2024

PHP Landscape
Report

© Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered

trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (0220JB24)
 Table of Contents
Foreword.................................................................... 03

About the Survey......................................................... 04

PHP Application Development Trends.............................. 07

Security and Compliance Trends......................................19

PHP Version Adoption and Migration Trends..................... 25

Development Priorities................................................. 33

The State of PHP in 2024................................................ 35

Final Thoughts............................................................. 38

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Foreword
To the reader,

The PHP 8 lifecycle is well under way, with conversations already starting about whether there will be another PHP 8 version
following 8.4, or if the project will pivot to a new major version. Being mid-way through the PHP 8 lifecycle, it’s a good time to
see how adoption trends versus previous major versions.

When PHP 7 released, a large part of the ecosystem stayed behind on PHP 5; however, with PHP 8, we’re seeing much faster
adoption: instead of a close to 2:1 split between EOL and supported PHP as reported last year, the split is much closer to 1:1,
with usage of PHP versions prior to 7.4 dropping dramatically. The implication is pretty clear: the migration path between PHP
Matthew Weier
7 and PHP 8 has been much easier to accommodate.
O’Phinney
That said, there are other factors informing this trend. Security, and in particular supply chain security, are at the top of many Senior Product Manager
organizations priorities. One way to keep secure is to keep on current software. While businesses can choose long term Zend by Perforce
support runtimes, sometimes this doesn’t address the rest of the application: frameworks and libraries may only provide
security patches for up-to-date runtime versions. Another factor in PHP 8 adoption is the high adoption of containers and
orchestration practices within the PHP ecosystem. Both technologies simplify the process of testing and deploying new
runtime versions, allowing companies to migrate more quickly. Additionally, many of the recent changes in the language itself are either security oriented or aid in creation
of maintainable software: better randomization (which allows for better data hashing and encryption), data masking (via the `#[SensitiveParameter]` attribute), and read-only
properties and classes (which enable immutable data structures).

What I am observing in the ecosystem is a return to a basic principle of PHP: scalability. Containerization and orchestration practices focus on the fact that PHP is horizontally
scalable by design, via its “shared nothing” architecture; both allow businesses to add more servers as demand increases, and scale down when it dissipates. We also observe
an increase in adoption of technologies that help companies scale existing architecture: message queues, job queues, and more. These technologies do not come without cost;
we observe in the report that these are more widely adopted in larger organizations, which can more readily train their teams, or hire experts. But overall, they help companies
trim costs at a time when many are feeling the pinch.

The conclusion is positive: PHP remains a fantastic choice for web-facing applications and APIs, due to its wide-ranging integrations, evolving syntax, and focus on security.

Enjoy the report,

Matthew Weier O’Phinney

Senior Product Manager
Zend by Perforce

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About the Survey
WHICH JOB TITLE BEST MATCHES YOUR CURRENT ROLE?
The Zend 2024 PHP Landscape Report is based on the results of an
1.22%
anonymous survey of self-identified PHP users and administrators that was
1.4%
conducted between the months of October and December in 2023. The 1.57%
2.27
survey received a total of 572 valid responses. 2.27%
2.97%
• Developer

RESPONDENT FIRMOGRAPHICS
3.32%
• Development Manager/Director

• CIO/CTO
In our first question of the survey, we asked respondents to identify • IT Manager/Director

•
5.59%
Consultant
their job title. As in previous years, the bulk of respondents were in
6.47%
• Web Designer
development focused roles, with nearly 64% developers. Rounding
• Product Manager
out the top three, Development Manager/Director, and CIO/CTO roles 8.92%
• System or Database Admin

• Operations Manager/Director

•
represented 8.92% and 6.47% of respondents, respectively. 63.99%
Vice President/Executive

DEVELOPMENT TEAM SIZE

• Analyst

In our next question, we asked respondents to share the size of their

development teams. Development team size representation stayed largely
the same year over year as well, with teams with under 10 developers
WHAT IS THE SIZE OF YOUR DEVELOPMENT TEAM?
representing nearly 74% of respondents, with the bulk of respondents
(45.28%) having development teams with between 3-9 developers. 2.27%
2.62%
5.77%

