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It's better to use Laravel with Vue.js and also laravel is very lightweight and speed performance.

Go for Laravel 8 (not 7, obviously because it's the latest version and has a lot of new features and bug fixes) when it comes to backend coding.

Go for Vue.js (if you don't have any preference) because it is having by default configuration setup in Laravel).

Pick MySQL or PostgreSQL both work fine.

If you know GCP, go for it, otherwise go for Heroku.

Avoid spending time on hosting setup - prefer PaaS based solutions.

In Laravel, try Laravel Breeze or Jetstream - these might make the development much faster - at least for the basic setup that is there.

40-50k should not be a problem at all for the database nor for any frontend/backend combo. Laravel works pretty well with Vue.js, for example; and you can include Elasticsearch in the combo if you really need fulltext search capabilites in your app. That will be much more decisive in the final product than the frontend stack chosen.

I don't know anything really about CodeIgniter, but I do know that microservices are a great choice for e-commerce, as they tend to have a lot of different moving (but not necessarily connected) parts. That being said, and if you have a choice, I'd recommend Go personally. But node isn't the worst option if Go isn't something you're comfortable with.

If you know typescript and want an entire framework to work with, go wth Angular. AngularJS, to my knowledge was deprecated. React is great, popular, and you'll find a ton of support.

I highly recomand using the Vue based Nuxt framework for the front end. It is not required to use the server render feature and the folder based routing and stores are really nice to work with. In addition it brings component auto import and lots of plugins neatly integrated (authentication, i18n, socket.io, etc.). If in the setup process you also chose Vuetify as a component library you will cover 98% of needed components.

As for Laravel vs CodeIginter I would chose Laravel as the safest bet. Sadly, CodeIgniter development slowed down after the main contributor's death. It is also worth mentioning, as others did, that the initial boost Vue got is from Laravel's creator and community. The simplicity and ease of use mindset is shared.

I can't speak to Angular since I haven't used it for at least 3 years (I wasn't a fan back then) but both React and Vue are great frameworks and will do the job just fine. Since you are using Laravel for the back end I'd recommend Vue. There's a lot of overlap between the communities and most Laravel developers I know do favor Vue over React.

Laravel is the best tool in php and I know it also if i don't develop in php. Vue.js is the future. In combination with https://bootstrap-vue.org/ is THE solution.

Best regards

If your customer is an enterprise, I'll strongly recommend leveraging Azure or AWS for building and hosting your backend. AWS API Gateway + AWS Lambda + AWS RDS would be a good combination. You might want to run everything in your VPC if security / privacy are your top concerns.

Node.js is great but if I had a choice for something like this I would pick Elixir and Phoenix. They have LiveViews and channels which be one step up then the other 3 plateforms. It will also scale better and respond faster. Last will probably far less code as well.

Node.js is the perfect tech to real-time features like chats, forums, quizzes and polls. Additionally it has great support for objects storage like Mongodb and its important for file media management.

It has the necessary packages for what you need, in addition to optimizing your time with what is needed.

I would suggest you to pick the right stack for the right purpose. My suggestion would be to go for Microservices approach and break your app into smaller pieces according to the type of functionality like you mentioned above. E.g if you would be expecting the high traffic on you platform, then Node.js can be used as the endpoint there to handle that traffic. Normal form processing can be done in Laravel but I would not suggest codeigniter as managing code is difficult there.

So this way you can decide do architecture you app and can use the best of the feature from all the languages. Even it would be easier for you to manage your app based on the functionality and team who will be working on that. Hope you would like my suggestions.