adminEvery platform starts with a decision that’s hard to undo: the technology it’s built on. Get it right and the platform is pleasant to build on for years. Get it wrong and every new feature becomes a fight with the foundations.
When we set out to build WentoCart, we chose Laravel for the backend, React for the storefront and admin, Vite for the build pipeline, with Tailwind CSS and MySQL alongside. This post explains why, including the trade-offs we knowingly accepted. If you’re a developer deciding whether WentoCart is worth your time, this is the post for you.
TL;DR
- Laravel gives us a mature, productive backend that runs on affordable hosting almost anywhere.
- React lets us build an interactive storefront and admin from shared, reusable components.
- Vite keeps development fast and production bundles lean, and it integrates officially with Laravel.
- We chose proven, popular tools so developers can be productive on day one.
- The trade-offs: two languages in one project, the “PHP perception”, and the discipline
React bundles require.
The Problem We Wanted to Solve
Looking at the open-source commerce landscape, we kept seeing the same three options:
- Powerful but heavy platforms with complex architectures, steep learning curves and demanding hosting.
- Plugins on top of content systems, where commerce is layered onto software built for something else.
- Headless toolkits that are elegant for developers, but leave you to build the entire storefront yourself.
We wanted something in between: a complete store out of the box, built on a modern, mainstream stack, that a small team could install, understand and extend without specialist training.
Our Guiding Principles
Choose proven technology 1 Commerce handles money and customer data. We wanted battle-tested tools with long track records, not experiments.
Make it easy to hire for 2 Merchants and agencies should be able to find developers for their store without searching for rare specialists.
Ship a complete store 3 A working storefront, checkout and admin from the first install, not a kit of parts.
Be fast for shoppers and developers 4 Quick pages and interactions for customers; quick builds and clear code for the people extending it.
Let people own their stack 5 Self-hosted, open source and runnable on ordinary, affordable servers.
Why Laravel for the Backend
Laravel has become one of the most popular PHP frameworks because it makes the everyday parts of web development pleasant. For a commerce platform, that matters a lot:
- A complete toolkit: Eloquent ORM, migrations, validation, authentication, queues, events, scheduling, mail and testing are all built in. Orders, stock updates and emails map naturally onto these tools.
- Predictable releases: Laravel ships a major version each year with published support windows. Laravel 13, for example, arrived in early 2026 with bug fixes planned into 2027 and security fixes into 2028.
- Excellent documentation and community: answers to most questions are a search away.
- Hosting everywhere: PHP runs on almost any server, from a $6 cloud instance to enterprise infrastructure.
- Modern PHP: typed properties, enums, attributes and steady performance improvements make today’s PHP a very different language from the PHP of a decade ago.
“Isn’t PHP dying?” It’s a fair question. PHP has slipped in developer-survey popularity, and newer languages get more attention. But PHP still runs a large share of the web, including some of the most widely used content and commerce platforms, and Laravel continues to release, grow and attract new developers. For a self-hosted store that needs to run reliably on affordable hosting, that combination of maturity and availability was hard to beat.
Why React for the Storefront and Admin
46.9% of developers use React, making it the most 65M weekly downloads of Vite, the build tool that used front-end library in the survey. powers our front end.
Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025 Vite 8 announcement, March 2026
- Commerce UIs are made of components. Product cards, variant selectors, carts, filters and checkout steps map neatly onto React’s component model.
- Interactive by nature. Filtering, choosing a size or adding to cart can update instantly without a full page reload, which helps responsiveness metrics like INP.
- One skill set, two applications. The storefront and the admin dashboard use the same language and patterns, so developers can move between them easily.
- A huge ecosystem and talent pool. Libraries, tooling and developers are easy to find.
Why Vite for the Build Pipeline
- Fast feedback: near-instant dev server start and hot module replacement, so changes appear in the browser as you save.
- Lean production builds: code splitting and optimised assets out of the box.
- First-class Laravel support: Laravel ships with an official Vite integration, so the backend and front end fit together cleanly.
- Momentum: Vite 8, released in March 2026, moved to the Rust-based Rolldown bundler, with the Vite team reporting builds up to 10–30 times faster.
And the Supporting Cast: Tailwind CSS and MySQL
Tailwind CSS keeps styling consistent and generates only the CSS a page actually uses, which keeps stylesheets small and makes theming straightforward. MySQL is the world’s most familiar relational database for web applications, available on virtually every host and as a managed service from every major cloud provider.
The Stack at a Glance
Layer Technology Why we chose it
Backend Laravel (PHP) Productive, mature, runs on affordable hosting everywhere
Storefront React Component-based, interactive shopping experiences
Admin React Same skills and patterns as the storefront dashboard
Styling Tailwind CSS Consistent design, small stylesheets, easy theming
Build tooling Vite Fast development, optimised production bundles
Database MySQL Familiar, widely hosted, well supported
Installer php artisan wento:install One command to check requirements and set up a store
The Trade-Offs We Accepted
No stack is perfect, and we’d rather be upfront about ours:
- Two languages in one project. Contributors work in PHP and JavaScript. We think the benefits outweigh the context switching, but it is a real cost.
- The PHP perception. Some developers dismiss PHP on reputation alone. We’re betting that modern Laravel code will speak for itself.
- JavaScript needs discipline. React makes it easy to ship too much code. Keeping bundles lean is an ongoing commitment, not a one-time task.
- Not headless-first. We ship a complete application. Teams that only want a headless API may prefer toolkits designed purely for that.
- A young ecosystem. WentoCart is new, so there are fewer extensions and themes today than on older platforms.
What This Means for You
If you’re a… You get…
Developer A familiar Laravel and React codebase, fast tooling and a clear place to start.
Agency A stack your team already knows, and a complete store to customise for each client.
Merchant A modern store you own, on affordable hosting, with a large pool of developers to help.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why not build everything in JavaScript with Node.js? Node.js is a great choice for many projects. We chose Laravel for its complete, batteries-included toolkit and because PHP hosting is so widely available and affordable for self-hosted stores.
Why React instead of Vue or Livewire? All three are excellent. React’s ecosystem and talent pool are the largest, and its component model suits a rich storefront and admin built from shared pieces.
Can I contribute? Yes. WentoCart is open source under OSL-3.0, and the release package includes the full source. Visit the contribute page to get involved.
The Bottom Line
We built WentoCart on Laravel, React and Vite because they let us deliver a complete, modern store that real teams can understand, host and extend. We didn’t pick the trendiest tools; we picked the ones we believe will still be productive, well supported and easy to hire for years from now.
Read the code. Tell us what you think. Download WentoCart v1.0, explore the developer documentation, and share your feedback or contributions. We’d love to hear from you.