• 3-9
17.66% • 1-2
45.28%
• 10-20

• 21-50

•
•
100+
51-99
26.4%

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COMPANY SIZE
Next we asked teams to share the size of their company. We saw fairly WHAT IS THE SIZE OF YOUR COMPANY?
even distribution of company sizes, with 24.3% of respondents working
for mid-sized companies, 22.73% working for startups, and 19.93%
14.86%
working for small companies. Contractors / Freelancers and Enterprise
Companies made up the remaining respondents, with 18.18% and 14.86%
24.3%
• Mid-sized company
(101-1000 employees)
respectively. • Startup (1-20 employees)
18.18%
• Small company
(21-100 employees)
REGION
• Contractor/Freelance

Next, in a new question for this year’s survey, we asked teams to identify
19.93%
22.73%
• Enterprise company
(1000+ employees)
the location of their business headquarters. Europe (42.83%) and North
America (29.02%) had the largest representation in our survey. South
America, Asia, and the United Kingdom rounded out the top five with
7.69%, 7.17%, and 4.72% of responses, respectively.

IN WHICH GLOBAL REGION ARE

YOUR BUSINESS HEADQUARTERS?
Europe (42.83%) and North America
0.7%
(29.02%), had the largest representation in 1.4%
1.57%
our survey. 1.75%
3.15%
4.72%
• Europe

• North America

• South America

•
7.17%
Asia

•
42.83%
United Kingdom

•
7.69%
Africa

• Middle East

• Central America
29.02% • Australia

• Southeast Asia

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INDUSTRY
In our final firmographic question, we asked respondents to self-select the IN WHICH INDUSTRY DOES YOUR COMPANY BELONG?
industry in which their company operates. The top industry selected in 0.87%
this year’s survey was Technology at 28.32%, followed by Consulting or 2.27%
2.27%
• Technology

•
Professional Services at 12.24%. Among respondents that selected Other, 2.8%
4.37% Consulting or Professional Services
marketing was the top write-in response.
• Other
4.55%
• Banking, Insurance, or Finacial Serivces
4.9%
28.32%
• Education or Research

•
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Retail
Overall, we had a balanced firmographic profile this year. As in previous • Government or Public Services

•
5.24%
Media or Gaming

•
years, our respondents skewed toward development focused roles, which
Healthcare or Pharmaceuticals
makes sense considering developers are in roles that are often hands on in 5.94% 12.24%
• Vehicle, Transportation, or Logisitics
developing and managing PHP-based applications. • Manufacturing
10.31%
• Nonprofit

•
7.87%
Given the sample size, and the even distribution of respondents among Telecommunications
varying company sizes, we feel that the 2024 PHP Landscape Report is 8.04%
• Energy, Oil, or Gas

highly representative of teams working with PHP around the world and
gives accurate insight into the state of PHP development and management.

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PHP APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT TRENDS
In our next set of questions, we asked respondents to share more information about the types of PHP applications they develop, the types of technologies that they integrate
with and use, and where they deploy their application. We also asked a handful of questions regarding container and container orchestration technology adoption, and the top
container and container orchestration technologies used in PHP applications today.

PHP APPLICATION TYPES

In our first question for this section, we asked teams to share the types of PHP applications they build or deploy, with respondents able to select multiple entries as applicable.

As with the previous two years of our survey, the top three application categories were Services or APIs (78.06%), Internal Business Applications (64.14%), and Content
Management Systems (44.94%). Rounding out the top five were eCommerce (35.65%), and CRM / ERM Systems (29.75%).

WHAT TYPES OF PHP APPLICATIONS DO YOU BUILD OR DEPLOY?

Modernization
CRM/ERM of legacy
systems systems
(e.g. RPG to web)
64.14%
78.06% 44.94%
Internal 35.65% 29.75% 28.90% 3.16% Other
Services Content
business
or APIs Management
applications

14.98%
Mobile
eCommerce backend

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 PHP APPLICATION INTEGRATION TRENDS
Next, we asked respondents to identify the types of systems their PHP

WHICH TYPES OF SYSTEMS DOES YOUR applications integrate with. Unsurprisingly, 94.51% of respondents noted

PHP APPLICATION INTEGRATE WITH? that their PHP applications integrate with Relational Databases. Web
APIs were the next most common selection with 79.96% of respondents,
94.51%

followed by Filesystems in third at 70.46%.

79.96%

In our 2023 report, we noted that the breadth of technologies that PHP
developers now integrate within their applications is increasing, and we
70.46%

noticed that trend continue in 2024. Year over year, we saw growth in the
percentage of respondents integrating their applications with nearly every
54.85%

category, including Relational Databases, Web APIs, Filesystems, Key-

Value Storage, Search Services, and Cache Services. A new entry this year,
41.56%

34.81%

Job Queue, noted 18.99% integration among respondents.

