Technology selection is one of the highest-leverage decisions an agency makes on behalf of its clients. The right tech stack accelerates development, reduces long-term costs, and scales with the client’s business. The wrong choice creates friction at every stage — from development through deployment through years of maintenance. Yet many agencies default to their comfort zone rather than matching technology to requirements.
This guide provides a structured framework for evaluating tech stack options, covering the factors that actually matter for agency-delivered projects and the common pitfalls that lead to regrettable decisions.
Start with Requirements, Not Preferences
The first rule of tech stack selection is that the decision should be driven by project requirements, not team familiarity. A WordPress implementation is objectively better than a custom Laravel build for a content-heavy marketing site with a non-technical editor. A Laravel application is objectively better than WordPress for a complex SaaS platform with custom business logic. The technology should serve the project, not the other way around.
Map the project’s core requirements before evaluating any technology. What kind of content management does the client need? How complex is the business logic? What are the performance requirements? Who will maintain the application after launch? What integrations are required? What is the realistic budget? The answers to these questions narrow the viable options significantly before any technology-specific evaluation begins.
The Decision Framework
Content-First Projects: WordPress or Shopify
If the primary need is content publishing, product catalog management, or e-commerce with standard workflows, a CMS or e-commerce platform is the right starting point. WordPress handles content management with unmatched flexibility and a massive ecosystem of plugins. Shopify handles e-commerce with a managed infrastructure that eliminates hosting complexity. Both provide visual editing interfaces that non-technical users can operate independently.
Choose WordPress when the project involves complex content structures, custom post types, multi-author publishing workflows, or deep integration with third-party content systems. Choose Shopify when the project is primarily e-commerce with standard catalog, cart, and checkout requirements and the client values managed infrastructure over customization flexibility.
Logic-First Projects: Laravel
When the application’s value lies in custom business logic — complex workflows, data processing, multi-step forms with validation rules, role-based access control, or integration with multiple external systems — a framework like Laravel is the appropriate choice. Laravel provides the structure and tooling for building custom applications efficiently while maintaining code quality and testability.
Laravel is the right choice when the project requires custom database schemas, complex authorization rules, background processing, real-time features, or API development. The development investment is higher than WordPress or Shopify, but the result is an application built precisely to the client’s specifications without the constraints of a pre-built platform.
Interactive Front-End Projects: Vue.js
When the user interface requires significant interactivity — dashboards, real-time data displays, complex forms, drag-and-drop interfaces, or single-page application behavior — Vue.js provides the front-end framework needed to deliver these experiences. Vue.js works as a standalone front end consuming APIs, as a complement to Laravel via Inertia.js, or as interactive islands within a WordPress or static site.
The decision is not whether to use a front-end framework, but how much of the application needs framework-driven interactivity. A contact form does not need Vue.js. A real-time project management dashboard does. Match the level of front-end framework investment to the actual interactivity requirements.
Platform Products: SaaS Stack
When the client is building a product — a SaaS application, a platform, a marketplace — the tech stack needs to support multi-tenancy, subscription billing, API access for third-party integrations, and the kind of long-term scalability that product development demands. Laravel combined with Vue.js provides a full-stack solution for SaaS development, with ecosystem packages for billing (Cashier), multi-tenancy, and API management.
Factors That Shape the Decision
Client’s Technical Capacity
Who will maintain the application after the agency hands it off? If the client has a non-technical marketing team, WordPress with a well-configured admin interface is more sustainable than a custom application that requires developer intervention for content updates. If the client has an in-house development team, a custom framework application gives them the flexibility to extend and modify the system independently.
Budget and Timeline
Platform-based solutions (WordPress, Shopify) deliver faster and at lower cost than custom development. A WordPress site with a premium theme and configured plugins launches in weeks. A custom Laravel application with Vue.js front end takes months. Both approaches produce excellent results for the right project — the question is whether the project’s complexity justifies the custom development investment.
Be direct with clients about these trade-offs. A $30,000 budget for a SaaS platform is not realistic, and recommending custom development at that price point does the client a disservice. Equally, forcing a complex business application into WordPress because it is cheaper upfront creates technical debt that costs more in the long run.
Scalability Requirements
Scalability is frequently cited as a reason for choosing custom development, but it needs to be assessed realistically. WordPress with proper caching serves millions of pageviews per month. Shopify handles significant e-commerce traffic on its managed infrastructure. Most agency client projects will never outgrow these platforms.
Custom scalability matters when the application involves high-frequency data writes, real-time processing, concurrent user operations, or computational workloads that demand specific infrastructure configurations. If the scaling needs are primarily read traffic (page loads, content delivery), platform solutions with CDN and caching handle this efficiently.
Integration Requirements
Evaluate the integrations the project requires and how each platform handles them. WordPress has plugins for most common integrations (CRMs, email marketing, analytics, payment processors). Shopify has an app ecosystem for e-commerce-related integrations. Custom Laravel applications can integrate with anything that has an API, but each integration requires development effort.
When a project requires deep integration with a system that has a poor or undocumented API, custom development provides the flexibility to build robust error handling, data transformation, and retry logic around unreliable endpoints. Platform plugins may not handle these edge cases gracefully.
Hybrid Approaches
Not every project fits neatly into one technology category. Many of the best agency solutions combine platforms — WordPress for content management with a Laravel API for custom business logic, Shopify for e-commerce with Vue.js for a headless front-end, or a WordPress marketing site alongside a Laravel SaaS application sharing a single authentication system.
These hybrid approaches work well when different sections of the project have genuinely different requirements. The key is ensuring clean integration points between systems and avoiding the complexity of maintaining too many technologies for marginal benefit.
The Agency Recommendation
The best agencies develop proficiency across multiple technologies so that recommendations are genuinely objective. When the only tool you have is WordPress, everything looks like a WordPress problem. When you can deliver WordPress, Shopify, Laravel, Vue.js, and SaaS solutions with equal confidence, the recommendation matches the project rather than the agency’s limitations.
Document your tech stack recommendation with clear reasoning. Explain why the chosen approach fits better than the alternatives. Address the trade-offs openly. This transparency builds client trust and protects both parties from second-guessing later in the project. A well-reasoned technology recommendation is one of the most valuable things an agency provides — it saves clients from costly missteps that less experienced teams make.