If my project is "big enough" to warrant something like Laravel, I would just pick Rails or Phoenix over it any day. I find both those languages much better to work in and I just feel like I'm getting things done way faster. If its smaller than that, I'dd definitly just pick go or node with express or go maybe.

I work with PHP 5 days a week through work and even a few years into it, i still do not like it. Its feels like a mess compared to the other languages I work with for my own projects. Even when working with something like Laravel which do mask a bunch of the pain points of the language, it still feels cumbersome IMO.