About

The PHP architecture layer that grows with your system — without rewrites

From #[CommandHandler] on day one, to event sourcing, sagas, outbox, and distributed messaging at scale — one package, same codebase, no forced migrations between growth stages.

Works on the Laravel or Symfony you already run.

Install today. Write a command handler in the next five minutes. Add event sourcing three years from now on the same codebase — by writing new classes, not swapping libraries.

The 30-second proof

You start here on day one:

That's the entire setup. No bus configuration. No handler registration. No retry config. No serialization wiring. Ecotone reads your attributes and handles the rest:

• Command, Query, and Event Bus — wired automatically from your #[CommandHandler], #[QueryHandler], and #[EventHandler] attributes

• Event routing — NotificationService subscribes to OrderWasPlaced without any manual wiring

• Async execution — #[Asynchronous('notifications')] routes to RabbitMQ, SQS, Kafka, or DBAL — your choice of transport

• Failure isolation — each event handler receives its own copy of the message; one handler's failure never affects another

• Retries and dead letter — failed messages retry automatically, permanently failed ones go to a dead letter queue you can inspect and replay

• Tracing — OpenTelemetry integration traces every message across sync and async flows

Test exactly the flow you care about

Extract a specific flow and test it in isolation — only the services you need:

Now bring in the full async flow. Enable an in-memory channel and run it within the same test process:

->run('notifications') processes messages from the in-memory queue — right in the same process. The async handler executes deterministically, no timing issues, no polling, no external broker.

The key: swap the in-memory channel for DBAL, RabbitMQ, or Kafka to test what runs in production — the test stays the same. The ease of in-memory testing stays with you no matter what backs your production system.

The growth ladder

Every other PHP alternative forces you to re-decide architecture at each column break — swap libraries, add glue, or stitch together a multi-package stack. No other single PHP package spans the full set of growth stages.

Why companies pick Ecotone

1. No forced migrations as your domain grows

Every other PHP choice commits to a ceiling on day one — beyond it lies integration work:

Composable with alternatives. Complete standalone.

Ecotone doesn't have to be the entire stack. It composes with the other libraries above when a team already has a preferred tool for one layer:

• Ecotone as the orchestration / saga / outbox layer, delegating long-running cross-language durable workflows to Temporal.

• Ecotone as the CQRS, workflows, and asynchronous communication layer, delegating event sourcing to EventSauce, Patchlevel, Spatie laravel-event-sourcing, or your own ES library.

• Ecotone as the Event Sourcing layer — you bring message handlers on Symfony Messenger (or your bus of choice); Ecotone persists the events and provides scalable (partitioned + streaming) projections.

Ecotone is the only toolkit on this list that runs fully standalone. Every other option requires you to integrate something for the layers it does not cover. Ecotone covers every layer itself when you want it to, and composes with alternatives when you prefer a specific tool for one piece.

2. Replaces the Laravel and Symfony patchwork with one toolkit

If you're on Laravel today, reaching for the full set of patterns typically means stitching Spatie laravel-event-sourcing + Durable Workflow + Bus::chain + a DIY outbox + listener-dedup middleware. Five libraries, five upgrade paths, five mental models, custom glue between them.

If you're on Symfony, the common path is Messenger + Patchlevel or EventSauce (for the ES layer) + a community outbox package or DIY outbox + a DIY saga layer or Temporal-on-the-side.

Ecotone collapses all of it into attributes on plain PHP classes. One package to upgrade, one model to teach.

3. True per-handler failure isolation — a copy of the message to every handler

Ecotone delivers per-handler failure isolation by dispatching a copy of the message to every handler. Each handler processes its own message, retries independently, and fails independently. A failure in one handler cannot affect, block, or re-trigger any sibling handler, because they are never sharing a message envelope in the first place.

This is the structural difference from Symfony Messenger: Messenger dispatches a single envelope through multiple handlers; per-handler failure isolation is not a property it provides, and the community workarounds (per-handler transports, idempotency keys, custom dedup middleware) reduce the problem without solving it at the framework level.

Pair that with a first-class transactional outbox and deduplication, and the three patterns you would otherwise assemble from idempotency middleware + a community outbox package + a custom dedup layer become default behavior.

4. Production resilience is the default, not assembly

• Transactional outbox — business write and message publish in one atomic commit. No "we published but the DB rolled back" ghost events. No "we committed but the publish crashed" lost events.

• Dead letter queue — failed messages captured with full context, replayable with one command.

• Deduplication — built in, attribute-driven.

• OpenTelemetry tracing — every message traced across sync and async hops.

• Retries with configurable backoff — per channel, no custom wiring.

5. Framework-portable business code

Same aggregates, handlers, sagas, and projections run on Laravel, Symfony, or any PSR-11 container. A team that starts on Laravel and later consolidates on Symfony (or vice versa) does not rewrite business logic. For companies hiring from both PHP pools, handling acquisitions, or wanting long-term framework independence, this removes a category of strategic risk.

