Legacy Laravel and PHP rescue and maintenance

Someone who has kept PHP systems running in production, not only built new ones: the job is reading someone else's undocumented code and upgrading it without stopping the business. I'm Marco Orta, a developer in Mexico City with 10+ years of PHP and Laravel, working remotely in US time zones. I always start with a 5-business-day assessment for US$590, credited if you hire the rescue.

It depends less on lines of code than on three things: how many third-party packages it uses (and how many are abandoned), whether it has tests, and which PHP version it runs today, because Laravel 13 requires PHP 8.3 or newer. That's why the number comes out of the assessment. For reference, stabilization starts at US$1,690 at a fixed price; a long jump such as Laravel 5 to 13 is done in stages and costs more than 10 to 13. Prices come from my remote rate of US$35–45 per hour.

Because versions have end dates. PHP 8.2 gets security fixes only until December 31, 2026; Laravel 11 stopped getting them on March 12, 2026 and Laravel 12 gets them until February 24, 2027. An app on PHP 5.6 or 7.x, or on Laravel 5, 6 or 8, has been out of support for years. The more versions pile up, the longer and costlier the jump, which is why the assessment starts by finding out where you stand.

Migrating in stages wins most of the time. A rewrite looks cleaner, but for months you pay for two systems, the new one takes long to match rules the old one already handled, and many rewrites get abandoned halfway. Migrating in stages keeps the app running while modules are replaced one by one. I recommend a rewrite only when the code has no reasonable fix or the technology can't be upgraded, and the assessment says so with reasons.

Yes, it's the most common case. With the code, server access and a copy of the database I reconstruct how it works: what each module does, what it depends on and which jobs run on their own. Everything I reconstruct is documented and stays with your company, so it never depends on a single person again, me included.

From US$290 a month: security patches, PHP, Laravel and package upgrades, monitoring, tested backups and minor changes. The final amount depends on the size of the app and how many changes you ask for; it's fixed in the assessment plan. New features are quoted separately, at a fixed price.

I'm in Mexico City on Central Standard Time all year, so my day overlaps most of a US workday, and calls and handoffs happen in English. You own the code from the first commit: it lives in your repository and your accounts, with the docs and server access. If we stop working together, you keep everything.