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13 Best PHP frameworks to Consider for Web Development in 2023

PHP is the most popular programming language, and its market share is 45.43%.

The web development tech stack of PHP includes some frameworks. So, the most effective combination in the PHP tech stack requires the top frameworks. It is because the technologies and tools make the development process fast, effective, and easy.

PHP frameworks for web, help developers complete the development process not only fast but also effectively. Many frameworks follow MVC architecture so it becomes easy for the developers to build a high-performing website in a short time.

Moreover, it uses a form of injection attack, cross site scripting (XSS). There are three types of cross site scripting Stored, Reflected, and DOM XSS. You can know about the best PHP frameworks to consider for web development in 2023 in the space below.

Why should you choose Laravel?

The expressive and elegant syntax of Laravel attracts many enterprises. Laravel developers don’t have to struggle to deal with complex tasks. Moreover, they can use its Eloquent ORM (Object Relational Mapping) for effective development.

Numerous businesses choose one of the most sought-after PHP frameworks Laravel for the instant hosting and deployment platform as well. You can know more about this framework before choosing it for your next project.

Huge Community:

The framework has been gathering huge community support in awe-inspiring ways since 2011. Laravel is so popular among developers as one can create complex web applications without compromising on speed and security. The high preference received by the platform has made it a synonym for PHP development.

Scalable & Performant:

Laravel makes use of MVC architecture, with a functional and object-oriented programming approach that helps you create a modular code base for your application. Moreover, MVC architecture helps to organize large web applications easily.

The segmented architecture is the sole reason for the platform having such extensive architecture. Because the developers take the help of ready-to-use packages such as Fortify, JetStream, Horizon, Cashier, Passport, and more.

These account for a faster development process while giving them more time to market. Likewise, the developers can use input validation in Laravel.

Feature Rich:

User management and easy authentication are crucial for the web. One can deliver messages via Slack or SMS and integrate with email services like Sendmail and Amazon SES.

It has an Eloquent ORM that provides an API interface to ease the interaction with databases. In-built Eloquent ORM is necessary for smooth transitions of data between incompatible type systems removing the necessity to write complex codes. Likewise, it offers a range of security features.

Known Platforms that use Laravel for their Web Applications:

• Razorpay
• Olx
• Wattpad
• TransferGo
• 9GAG
• Mastercard

CodeIgniter:

CodeIgnitor is the most lightweight PHP framework. It is one of the widely used web application development frameworks that is merely 2 Mb in size and helpful for common tasks. The platform has a small footprint, promotes hassle-free installation, and has minimalistic prerequisites for installation.

In addition, this lightweight PHP framework is a component based PHP framework. It is a bare-bone framework that has an intuitive interface and a rich library. It empowers PHP enterprise development. However, the caching system is not developed in Codeigniter.

Why Should You Choose CodeIgniter?

Codeigniter is widely used as one of the best PHP frameworks. It is suitable for creating high-quality web applications, CMS, websites, and eCommerce stores. Moreover, it offers you a highly-interactive interface. So, it’s a framework to choose for a small footprint and high performance.

You can use Codeigniter one of the amazing PHP frameworks for your web development because it offers various benefits. Have a look at them before you pick Codeigniter for your project.

Best Suitable for Dynamic Websites:

CodeIgniter is an extremely powerful framework irrespective of its small size. Using this one can create reusable components that can be constructed using prebuild modules. This works best for a CodeIgniter development company that gets projects to create dynamic websites.

Offers Essential Classes & Tools:

The platform is tool-rich with dedicated classes for unit testing, security, image manipulation, FTP, typography, form validation, throttling, and more. It also consists of two tools that can be used to benchmark your PHP application, i.e. Iterator and Timer.

Feature Rich & Well Documented:

CodeIgniter offers some important features such as MVC architecture, security, easy error handling, negligible PHP adoption struggle, simple encryption steps, etc. The platform is the perfect choice for beginners as it’s very well documented.

Known Platforms that use CodeIgniter for their Web Applications:

Why should you choose Symfony?

Symfony is a well-organized and feature-rich PHP framework. Symfony developers can build sustainable web applications by following the easiest way. So, it’s a highly-flexible framework that uses a modular component system.

Moreover, Symfony uses Twig. It is an effective and fast template engine with a concise syntax. However, it has one downside its steep learning curve. You can know more about this framework in the below section and understand, why it comes in the list of best PHP frameworks.

Reusable Components:

This is the only framework that follows the complete standards of PHP and the web. It offers a healthy set of 50 reusable components that promote a faster development environment.

Using the same one can also develop APIs, microservices, and web applications. The components are also being used by popular CMSs such as OroCRM, PHP Bulletin Board (PHPBB), and Drupal.

Compatibility:

The platforms work well with most design patterns and web practices and allow integration with other vendor libraries. As Symfony is highly flexible it can easily integrate with bigger projects like Drupal.

Database Support:

Symfony offers an alternative to writing repetitive SQL code by making use of open-source doctrine ORM for database operations. It also supports a wide range of databases such as SQL Server, MySql, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQLite, SAP Sybase, and more. You can get many PHP database frameworks.

Known Platforms that Use Symfony for Their Web Applications:

• Spotify
• Magento
• BlaBlaCar
• Statista
• Practo
• Naukri.com

CakePHP:

CakePHP work on the PHP CRUD frameworks which makes it one of the easiest frameworks to learn currently. CRUD is the abbreviation for Create, Read, Update, and Delete, which happens to be a popular aspect of this framework.

It is one of the simplest PHP frameworks that require only a web server and a copy of the framework. Moreover, It is the first that supports the PHP MVC framework. This is what makes this framework a personal favorite for a CakePHP web development company.

To use it, one would need a web server with the framework’s copy, other than this the framework is quite easy to install. Besides, SQL injection prevention provides effective security features.

Why Should You Choose CakePHP?

CakePHP is the most popular framework for fast development time. The modern PHP 7 framework offers a flexible database access layer and a powerful scaffolding system. Moreover, PHP developers can use it easily and effectively. They can build fast, feature-rich, and robust websites for clients.

In addition, the broad set of components helps the developers build a customized yet robust software solution. But, CakePHP has some coding guidelines that every developer has to follow, so it can be time-consuming.

Best for Commercial Websites:

The framework offers some stand-out high-end security features such as cross-site request forgery protection, cross-site scripting protection, and SQL injection framework which makes it a perfect platform for creating commercial applications.

Faster Prototype Development:

Scaffolding is a technique that helps you generate project code and access databases with ease. It also uses some high-level tools. Likewise, CakePHP promotes faster prototype development by offering features such as scaffolding and code generation. It uses a web server to meet technical requirements.

Requires Minimal Configuration:

CakePHP has ready-to-use features such as authentication, internationalization, caching, database APIs, and validation. It requires minimal configuration without any need for XML or YAML config files.

Known Platforms that Use CakePHP for Their Web Applications:

• MIT
• BMW
• Hyundai
• House Party
• Billabong

Zend Framework:

Zend framework is built on the agile methodology and happens to be a completely object-oriented framework. It can be used to create high-quality enterprise-level applications. And you can use only the components that you want. However, it has a steep learning curve.

The framework has observed more than 570 million installations. One of the perks of using the Zend framework is that its code can be transferred acrossdifferent frameworks without any resistance, as it follows the PHP Framework Interop Group (PHP-FIG) standards.

Why Should You Choose Zend?

Many believe that Zend is the best PHP framework for application development for different enterprises. You have to use Zend-auth to authenticate the user. Or if you want to control the resource, you can go for Zend-ACL.

If you are also thinking to develop enterprise-level software solutions, Zend can be selected as one of the best choices. Explore the below section and know about this framework in the detail.

Feature-Rich:

The framework has been created to offer speed, security, extensibility, and performance in mind. As it is designed to create exquisite enterprise applications, it offers components such as forms, services, code reusability, authentication, and more.

If you feel your website is going to be complicated, try its other cool features such as coding tools, debugging tools, a scalable interface, and an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor.

Component-Rich:

The framework is component-rich and offers data encryption, simple cloud API, session management, and MVC. Developers can use various security features to make a website robust. Apart from this, you can also integrate external libraries and use the components you want. Our core developer team knows how to use libraries.

Known Platforms that use Zend for their Web Applications:

• Cisco Webex
• BNP Paribas
• BBC

Yii Framework:

Yii is a secure, flexible, and fast PHP framework that was launched in December 2008. It comes with many security features and is considered a universal web programming framework. The platform is known for its extensibility, and quick and easy installation, and also integrates with the popular code testing framework known as CodeCeption.

The framework has 13.6k+ stars on GitHub and more than 11 million downloads from Packagist. It requires knowledge of polymorphism, inheritance, and more as the framework is strictly object-oriented. One needs to hire Yii developers who would have sound knowledge of all the above concepts.

It works best for creating MVC architecture websites and for the record this framework has a steep learning curve. Furthermore, developers can use better documentation to prevent SQL injection prevention.

Why Should You Choose Yii?

The latest release of Yii is 1.1.25 (December 13, 2021). Well, Yii stands for “Yes It Is”. This framework by PHP supports rapid development and provides clean and dry designs. It can immediately catch the attention of the developers because it has some high-performance packages.

Although It has down points also, many developers use it for fast development and some security features. You can know more about it in the space below.

Complete Documentation:

Yii has documented it all from installation, explaining web concepts, launching applications, and everything else that comes in between. One can learn how to use it just by reading the documentation.

