- What is konekt/customer and what does it do?
- Konekt Customer is a Laravel library for handling customer records, including personal and organizational details, addresses, and related data. It ships ready-to-use Eloquent models and migrations so you can add customer management to an existing application instead of building the schema yourself. It is best understood as a customer-domain module rather than a full CRM or billing solution.
- Does konekt/customer require the Concord modular framework?
- Yes, the package is built around the Konekt Concord modular framework and brings its module bootstrapping conventions with it. That makes it a good fit for Laravel applications already using Concord, where it can be treated as a bounded customer module. In a conventional Laravel app without Concord, the architectural fit is poor because the extra coupling may outweigh the benefit of basic customer handling.
- Which Laravel and PHP versions does konekt/customer support?
- Supported versions are defined by the package's Composer constraints and have changed over time, so check the composer.json on the repository or the Packagist release metadata before committing. Pin exact versions and verify that Laravel, PHP, database, and Concord constraints all match your target stack. Low adoption means stale compatibility with current Laravel and PHP releases is a real risk you should test in a spike first.
- How do I install konekt/customer with Composer?
- Install it with composer require konekt/customer and then run the package migrations so the customer and address tables are created. Because it is a Concord module, expect to register the module and follow Concord's bootstrapping conventions during setup rather than a plain service provider flow. Start the installation in a disposable branch or scratch app so you can inspect exactly what the package publishes and migrates.
- Are the migrations publishable and safe to customize?
- The package provides migrations for its customer and address tables, and in typical Laravel fashion you should check whether they are publishable before running them in production. Review column types, indexes, foreign keys, and naming conventions against your own conventions, since migration conflicts are one of the known risks with this package. If you customize published migrations, keep them under your own version control and treat them as your responsibility going forward.
- Can I extend the customer models without forking the package?
- Extension points beyond what the module exposes are not well documented, and low usage means fewer proven patterns for customization. The safer approach is to wrap the package models in your own adapter or service layer so your application code depends on your interfaces rather than directly on the package classes. That keeps a future replacement or fork feasible if the package is abandoned.
- Does konekt/customer support multi-tenancy or complex customer hierarchies?
- The package focuses on conventional customer records, addresses, and related domain primitives rather than multi-tenancy, complex hierarchies, or CRM-style workflows. Feasibility drops sharply if your product needs data isolation per tenant, deep organizational structures, or strict API contracts the module does not expose. Evaluate your requirements against the schema before adoption, and consider implementing customer handling directly in Laravel if isolation is a hard requirement.
- Is konekt/customer production ready and actively maintained?
- Adoption signals are limited, with very few stars and no dependents, which means fewer battle-tested edge cases and less community pressure on fixes. There is no implied commercial support, so plan on your team owning upgrades, Laravel compatibility patches, and migration stewardship. MIT licensing is favorable, but do not make it the system of record for revenue-critical customer data until ownership and upgrade paths are explicit.
- How do I migrate existing customer data into konekt/customer tables?
- Map your existing customer records into the package tables, preserve legacy identifiers, and run backfills in a staging environment first. Validate counts, duplicates, address normalization, and referential integrity before cutover, and rehearse a rollback plan. Keep an adapter layer around the package models so the schema can serve as a starting point rather than a permanent public API.
- What are the alternatives to konekt/customer for customer management in Laravel?
- If you are not already committed to Concord, implementing customer and address models directly in Laravel is usually simpler and avoids the module coupling. More actively maintained domain packages may also be worth evaluating depending on whether you need addresses, contacts, or billing integration. Treat konekt/customer as one option to prove out in a time-boxed proof of concept, and compare it against a small in-house implementation before deciding.