Laravel Filament Backend Starter - Build your admin panel fast

Stop rebuilding the same auth, roles, and panel setup from scratch on every project. Laravel Filament Backend Starter gives you a production-ready admin panel in minutes, not days.

Built with Laravel 13 and Filament PHP v5, every decision in this starter has been made for you: security defaults, role structure, queue management, Docker setup. Copy it, configure your .env, run one command, and ship.

What you get

Secure authentication, out of the box

No more wiring up invitation flows or MFA from scratch:

• Email invitation system - users receive a secure link to set their password on first login
• First-login password renewal enforced (via Filament Renew Password)
• Multi-factor authentication with authenticator app support

Roles & permissions, pre-seeded and ready

• Spatie Laravel Permission integrated
• Default Backend role with policies pre-seeded
• User management Filament Resource included: invite and manage backend users directly from the panel

Production infrastructure included

• Laravel Horizon - queue monitoring, protected by auth & backend role
• Logs Viewer - protected by auth & backend role
• Redis for queues and cache
• Multi-stage Docker setup - PHP-FPM, Nginx, PostgreSQL, Redis, Horizon, scheduler, all wired with healthchecks

Developer experience

• User profile management (email, name, password, timezone)
• Per-user timezone applied automatically to all TextColumn and DateTimePicker
• Strong password policy enforced by default (12+ chars, mixed case, numbers, symbols)
• Light & Dark theme switch + empty custom theme scaffold
• Database notifications (Filament native)
• Subdomain or path routing (backend.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.com/backend)
• Fully localized - English by default, extend with your own languages
• Laravel Debugbar, PHPStan, Pint, PestPHP included

Tech stack

Who is it for?

✅ SaaS admin panels
✅ Internal dashboards
✅ Multi-role business tools
❌ Not intended for public-facing user portals

Need both an admin panel and a member portal? See the Multipanel Starter. It includes everything here plus a dedicated member panel with public registration.

Or need a setup with multi-tenancy? See the Multi-Tenant Starter.

Compare starter templates

How to install

Without Docker

composer install
cp .env.example .env
php artisan key:generate
npm install
npm run build

Configure your .env, database, Redis, mail, and your panel access:

# Access at backend.yourdomain.com
FILAMENT_PANELS_BACKEND_DOMAIN=backend.yourdomain.com
FILAMENT_PANELS_BACKEND_PATH=

# Or at yourdomain.com/backend
FILAMENT_PANELS_BACKEND_DOMAIN=
FILAMENT_PANELS_BACKEND_PATH=backend

Then run the setup command. It handles migrations, seeds roles & permissions, and creates your first backend user:

php artisan backend:setup

That's it. Your panel is live.

With Docker (recommended)

A docker-compose.example.yaml is included with everything pre-configured: PHP-FPM, Nginx, PostgreSQL, Redis, Horizon, and the scheduler.

A dedicated bootstrap service runs migrations automatically before the app starts - no manual intervention needed.

For a deep dive into the Docker architecture behind this setup:
👉 Production-Ready Docker Setup for Laravel Filament 
👉 Production-Ready Docker Compose for Laravel Filament

# 1. Copy and adapt the example compose file
cp docker-compose.example.yaml docker-compose.yaml

# 2. Set up your environment
cp .env.docker.example .env
# Edit .env with your database credentials and panel config

# 3. Build and start
docker compose up -d --build

# 4. Create your first backend user
docker compose exec php-fpm php artisan backend:setup

Access the panel at https://localhost:4443/backend.

⚠️ Always use https://. Nginx expects SSL on port 4443.
⚠️ The browser will warn about the self-signed cert in local dev, this is expected. Self-signed certificates are already provided in docker/example/nginx/certs/.

For production, adapt the compose file and Nginx config to your own infrastructure. See the GitLab CI guide for a production pipeline.

Deploy your starter on DigitalOcean

The go-to VPS for this stack. Docker, Nginx, PostgreSQL, Redis, Horizon - all run perfectly on their Droplets.

Get started with DigitalOcean →

Visual overview

Get access

The Backend Starter is included in the Full Access tier, along with the Multipanel Starter, all premium articles, and every future starter and guide.

Download the latest version at the bottom of this page - re-download anytime to get updates. The filename includes the release version so you always know what you have.

Reselling or redistributing the code as a standalone product is not permitted.