33.76%

23.21%

19.83% KEY TAKEAWAYS

18.99%
PHP is a glue language for the web, and its wealth of integration extensions

6.54%
give huge flexibility for organizations and developers. When looking

3.59%
through the options, one thing to note is that almost all of these provide
either some form of data storage or process deferment; combined, these

• Relational Database (e.g. MariaDB)

factors enable scalability in web applications.

• Web APIs

•
This is the other factor in PHP’s ongoing popularity and suitability for
Filesystem

• Key Value Storage (e.g. Redis, Memcached)

the web: horizontal scaling. You can spin up more application instances

• Cloud-based Object Storage (e.g. AWS S3, DigitalOcean Spaces) when you need to scale your application up, instead of taking down
• Search Service (e.g. Elastic)

•
the application to provision a larger, more capable server. Horizontal
Message Queue (e.g. ActiveMQ, Kafka)

• Cache service (e.g. Varnish)

scalability helps reduce total cost of ownership, particularly when

• Document Storage (e.g. MongoDB) deploying to the cloud, as you can scale back when your traffic goes down,
• Job Queue (e.g. Gearman or ZendHQ)

•
reducing your costs.
Time Series Database (e.g. InfluxDB, Prometheus)

• Other

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OPERATING SYSTEM USAGE TRENDS
Next, we asked respondents to share the operating systems they use in deploying their PHP applications. In an effort to improve accuracy among teams deploying on multiple
operating systems, we allowed respondents to select multiple operating systems as applicable.

Our 2024 survey found Ubuntu to be the most-used operating system at 53.52%, followed by Debian at 30.47% and CentOS at 24.41%. Year over year, CentOS usage
dropped in ranking from the second most-used distribution in 2023 to the third most-used distribution in 2024, signaling teams departing the once-dominant, and soon-to-be
discontinued open source distribution for comparable paid, or open source distributions like RHEL, Rocky Linux, or AlmaLinux.

ON WHICH OPERATING SYSTEM(S) DO YOU DEPLOY YOUR PHP APPLICATIONS?

Ubuntu 53.52%

Debian 30.47%

CentOS 24.41%

Windows 16.02%

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 12.7%

Alpine Linux 12.11%

Amazon Linux 11.72%

Rocky Linux 4.69%

Other 4.3%

AlmaLinux 3.71%

Oracle Linux 2.93%

IBM i 2.54%

SUSE Linux 1.76%

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When looking at the most-used operating systems by company size, we
found that larger companies (15.27%) adopted RHEL more often than
COMPANIES WITH UNDER 100 EMPLOYEES
smaller companies (11%).

Ubuntu 59.22%
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Debian 32.36%
A decade ago, RHEL and CentOS were the hands-down front runners for
production web application deployment. Today, we’re seeing the Debian CentOS 26.54%
ecosystem in the lead by a large margin. One cannot help but wonder
Windows 17.8%
if the moves by RedHat in the past few years to halt development of 1:1
compatibility of CentOS with RHEL releases have led to distrust of that Amazon Linux 11.97%
ecosystem by consumers. One troubling takeaway from the stats is that
CentOS is still in 3rd position, considering that its last supported version,
version 7, reaches end of life June 30, 2024. Considering the relatively
small install bases of RHEL and other RHEL-compatible distributions, we are
COMPANIES WITH OVER 100 EMPLOYEES
curious to see if organizations will migrate within the RHEL ecosystem, or to
one of the Debian-based distributions this year. Ubuntu 44.83%

Another item to note is that Alpine Linux is almost at parity with RHEL.
Debian 27.59%
Alpine is rarely used as a base operating system other than in containers,
and its rise in usage in the PHP ecosystem is very likely directly related to the CentOS 26.54%

popularity of containers for PHP application deployment.

RHEL 15.27%

Windows 13.3%

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DEPLOYMENT TRENDS
In our next question, we asked respondents to share where they deploy their PHP applications, with the option to select multiple options as applicable. At the top of the list for
2024 was On-Premises, with 48.84% of respondents noting that they have at least one on-premises deployment. Running down the list, Amazon Web Services and “Other”
represented 39.34% and 22.48% of respondents, respectively. Among those who selected “Other,” respondents listed a number of popular hosting providers, and less
common cloud platforms.

WHERE ARE YOU DEPLOYING YOUR PHP APPLICATIONS?

