Question About Raycast and Sidescrollers

Hello guys, I've been making games with unity for almost 2 years, and have finished a few small games. I've learned most of the things myself, so, i don't have any reference to see if actually doing things the right way..

I've always did controllers for sidescrollers using Raycasts, not only for the player, but most of my enemies and other objects uses raycasting to check collisions with platforms. Sometimes I think i'm overusing raycasts, because most enemies or objects uses one or two raycasts in Update Function. I've never experienced much slowdowns, but who knows..

Am I doing it the right way? Is there a way to get precise controls and collisions using another method? I've tried multiple times to use Unity Physics, but I've never got them to work propely, they are not so precise and definetively not useful for a consistent 2d game.