I agree, and I've used Laravel too. Yii is built and designed by someone who has written frameworks before and understands how to do it right. The creator wrote

I agree, and I've used Laravel too. Yii is built and designed by someone who has written frameworks before and understands how to do it right. The creator wrote the Prado framework, then wrote Yii from the ground up. Laravel definitely has all the hype, but Yii has been around much longer and is better architected imho. It does have a slightly steeper learning curve and isn't as instantaneously easy to use at first, but it's worth the effort.