Your problem is not the PHP framework. It is the pattern you probably use. You try to send the emails and do jobs that are slow in their nature inline, and it takes too long until the server gives back a response. For that, you should use Queues. As for database, if it is slow now, it would still be slow in the next framework, since is another kind of optimization you must look for. Furthermore, one of the reasons your database access is slow, is because you do things in your database you should probably not do. Stuff like logging. Those things eat a lot of time and slow down everything. For that, look into something like Redis. You can use any framework with those concepts and have decent results. Have a look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTcyuzJkxIg