How to setup and scale the perfect websocket server for your Laravel project

Selecting the proper Laravel Websocket servers is complicated. Our engineers at ABOUT YOU have a few words of advice to help you decide!

More and more web developers are using Laravel as their Backend Framework — and not without reason: Laravel has become the most popular PHP framework in the last years. The advantages are apparent: web projects can be shipped extremely fast and are easy to operate, and its growing community is eager to provide top-notch packages that are easy to integrate.

However, things are getting a bit more complicated regarding WebSockets. If you want to incorporate real-time functions into your web application via WebSockets — for example, to display a live count of visitors on your website or to send live notifications, the selection of the proper setup is atypically complicated for Laravel.

It seems that the requirements of Laravel users are too individual to offer a standardized solution.

ABOUT YOU has addressed this issue and searched for a successful WebSocket server solution for their own e-commerce suite.

If you want to learn more about possible WebSocket backends for Laravel and how to use them successfully in your web project, check out the full article on the ABOUT YOU TECH Blog!

TL;DR

With Laravel and the appropriate WebSocket server, it is easily possible to push event-based data from a Laravel application to the web application. However, when choosing the right Websocket server solution, you should carefully consider which functionalities each option offers and which one is best suited for your intended use.

The PHP-based Laravel WebSockets Server with good documentation and a large user base is recommended for simple push notifications. If, on the other hand, you plan with high utilization of your web application and need maximum availability, you will not be able to avoid a horizontally scalable solution.

It is worth looking at the still very new but promising Soketi project, or at Laravel WebSockets v2, which is already very stable even if still in a beta version.

See our complete analysis of the different websocket solutions and a tutorial to setup your own server with our article on the ABOUT YOU TECH Blog!