I agree that Laravel models rub the wrong way, but that shouldn't instantly remove Laravel from the equation when thinking about what tools to use for building a website.
Laravel is great for shipping things fast. Sometimes, that's what you want, even if that means a less maintainable app in the long run. Because sometimes there is no long run; you know it will just be an app made by you only as a rather one shot thing.
Same goes for wordpress. Lots of devs like to shit on it by default. But its like people shitting on PHP because of the PHP 5 days. You'd be surprised how quickly you can build really complex content websites with Wordpress. Way quicker than with barebones laravel or symfony. And with not that ugly code ;)
Laravel is great for shipping things fast. Sometimes, that's what you want, even if that means a less maintainable app in the long run. Because sometimes there is no long run; you know it will just be an app made by you only as a rather one shot thing.
Same goes for wordpress. Lots of devs like to shit on it by default. But its like people shitting on PHP because of the PHP 5 days. You'd be surprised how quickly you can build really complex content websites with Wordpress. Way quicker than with barebones laravel or symfony. And with not that ugly code ;)