39.34% 12.6%
13.37% 9.69%
48.84% Amazon 22.48% Google
Digital Microsoft
On Premises Web Other Cloud
Ocean Azure
Services Platform

COMPANIES WITH OVER 100 EMPLOYEES COMPANIES WITH UNDER 100 EMPLOYEES
2.67% 18.91% 8.65%
12% Digital Digital Microsoft
Other Ocean Ocean Azure

37.33% 36.54%
64% Amazon 45.83% Amazon
On Premises Web On Premises Web
Services Services

13.33% 8% 30.77% 14.42%

Microsoft Google Other Google
Azure Cloud Cloud
Platform Platform

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When looking at responses by company size, we noted that large companies were more likely than small companies to deploy on premises (64% vs. 45.83%).

Looking at deployment choices dating back to our 2022 survey, we noted that on-premises deployments reached their highest rate in the last three years, while AWS, Google
Cloud Platform, Digital Ocean, and Microsoft Azure dropped to their lowest usage rates of the last three years.

PHP APP DEPLOYMENT TRENDS 2022-2024

46.08% 47.63% 48.84%
39.65% 39.34% 36.87%
19.51% 17.2%
14.29%
13.87% 16.88% 13.37%
12.6% 12.72% 9.69%

AWS On-Premises Google Cloud Digital Ocean Microsoft Azure

Platform

• 2022
• 2023
• 2024

KEY TAKEAWAYS

In the 2023 PHP Landscape Report, we saw a cloud provider, AWS, take the top spot for PHP application deployment for the first time; this year has reversed that trend — and
in a quite significant way, as this is the highest number of respondents in the past three years indicating on premise deployment as their choice. In talking with customers and
prospects, we hear many discuss moving back to on premise deployment as a way to reduce operations costs, as well as secure business and customer data. This choice is clearly
more popular with larger companies, where they have the space and personnel to run these data centers.

For those companies choosing to deploy to the cloud, there’s a clear bifurcation of preference based on organization size. While AWS is the lead choice regardless of company
size, smaller companies show a preference for Digital Ocean over more “enterprise-y” clouds such as Azure and GCP.

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 WEB SERVER TRENDS
WHICH WEB SERVER(S) DO YOU USE In our next question, we asked respondents to share which web servers they use for their PHP
FOR YOUR PHP APPLICATIONS? applications, with the option to select all that apply. The top choice among application servers in
our survey was Apache, at 69.96% of responses, followed by nginx at 60.85%. IIS, which
Apache 69.96%
simultaneously jumped in ranking to number three and decreased in percentage use year over year,
nginx 60.85% came in at 6.01%.

IIS 6.01%

lighttpd 2.71% Year over year, we saw usage of Apache and nginx climb, while
use of IIS, lighttpd, LiteSpeed, and Caddy all declined.
Caddy 2.52%

LiteSpeed 1.94%

Other 1.74% KEY TAKEAWAYS

This marks the second year in a row where we have observed relative parity between Apache HTTPD
and nginx. What’s interesting about this year, however, is that both solutions gained adoption, fully at
the expense of other web server solutions.

Considering that the FrankenPHP project, which provides a PHP application server on top of Caddy,
has reached a stable release in recent months, we are curious if we will see this trend reverse in the
coming year, or if these use cases will remain niche.

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CONTAINER TRENDS
Next, we turned our attention to the container ecosystem. We asked respondents to share their status and plans around containerization technologies. Our survey found
58.91% of respondents noting that they are currently using container technologies, with an additional 13.57% planning on using container technologies within the next 12
months. 27.52% of respondents reported no plans to use container technologies in the future.

Looking at these results year over year, container technology adoption stayed relatively flat, with a slight increase (57.52% to 58.91%) in those indicating usage of container
technologies. Year over year, those planning to use container technologies in the next 12 months fell significantly (19.79% to 13.57%), while those reporting not using container
technologies and not having plans to do so increased (22.70% to 27.52%).

As with our 2023 previous survey, we found large companies more likely to indicate usage of container technologies than smaller companies, with 65.69% adoption vs.
54.49% respective adoption.

