Yii development company
For products already running on Yii, and for new PHP applications that suit its conventions: Yii 2 modules, REST APIs, RBAC, queues and caching, plus upgrade work that keeps aging Yii codebases secure on current PHP versions.
- Senior engineers · IST + EST overlap
- NDA on day 1
- 24-hour reply
- Projects shipped
- 50+
- Code ownership
- 100%
- Client rating
- 4.8/5
- First reply
- 24h
Practical Yii engineering for live products
Krapton’s engineers work as your Yii development company on live Yii 2 products and on new PHP applications where the framework’s conventions fit. Yii 2 remains a capable framework: ActiveRecord and query builder for data access, Gii for scaffolding, behaviors and events for cross-cutting logic, built-in RBAC, and REST controllers that expose models with little code. The common problems sit in the codebases around it: fat controllers, business rules buried in views, N+1 relations loaded without with(), schema cache disabled in production, and Composer dependencies frozen on old PHP versions. Our engineers fix these incrementally: moving logic into services and form models, adding Codeception tests before refactors, enabling query and schema caching, and moving long tasks to yii2-queue workers. For the future, Yii3 is a PSR-based rewrite rather than an in-place upgrade, so we help you choose between staying on a maintained Yii 2, migrating gradually to Yii3, or moving to Laravel or Symfony when hiring or ecosystem needs point that way.
Yii development services
Yii 2 application development
New modules and applications on the basic or advanced template, with ActiveRecord models, form models for validation, Gii scaffolding refined by hand, and clear separation between frontend, backend and console.
REST API development
APIs built on yii\rest\ActiveController or custom actions, with serializers, HTTP bearer or JWT authentication, rate limiting via RateLimitInterface, and OpenAPI documentation for frontend and mobile consumers.
RBAC and admin panels
Role and permission hierarchies with DbManager, access rules on controllers, and GridView or custom admin interfaces that let operations staff manage records without developer help.
Performance and caching
Eager loading with with() and joinWith(), schema and query caching, fragment and page caching backed by Redis, and profiling through the Yii debug toolbar to find slow actions.
Upgrades and security fixes
Moving Yii 2 projects onto supported PHP 8 releases, updating Composer dependencies and extensions, removing deprecated code, and reviewing CSRF, validation and output encoding throughout the application.
Legacy Yii migration
Planned moves from Yii 1.1 to Yii 2, or from Yii 2 toward Yii3, Laravel or Symfony, using a strangler approach that routes features to the new code one at a time.
Why teams choose Krapton for Yii
Senior engineers, fixed scope, and code you own — the things agencies promise and rarely deliver.
Comfortable with inherited code
Our engineers are used to reading undocumented Yii projects, mapping modules, behaviors and event handlers before changing anything, so fixes do not trigger surprises elsewhere.
Tests before refactoring
Codeception unit, functional and acceptance tests are added around the code we plan to change, giving a safety net that most legacy Yii projects are missing.
Neutral on framework future
We lay out the real tradeoffs between staying on Yii 2, adopting Yii3 and moving to Laravel or Symfony, including hiring pool, package ecosystem and migration effort.
Security reviewed by default
Every change is checked for validation rules, Html::encode output, CSRF tokens, safe attributes on mass assignment and parameterized queries, the areas where Yii applications most often go wrong.
How a Yii project runs with Krapton
01
Codebase assessment
We review structure, dependencies, PHP version, test coverage and slow actions, then write a short report ranking risks and quick wins.
02
Stabilize first
Critical paths get tests, error logging goes to Sentry or similar, and blocking security or compatibility issues are fixed before new features.
03
Feature delivery
New modules and API endpoints ship in short iterations with migrations, tests and code review, deployed through a pipeline instead of manual uploads.
04
Roadmap and handover
Krapton documents the architecture and a framework roadmap, then continues maintenance or transfers the codebase with runbooks to your developers.
The Yii stack we build with
Yii development: questions answered
What does a Yii development company handle on an existing product?
Mostly feature work, stabilization and upgrades on code that is already earning money. That covers new modules and API endpoints, fixing slow pages and N+1 queries, tightening RBAC and validation, moving the app onto supported PHP versions, adding tests, and planning the framework’s future. Krapton starts with an assessment because inherited Yii projects vary widely in structure and quality.
Should we stay on Yii 2 or move to Laravel or Symfony?
Stay on Yii 2 if the application is stable, the team knows it and maintenance releases cover your PHP version; move when hiring, packages or architecture keep holding you back. Laravel offers the largest PHP ecosystem and talent pool, Symfony suits long-lived enterprise systems, and Yii3 keeps Yii’s philosophy with modern PSR components. Any move should be gradual, module by module, rather than a full rewrite.
Can you migrate a Yii 1.1 application to Yii 2?
Yes, but expect a migration rather than an upgrade, because Yii 2 introduced namespaces and reworked ActiveRecord, views and configuration. We usually run both versions side by side behind the same web server, moving routes and modules one at a time while sharing the database and session. Tests on each migrated route confirm behavior matches before old code is deleted. Some teams use the same effort to move to Laravel instead.
How do you speed up a slow Yii application?
Start with the debug toolbar and database logs, since most slow Yii pages come from queries rather than PHP. Typical fixes are eager loading relations with with(), adding indexes for GridView filters and sorts, enabling schema cache in production, caching expensive fragments in Redis, and moving emails, exports and imports to queue workers. OPcache and a current PHP 8 release add a further improvement without code changes.
How is the cost of Yii development services worked out?
It is worked out from the codebase’s condition and the scope of change, not a standard package. Drivers include the Yii and PHP versions in use, test coverage, the number of modules and integrations, whether data or framework migration is involved, security or compliance requirements, and how much undocumented logic must be understood first. Undocumented legacy code is usually the largest unknown, so it is examined before any estimate.
Ready to build? Tell us what you have in mind.
Send a short brief and a senior engineer will reply within one business day with next steps — no sales fluff.