Customer Laravel Package

Product Decisions This Supports

• Feature Development: Accelerate the implementation of customer management (registration, authentication, profiles, subscriptions, and segmentation) in PHP-based applications, reducing time-to-market for features like user onboarding, loyalty programs, or B2B customer portals.
• Roadmap Alignment: Ideal for teams building eCommerce platforms, SaaS applications with user accounts, or membership-based services where customer data is a core asset. Integrates seamlessly with Sylius’s broader ecosystem (e.g., orders, payments) if scaling to full eCommerce.
• Build vs. Buy: Buy for teams lacking in-house expertise in secure, scalable customer management systems. Avoids reinventing wheels for CRUD operations, validation, or API endpoints while adhering to best practices (e.g., Doctrine ORM, Symfony security).
• Use Cases:
  • B2C/B2B Platforms: Customer self-service portals, account dashboards, or multi-tenancy support.
  • Marketplaces: Vendor/customer dual systems with role-based access.
  • Legacy Modernization: Migrate monolithic customer logic to modular components with cleaner separation of concerns.
  • API-First Projects: Pre-built REST/GraphQL endpoints for customer data (extendable via Sylius API Platform integration).

When to Consider This Package

• Adopt if:
  • Your stack is PHP/Symfony/Laravel and you need batteries-included customer management (auth, profiles, addresses, groups).
  • You prioritize extensibility (e.g., custom customer fields, events, or workflows via Sylius’s event system).
  • Your team lacks bandwidth to build secure, auditable customer data pipelines from scratch (e.g., password hashing, email verification, or GDPR compliance).
  • You’re already using or plan to use Sylius’s other components (e.g., Order, Payment) for consistency.
• Look elsewhere if:
  • You’re not using PHP/Symfony: The package is tightly coupled to these frameworks (e.g., Doctrine ORM, Symfony security bundles).
  • You need advanced social logins or third-party auth providers (e.g., OAuth2, Auth0) out of the box—this package focuses on core customer data, not auth backends.
  • Your use case requires real-time sync with external systems (e.g., CRM integrations like HubSpot/Salesforce), which may need additional middleware.
  • You’re building a minimalist MVP and want to avoid dependency bloat (this package is ~50KB+ with Doctrine; consider Laravel Breeze/Jetstream for simpler auth).
  • Your team prefers JavaScript/TypeScript for customer management (e.g., NextAuth.js, Supabase Auth).

How to Pitch It (Stakeholders)

For Executives: "This package lets us ship customer management features 3–6 months faster by leveraging Sylius’s production-tested, GDPR-compliant components—used by enterprises like [example]. It’s a low-risk, high-reward tradeoff: we avoid the cost of building and maintaining custom auth/profile systems while gaining scalability and security. For example, [Competitor X] took 18 months to build their customer portal; we can do it in 3 with this. The MIT license and Sylius’s roadmap ensure long-term viability."

For Engineering: *"sylius/customer gives us:

• Pre-built CRUD for customers, addresses, and groups (no more writing Doctrine entities from scratch).
• Symfony Security integration: Ready-to-use firewalls, voters, and password reset flows.
• Event-driven architecture: Hook into CustomerCreated, AddressUpdated, etc., for custom logic (e.g., triggering welcome emails).
• API-ready: Works with Sylius API Platform for GraphQL/REST endpoints with minimal config.
• Test coverage: 90%+ unit/integration tests reduce regression risk. Tradeoff: We’ll need to adopt Doctrine ORM (if not already) and learn Sylius’s conventions, but the payoff is less boilerplate and more time for business logic."*

For Design/UX: "This package handles the plumbing (e.g., form validation, data storage) so we can focus on UI/UX for customer journeys (e.g., onboarding flows, profile customization). The Sylius team’s design system (e.g., Sylius UI) aligns with modern eCommerce patterns, reducing friction in implementing features like address books or subscription tiers."