PHP is the most widely used programming language for the web development. It was originally developed by Rasmus Lerdorf and stood for Personal Home Page as it’s developed to manage his personal website. Later, after beta tests and improvement, it is called as Hypertext Preprocessor.

There are many PHP Frameworks developed to enhance development. The frameworks provide well structured platform to easily maintain complex applications with better security reasons.

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But how do you know which PHP Frameworks is right for you?

In this post, we will list the 10 best PHP Frameworks out there to help you choose in 2023.

Why use a PHP Frameworks?

A frameworks provides a basic structure to develop web applications. It speed up development and help to write optimized secure code. So there are many reasons for using PHP frameworks:

• Helps to develop web applications faster and well organized.
• Use of MVC architecture
• Organization of code
• Speed-up Custom Web Application Development
• Provide plug-ins, extensions, libraries and helpers
• Database support
• Automate Common Web Development Tasks
• Protect Websites from Targeted Security Attacks
• Perform Unit Testing Efficiently
• Community Support

List of 10 Best PHP Frameworks in 2023

Here is a list of the best PHP frameworks, based on popularity and ability to facilitate and streamline application development.

1. Laravel

Introduced in 2011, Laravel is the most popular, open-source PHP framework and most widely used framework since 2015. Why? Because it is faster, secure and can handle large and complex application easily than other frameworks. It also simplifies the development by providing common tasks such as routing, queuing, sessions, caching, and authentication.

Reasons to use Laravel framework

There are many reasons for using Laravel framework. Here is the points that made it a better choice for your web application.

• Easy installation to start with it
• Suitable for all kind of web application (specifically applications with complex back-end requirement).
• Clean and simple routing
• Effective ORM and database layer
• Easy integration with third-party libraries such as AWS, export libs, etc.
• Async queue and background jobs for the long running tasks
• Supporting unit tests out of the box
• Secure, faster and most suitable to build B2B or enterprise websites that will evolve with changing web trends
• Active and growing community that can provide quick support and answers

2. CodeIgniter

Since it’s initial release in 2006, CodeIgniter becomes the first choice of programmers for developing all kinds of web applications. It’s lightweight and easy to use with prebuilt modules. The upcoming version of CodeIgniter 4 which is under development, can also be used with command-line programs just like other latest frameworks. So you may also consider the CodeIgniter 4 when it is available for development.

Reasons to use CodeIgniter framework

There are many reasons for using CodeIgniter framework. Here is the key points that made it a better choice for your web application.

• Has a smaller footprint which makes it faster
• Lightweight and straightforward PHP framework that’s hassle-free to install
• MVC architecture
• Comes with built-in security features
• Easy to extend and customize
• Supports both web page and database caching
• Easy Handling Of Errors
• Less coding requirement and speedier development
• Stage by stage testing in development stage
• Great support from community

3. Symfony

Launched in 2005, Symfony is the oldest framework in the list. It is the complete framework suitable for large scale of application development with features such as flexibility, reliability, ease of testing, long-term support and large community.

Reasons to use Symfony framework

There are many reasons for using Symfony framework. Here is the key points that made it a better choice for your web application.

• Perfect choice for developing large-scale enterprise projects
• Reusable PHP components
• Highly flexible
• Easy Testing
• Complies with most web best practices and design patterns
• Allows integration with other vendor libraries
• Stable and Sustainable

4. Zend Framework

Initial release in 2006, Zend framework is the complete object oriented PHP framework. It’s features such as interfaces and inheritance which makes it more extendable. The framework is developed on the agile methodology which makes it to deliver high quality applications for the enterprise clients.

Reasons to use Zend Framework

There are many reasons for using Zend. Here is the key points that made it a better choice for your web application.