No other option on this list offers framework portability.

6. Battle-tested patterns, not invented ones

Ecotone is built on Enterprise Integration Patterns — the same foundation behind Spring Integration, Axon Framework (Java), NServiceBus and MassTransit (.NET), and Apache Camel. These patterns run banking, telecom, and logistics systems in production at scale, measured in decades.

Ecotone brings them to PHP as attribute-driven code on your existing Laravel or Symfony application. Your team writes POPOs; Ecotone applies the patterns.

7. Composable messaging — pipe, route, split, filter, transform on the fly

The EIP foundation is not a lineage — it is a working catalogue of composable primitives you write as attributes:

• Pipe handlers together — output of one handler becomes input of the next, no Bus::chain glue code.

• Content-based routing — route the same message to different handlers based on its payload or headers. VIP orders go through the premium path, bulk orders through the batch path — no if statements in your domain code.

• Splitters — one OrderPlaced event with ten line items fans out into ten per-item fulfillment messages, processed in parallel, each independently retryable.

• Filters and transformers — reject, enrich, or reshape messages declaratively.

The problem these primitives solve is complex integration flows that usually collapse into unmaintainable conditional dispatch code. In Ecotone, each primitive is an attribute on a handler or channel. The flow is readable in one place, the failure modes are first-class, and adding a new routing rule is an attribute, not a refactor.

See it built end-to-end: Composing Building Blocks — a walk-through of an Order Fulfillment system that uses every primitive above, with side-by-side Symfony Messenger and Laravel Queues comparisons.

8. Multi-tenancy down to the message channel

Multi-tenancy in Ecotone is not just isolated storage. It extends through the messaging topology:

• Tenant-isolated event streams — each tenant's events live in their own stream. No cross-tenant replay risk, no cross-tenant projection leakage.

• Tenant-routed message channels — messages are automatically routed to per-tenant queues based on their metadata. One handler, many tenants, no cross-contamination.

• Priority routing by customer status — a VIP customer's request is dispatched to a fast queue and processed with higher priority; a free-tier request goes through the standard queue. Same handler code, declarative routing.

• Tenant-aware projections — each tenant gets its own read model, rebuildable in isolation.

This is multi-tenancy as an architectural property of the message bus, not a WHERE clause in your queries.

9. Endpoint-ID routing — refactor without fear, deserialize only when needed

Ecotone routes messages by endpoint ID, not by class name. Three direct consequences:

• Rename classes, move handlers, change namespaces — nothing breaks. The endpoint ID is the contract. You can move a command handler from one module to another, rename the command class itself, refactor the entire package structure, and every queued message in flight will still be routed to the right handler.

• Deserialize only when needed. A message passing through a router or pipe is not deserialized until it reaches its actual endpoint. Messages that do not need processing at a given node stay serialized — meaningful throughput gains on high-fanout and pass-through workloads.

• Protocol-stable integration between services. Published messages stay compatible with consumers as your internal code structure evolves. The fully-qualified class name is not part of the wire contract; the endpoint ID is.

10. Compose patterns without glue code — the attribute is the wiring

The reason CQRS, event sourcing, sagas, and projections compose seamlessly is that they are all handlers on the same messaging foundation. There is no wiring layer, no event-to-handler mapping configuration, no container registration, no factory class.

Four different building blocks — Aggregate, Saga, Projection, async event handler — subscribing to the same event. There is no EventSubscriberInterface list to register, no saga-to-event mapping file, no projection orchestrator. Each subscriber receives its own copy of the message, retries independently, and lives its own lifecycle.

This is what "one toolkit, every pattern, no glue" means in practice.

11. Resilience as a per-bus policy — extend the CommandBus for your use case

Resilience in Ecotone is not a global setting. You define custom buses per use case by extending CommandBus, EventBus, or QueryBus into a use-case-specific interface, then attach the policy as attributes directly on the interface declaration.

Three attributes, three orthogonal guarantees — retry, dead-letter routing, and deduplication — applied to every command dispatched through this bus. The default CommandBus stays synchronous and fail-fast; a separate InternalApiCommandBus can have its own tighter retry budget. All of them dispatch to the same command handlers — the policy is the bus, not the handler.

12. #[Priority] works everywhere — one attribute, uniform semantics

Priority in Ecotone is a single attribute that applies uniformly across every handler type and across synchronous and asynchronous dispatch:

• Synchronous dispatch — when multiple handlers subscribe to the same event (Event Handlers, Projections, Sagas), #[Priority] orders their invocation.

• Asynchronous dispatch — where the broker supports priority, Ecotone maps the attribute directly to the broker's mechanism: RabbitMQ's native priority queues (x-max-priority) for broker-native priority, or prioritized-queue routing for transports that consume per-queue.

One attribute, uniform semantics across Event Handlers, Projections, Sagas, and async transports. No custom middleware, no separate "VIP transport" to configure, no if-branches in handlers.

