Migrate from php 5.5 (Laravel 5) to PHP 5.3

Laravel 5.1 does not support less than PHP 5.5! Laravel 4 and 5 does not support less than PHP 5.4!

Upgrade your server version.

@CROSP you may need to consider migrating to another server. I believe that you are currently running on a shared host. As mentioned above, there is no major laravel version which supports PHP 5.3 and below.

Also, you should always use the latest version of PHP as it presents much better CPU and memory usage. Especially PHP7 which presents a whole new Zend Engine which is a very big competitor for HHVM and in some areas is even much faster. PHP7 will bring a new era for web developers :)

@CROSP it may not possible migrating L5 for support php 5.5 to php 5.3, if you want to do this you need to change all code in Laravel that dose not support php 5.3 !
Better make your own framework rather then change on Laravel
you may follow Symfony, it's may help you (not sure)

@CROSP Where will you use this app? At work or for one of your own sites/projects?

If it's work related then you may want to use a different framework as @absiddiqueLive pointed out. CakePHP 2.0 supports 5.3, if the application is simple enough, you might be able to port it there was well.

For best results, consider using Vagrant and setup a VM that is running PHP 5.3 or has identical setup as your host. This way you won't run into any kind of surprises.

The "hosting" company only supports an outdated php version? Simply go and switch to a professional hoster! Maybe http://www.fortrabbit.com/laravel-hosting or something like that.