• Excellent for large enterprise applications
• Fully object oriented
• Focus on just what you require and forget everything else
• MVC components
• Extended classes
• Simple cloud API
• Data encryption and session management
• Easy integrate with external libraries
• Good documentation and has a large community base

5. CakePHP

With it’s initial release in 2005, CakePHP gained popularity with it’s better performance and new components. CakePHP is simple and elegant framework suitable for all kinds of applications.

Reasons to use CakePHP framework

There are many reasons for using CakePHP. Here is the key points that made it a better choice for your web application.

• Simple and easy to install
• Include all advanced security features
• Fast builds and proper class inheritance
• MVC Pattern
• Proper class inheritance
• Easily extend with components, helpers, behaviors and plug-in
• Build in validation
• ACL functionality and security
• CRUD scaffolding
• Great documentation with large support community

6. Yii

First stable release in 2014, Yii framework is the high performance, component-based PHP framework for developing modern web applications. It is suitable for developing all kinds of applications.

Reasons to use Yii framework

There are many reasons for using Yii. Here is the key points that made it a better choice for your web application.

• Easy installation process
• Robust security features
• Shorter Development Time
• Easily Tuned for Better Performance
• Highly extensible
• Excellent speed and performance
• Provision for Testing
• Large community

7. Slim

Slim is a micro framework and popular for developing small but powerful web applications. It’s favorite framework of developers for coding REST APIs.

Reasons to use Slim framework

There are many reasons for using Slim. Here is the key points that made it a better choice for your web application.

• Easy to learn and coding
• Fast and powerful HTTP routing
• HTTP caching for improved website performance
• Secured cookies for improving the security
• Easy error handling and debugging
• Dependency injection for controlling external tools
• Good documentation and support

8. Phalcon

Originally released in 2012, Phalcon is an open-source PHP framework with MVC pattern. Unlike most PHP frameworks, Phalcon is implemented as a web server extension written in C to boost execution speed, reduce resource usage, and handle more HTTP requests per second than other frameworks written primarily in PHP. But you don’t worry about learning the C programming language.

Reasons to use Phalcon framework

There are many reasons for using Phalcon. Here is the key points that made it a better choice for your web application.

• Easy to install and use
• Best suitable for creating highly configurable web applications
• Provides ORM (Object Relational Mapping), templating engine, routing, caching etc
• Increased execution speed
• Top security and caching
• Optimizes performance due to its efficient memory utilization

9. FuelPHP

Released in 2011, FuelPHP is an open-source PHP framework with MVC pattern. The framework also has its own hierarchical model view controller (HMVC) which help to reduce the content duplicate on multiple pages.

Reasons to use FuelPHP framework

There are many reasons for using FuelPHP. Here is the key points that made it a better choice for your web application.

• Easy to configure and use
• Code reusable and easier to maintain
• Flexible and community driven web framework
• Extremely portable, works on almost any server.
• Flexible URI routing system.
• provides RESTful API development support
• Lightweight ORM model
• Input filtering and prevents SQL injection
• Autoloading classes, Session management, and Exception handling

10. PHPixie

Originally released in 2012, PHPixie is HMVC design pattern based PHP framework. It is used to develop read-only websites with high-performance. It is suitable for social networking websites, customized web applications, and web app development services.

Reasons to use PHPixie framework

There are many reasons for using PHPixie. Here is the key points that made it a better choice for your web application.

• Easy to install and start
• HMVC architecture
• Standard ORM (object-relational mapping)
• Input validation
• Authorization capabilities
• Inbuilt Authentication
• Inbuilt caching
• Inbuilt Exceptions and tracing with Debug component
• Database support for – MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, and MongoDB

Which PHP framework is right for you?

The framework helps to simplifies the application development process. It helps to manage project structure, code, security and minimize development time. Each framework has it’s own features, strength, weakness and also vary in terms of database support, documentation and community.

The decision to choose the best PHP framework is fully depends on various factors such as ease of use, security, scalability, documentation etc. So first try to understand the requirement of your project that you want to develop. Then check the features of each framework and choose the most suitable PHP framework for your project.

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