Cache & Other Components:

You can follow the guides offered by Yii to learn and implement numerous types of caching. Using the same, you can implement fragment caching, page caching, query caching, HTTP caching, data caching, and everything from server-side to client-side in browsing caching.

It also offers classes and components for working with databases, handling requests, fetching and displaying data, debugging code, etc.

High-Security:

Yii has security features such as password handling, trusted proxies, cryptographic features, authorization, authentication, and headers. For instance, authentication can be implemented by making use of Yii’s ‘IdentityInterface’ and using the ‘user component’.

Known Platforms that Use Yii for Their Web Applications:

• Lenovo
• Discovery
• Deloitte
• Fujitsu
• Lulo
• Utrip

Phalcon:

In the series of frameworks for web development, Phalcon is the next. It is a web server extension written in C that was originally written in C and C++ programming languages. It has scored 10k+ on GitHub and is best at offering high performance while consuming fewer resources. Phalcon is considered one of the best frameworks to develop custom web applications. In addition, it supports a hierarchical model view controller.

Why Should you Choose Phalcon?

Phalcon also gained popularity recently. It offers Test RPS (Request Per Second) and TPR (Time Per Request) as the widely used features. Phalcon is a full-stack PHP framework and a C-extension.

The most exciting feature of this framework is blazing-fast development. Since speed is crucial for any developer, Phalcon turned out to be the best choice for quick processing. These are some highlights, you can read about the framework in the below section.

Blazing Fast:

The framework has a low-level architecture, and a one-time load of C extensions, Zephir, and PHP. As the code gets compiled and not interpreted, makes it faster. It also consists of the memory-resident feature hence it can be called upon need. It offers enhanced performance as it doesn’t make use of file reads and file stats.

Natively Compiled:

The framework has low overhead for MVC architecture web applications. The code is not interpreted and is compiled to the native platforms. It also natively supports SQLite, MySQL, and PostgreSQL.

Known Platforms that Use Phalcon for Their Web Applications:

• Urban Sports Club
• SociaVeo
• Proshore
• ESCHER
• PlaceOnAir

Slim:

As the name suggests, Slim is a micro-framework that can be used to create PHP web applications simple and powerful web applications and application programming interfaces (APIs). Slim has 10k+ stars on GitHub.

Even though slim is minimalistic the framework is extremely efficient in creating small applications that don’t require full-stack development. Slim is fast as it has a lean codebase and no third-party dependencies. Moreover, it needs a web server with URL rewriting.

Why Should You Choose Slim?

It was developed with the help of top components like PHP FIG standards. And you can easily integrate it with other components and libraries. Moreover, the dependency injection is simple but not that effective.

If you are confused about whether to choose Slim, one of the best PHP frameworks, or not, you can read our informative sections below.

Fast Routing:

Slim consists of a powerful Router. This assists in routing to specific URLs and HTTP request handler methods. The router supports different URL types, even the ones with patterns and parameters. Implementing pattern-based URLs is a common practice in eCommerce apps.

Feature-Rich:

Offers PSR-7 support that’s essential to implement in your slim project.

The framework can extend with third-party components on packagist and first-party PHP components.

Other stand-out features include client-side HTTP caching, cookie encryption, session encryption, and support for ‘flash’ messages across HTTP requests.

Slim also offers great tutorials for beginners, has an active developer community, and invests well in time-to-time maintenance and updates.

Known Platforms that Use Slim for Their Web Applications:

• AgriTask
• GreenBot
• HHey
• Bootiq
• Gamned

Lumen:

Lumen is a micro-framework, and the Laravel team developed it. The performant and lightweight framework is the perfect choice for creating modern applications. It’s similar to Laravel, hence developers familiar with the same will find it easy to use.

Why Should You Choose Lumen?

Using Lumen you can create lightning-fast microservices and APIs for Laravel-based applications. It’s faster than other PHP micro=frameworks such as Silex and Slim.

With minimal configurations, you can make use of Larvael features such as testing, validation, authorization, caching, Eloquent ORM, views, queues, and more.

If you need it Lumen easily upgrades to full-fledged Laravel applications.

It works best with PHP 7.3 or a higher version. And to meet system requirements you can leverage Laravel Homestead.

Known Platforms that Use Lumen for Their Web Applications:

• Publy
• Piio
• ZenChef
• Index.co
• mPokket
• Rooter
• Codepolitan

Why Should you Choose FuelPHP?

Known Platforms that Use FuelPHP for Their Web Applications:

• Front Desk
• Wan Wizard

Why Should you Choose Fat-Free Framework?

Known Platforms that Use Fat-Free for Their Web Applications:

• Andiamo
• Baker Online
• Malwarebytes Jobs
• Eve University Dev Pathfinder
• Eloquens

Why Should you Choose Zikula Framework?

Why Should You Choose PHPixie Framework?