Introducing Laradevs and new Team Plans

I've been a bit quiet here for a while - sorry about that!

It's been a very busy summer. I've had a lot of client work (a bit too much tbh), I was in London for most of August and the Laracon US at the end of August.

I've spent September getting back up to speed, but then needed a holiday from all of the travelling and working - I hadn't had a break since February.

Things are a little easier now, so I feel like I'm getting back on top! And that means you can expect more awesome developments here.

Rebranding

For those who've missed it, the site is transitioning from Laradir to Laradevs. It's a minor improvement and honestly probably just a step on a longer journey for the brand.

But it's a crucial one. I never really liked the sound of Laradir ("Lara... duh??") and it also feels like it makes the focus of the site way too narrow... it's not just a directory, I plan for it to be so much more than that.

I think 'Laradevs' reflects this nuance a bit better. It's also nicer to say.

Most things (like social media profiles) have changed over - it's pretty much @lara_devs everywhere now: Pinkary, Twitter, Threads - and you can get to the site via laradevs.com today, but the domain name switchover will be one of the final things to happen once everything else is sorted.

And Hassan is doing incredible work elevating the experience across the whole platform to go along with this.

New Teams Pricing

New prices

Details on the new Teams page.

Pricing is hard. I'm still trying to work out the sweet spot that doesn't put people off, but at the same time doesn't completely undervalue the platform.

I believe there's huge value in Laradevs. Even just the fact that it's a single place with direct access to hundreds of qualified developers who are here looking for work.

But what I'm finding is that many Teams don't really want to do the work of finding people and reaching out to them - it seems mostly that they prefer the good, old-fashioned 'fire and forget' of posting a job and letting the candidates come to them.

I still think that's a bit backwards, especially when I keep hearing about how many low-quality applications companies then have to sift through. But I get it, old habits die hard. It's not always easy to see how front-loading efficiency improvements lowers overall costs.

So you know what, I'm not going to fight it! My main priority over the next couple of months is going to be about enabling Teams to work in the way that they find the most appropriate.

If that means you use Laradevs to find Laravel developers and you reach out to them, great - that's just one way to do it. But there will be more ways too:

  1. Job Ads & Projects - Teams will soon be able to create job/project listings! These won't be publicly advertised; they'll only be visible to approved developers. It'll cost 5 Credits to post a job from a Teams account and they'll stay live for about a month. An email notification will go out to developers whose profiles match your parameters for candidates.
  2. Automated Matching - saved searches and job/project ads will update daily to continuously match developer profiles, sending notifications out to both sides when there are new matches.
  3. Instant Access - for those times when you just need a developer right now (!), I'm putting together a crack team of senior Laravel engineers who will be available on tap. This service will be available to Teams on the new Business plan...

To support this, I've introduced two new pricing tiers (and retired the old ones):

  • Monthly is now called the Pro plan. The monthly price is the same, but there's now a yearly payment option now which gives you 2 months free
  • Yearly has been changed to the Business plan, but is now priced monthly (again with a generously-discounted yearly option).

The new Business plan is epic.

It gives you unlimited Credits for a start, which means you can post as many jobs or projects as you need, and unlock as many developer profiles as you can shake a Laravel-branded notepad at.

And I'm cooking up some (what I think are) really cool features for Teams at this level to showcase you in the community even more and get those really top quality applications in.

And more!

There's plenty more in the works. We're steadily working our way across the entire site to refresh the layouts, improve the UX and add some extras along the way.

Our next focus is Developer profile pages, so look out for exciting updates coming to yours soon!

After that, we'll move onto Team profile pages.

Excited!