Laravel Maintenance
A maintenance retainer is for applications that should stay boring: patched, backed up, deployable, and owned by someone who will still answer in six months.
Maintenance is not a synonym for neglect
Laravel maintenance, done properly, is the work that prevents a rescue: dependency hygiene, PHP version planning, backup restores that have been tried once, and queue workers that are supervised rather than “started in a screen session in 2021”.
If more than a few operational basics are missing — backups, workers, a deploy path, someone who still has the keys — a code audit or rescue is the honest first month, not a cheap retainer that pretends otherwise.
Security patches, PHP versions, and Composer hygiene
A maintenance month is usually: Laravel and package security releases, a PHP version plan that does not wait for EOL, queue workers that survived the last reboot, and a backup restore that has been tried once. Unused time does not magically become a rewrite. What rolls forward is written in the retainer, not implied by a pricing table.
Process
- Baseline Repo access and how production actually runs. No retainer on a mystery box.
- Cadence Agreed hours or a monthly block, with unused time not magically becoming a rewrite.
- Change control Small PRs, notes, staging where it exists.
Questions that usually come up
What is included in Laravel application support?
A named engineer who already knows the app: production incidents, dependency patches, small features, deploy coverage, and the judgement to refuse work that should be a project. Exact scope is written per retainer.
Can you support an application with no documentation?
Yes. Documentation is reconstructed from the running system: env, scheduler, workers, README that actually boots. That reconstruction is billed as work, not assumed to be free.
How do you investigate recurring bugs?
Reproduce, then look at logs, failed jobs, the last deploy, and the integration boundary u2014 not u201crestart PHP-FPM and hopeu201d. Recurrence usually means a missing test or an unowned queue.
Can you add automated tests to an existing Laravel application?
Yes. Characterisation tests around auth, money, and webhooks first. A green suite that never hits HTTP is not coverage.
How do you handle production deployments?
A repeatable pipeline (Git + artisan, Forge/Envoyer/CI as appropriate), with a rollback story. I will not FTP a u201chotfixu201d into production as a habit.
Can you improve slow Laravel applications?
Yes u2014 after measuring. N+1 queries, missing indexes, unbounded exports and queue lag are common. See performance optimisation.
Can you help after the original developer has left?
That is Laravel Rescue. Support retainers usually follow once the app is reproducible and the fires are listed, not before.
Do you handle Laravel security patches and Composer updates?
Yes u2014 that is the boring core of a maintenance retainer: framework and package patches that are actually safe to take, PHP version planning, and not leaving composer.lock frozen until a CVE becomes an incident.
Are queue workers, Horizon and the scheduler part of support?
If the app uses them, they have to be in the operational baseline: a supervised worker, a scheduler that actually runs, failed-job visibility. u201cWe have Redisu201d is not the same as a worker that survived the last reboot.
What is not included in a Laravel support retainer?
Major Laravel version jumps, new third-party integrations, hosting migrations, and rewrites. Those are scoped and quoted separately. Exact inclusions, hours and response expectations are written per retainer u2014 there is no fake SLA badge on this site.
Qualification
Discuss your Laravel project
Name, work email, and a short description of the application is enough. No discovery call theatre before I know whether I can actually help.
- UK businesses with a real Laravel (or legacy PHP) application
- Build, support, rescue, upgrade or integration work
- Reply from Oliver Burton, usually within one working day