Trusted in regulated and high-stakes production

Ecotone runs in production at:

• Payment gateways — where retried handlers cannot double-charge, and the outbox must guarantee that every committed transaction produces exactly one downstream message.

• Credit card systems — where transaction loss is catastrophic, and every state change must be auditable and replayable.

• Certification authorities — whose entire business depends on reconstructible, tamper-evident audit trails; the event log is the audit log.

• E-commerce platforms — orchestrating order → payment → fulfillment → notification as declarative sagas with compensation.

• Public transportation subscription systems — managing nationwide transit subscriptions (create, renew, terminate) with distributed bus integration to Java and PHP services over Kafka.

• Two-sided marketplaces — coordinating customer orders, provider subscriptions, lead distribution, and B2B enterprise partnerships on one event-driven backbone.

The features on the capability matrix below are not hypothetical. They run in systems where failure is either regulated (audit, payments), expensive (double-charges, lost deliveries), or public (transit, marketplaces).

The full capability matrix

Read more: Why Ecotone?

Where Ecotone fits in your stack

Your framework stays. Your ORM stays. Your queues and transports stay. Your deployment stays. Ecotone is a Composer package that adds architecture on top of what you already run — business logic as POPOs, messaging topology as attributes, and your existing Laravel, Symfony, or PSR-11 container underneath.

AI-ready by design

Ecotone's declarative, attribute-based architecture is inherently friendly to AI code generators. When your AI assistant works with Ecotone code, two things happen:

Less context needed, less code generated. A command handler with #[CommandHandler] and #[Asynchronous('orders')] tells the full story in two attributes — no bus configuration files, no handler registration, no retry setup to feed into the AI's context window.

AI that knows Ecotone. Your AI assistant can work with Ecotone out of the box:

• Agentic Skills — Ready-to-use skills that teach any coding agent how to correctly write handlers, aggregates, sagas, projections, tests, and more.

• MCP Server — Direct access to Ecotone documentation for any AI assistant that supports Model Context Protocol — Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, GitHub Copilot, and others.

• llms.txt — AI-optimized documentation files that give any LLM instant context about Ecotone's API and patterns.

Declarative configuration that any coding agent can follow and reproduce. Testing support that lets it verify even the most advanced flows. Less guessing, no hallucinating — just confident iteration.

Start with your framework

Laravel — Laravel's queue runs jobs, not business processes. Stop stitching Spatie + Durable Workflow + Bus::chain + DIY outbox. Ecotone replaces the patchwork with one attribute-driven toolkit: aggregates with auto-published events, piped workflows, sagas, snapshots, transactional outbox — testable in-process, running on the queues you already have. composer require ecotone/laravel → Laravel Quick Start · Laravel Module docs

Symfony — Symfony Messenger handles dispatch. For aggregates, sagas, or event sourcing, the usual path is bolting on a separate ES library, rolling your own outbox, and adding a saga or workflow layer on top. Ecotone replaces the patchwork with one attribute-driven toolkit: aggregates, sagas, event sourcing, piped workflows, transactional outbox, dedup, and per-handler failure isolation. Pure POPOs, Bundle auto-config, your Messenger transports preserved. composer require ecotone/symfony-bundle → Symfony Quick Start · Symfony Module docs

Any PHP framework — Ecotone Lite works with any PSR-11 compatible container. composer require ecotone/lite-application → Ecotone Lite docs

Proven patterns, proven runtime

• In continuous development since 2017 — nine years of production.

• Maintained by a core team of three (Dariusz Gafka, Jean de La Bédoyère, Piotr Zając) and an open-source contributor community.

• No breaking changes across major versions. Ecotone follows a stability commitment — your business code keeps working across releases, so upgrades are safe to apply. See the changelog.

• Commercial support, SLA, consulting, and workshops available for teams running Ecotone in production — contact us to arrange a support agreement.

• Built on Enterprise Integration Patterns — the same pattern language behind Spring Integration, Axon Framework, NServiceBus, MassTransit, and Apache Camel.

• AI-ready: MCP server, ready-to-use coding-agent skills, llms.txt docs for any LLM.

Evaluate it in one handler

You do not need to migrate anything to try Ecotone. You do not need architectural buy-in to evaluate it. Install the package, add #[CommandHandler] to one method, run your tests, and decide.

• If the pattern fits, add more attributes alongside your existing code — nothing in the rest of your codebase needs to change.

• If it doesn't fit for this project, remove the package before you've invested. The evaluation is intentionally reversible; the architectural commitment happens later, as your domain actually grows into the deeper features.

Five-minute install. Familiar patterns from day one. No forced architectural migrations as your system grows.

• Install — Setup guide for any framework

• Composing Building Blocks — Full walk-through of the composition model with Messenger / Laravel comparisons

• Learn by example — Send your first command in 5 minutes

• Go through tutorial — Build a complete messaging flow step by step

• Workshops, Support, Consultancy — Hands-on training for your team