ARE YOU CURRENTLY USING ANY COMPANIES WITH OVER COMPANIES WITH UNDER
CONTAINER TECHNOLOGIES? 100 EMPLOYEES 100 EMPLOYEES

20.59%
27.52%
32.05%

13.73% 54.49%
58.91%
13.57% 65.69%
13.46%

• Yes
• No, but we are planning to use them
within the next 12 months
• No, and we currently have no
plans to use them

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TOP CONTAINER TECHNOLOGIES
Next, we asked those who indicated using container technologies to share WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING CONTAINER
which technologies they deploy, with the option to select multiple options TECHNOLOGIES DO YOU USE?
as applicable. Our survey found Docker as the top selection at 93.75%,
Docker 93.75%
followed by Podman (8.07%), containerd (5.37%), Other (5.47%), and
CRI-O (1.82%). Among those who selected Other, the most common write-
Podman 8.07%
in responses were FreeBSD, OpenShift, and LXC.
containerd 5.73%
Looking at those choices year over year, we saw a significant uptick in
Docker adoption (68.34% to 93.75%), and moderate dips in Podman Other 5.47%
(10.22% to 8.07%), containerd (9.38% to 5.37%), and CRI-O (8.54%
CRI-O 1.82%
to 1.82%).

KEY TAKEAWAYS

While a clear majority of respondents are using containers or plan to use

them, we note that this adoption is higher in larger organizations. When we
consider that larger companies are (a) deploying more often on premise,
and (b) often have hybrid deployment strategies, containers are a more
natural fit and solution to these needs. Additionally, larger organizations
are more likely to attract and retain engineers with expertise in container
operations.

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ORCHESTRATION TRENDS
In our next question, we asked respondents to share their status and plans regarding adoption of orchestration technologies. 43.80% of respondents noted that they don’t use
orchestration technologies and have no plans to do so, while 41.67% indicated that they are currently using them. 14.53% noted that they don’t currently use orchestration
technologies, but have plans to do so in the next 12 months.

Looking at these results year over year, we noticed a significant shift in responses. Those indicating no, with no plans to use orchestration technologies jumped significantly
(35.12% to 43.80%), while those stating current usage fell (47.70% to 41.67%).

Looking closer, our results indicated that large companies were far more likely to use orchestration technologies, with 50.98% of large companies indicating current usage,
compared to only 35.58% of small companies.

ARE YOU CURRENTLY USING ANY COMPANIES WITH OVER COMPANIES WITH UNDER
ORCHESTRATION TECHNOLOGIES? 100 EMPLOYEES 100 EMPLOYEES

36.76% 35.58%
43.8% 41.67%
48.4%
50.98%

12.25% 16.03%
14.53%

• Yes
• No, but we are planning to use them within the next 12 months
• No, and we currently have no plans to use them

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TOP ORCHESTRATION TECHNOLOGIES
For those that noted use of orchestration technologies, we asked them to share which technologies they use. Top choices included Kubernetes (52.05%), Docker Compose /
Swarm (45.74%), and Terraform (25.55%). Rounding out the top five were Ansible and AWS Cloud Formation at 23.97% and 16.09% respectively.

Looking at selections year over year, Kubernetes usage climbed (44.81% to 52.05%), while Ansible (31.90% to 23.97%), Terraform (27.85% to 25.55%), AWS Cloud Formation
(25.32% to 16.09%), and Helm (19.49% to 15.46%) all dropped in popularity.

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING ORCHESTRATION TECHNOLOGIES DO YOU USE?

Kubernetes 52.05%

Docker Compose/Swarm 45.74%

Terraform 25.55%

Ansible 23.97%

AWS Cloud Formation 16.09%

Helm 15.46%

Puppet 8.52%

Azure Automation 6.31%

Other 4.42%

Chef 2.21%

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Looking at orchestration tool selection by company size, there were a few interesting shifts. Docker Compose and Swarm was a more popular selection for members of small
companies than those in large companies (50.57% vs. 39.86%).

COMPANIES WITH OVER 100 EMPLOYEES COMPANIES WITH UNDER 100 EMPLOYEES

Kubernetes 65.03% Kubernetes 41.38%

Docker Compose/Swarm 39.86% Docker Compose/Swarm 50.57%

Terraform 32.87% Terraform 19.54%

Helm 21.68% Helm 10.34%

Ansible 18.88% Ansible 28.16%

AWS Cloud Formation 18.18% AWS Cloud Formation 14.37%

Azure Automation 8.39% Azure Automation 4.6%

Puppet 6.99% Puppet 9.77%

Other 4.2% Other 4.6%

Chef 2.1% Chef 2.3%

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Our takeaway observation on orchestration trends mirrors our takeaway for containers. With larger organizations and more complex deployment needs, companies need
to embrace orchestration technologies. Consensus lies on containers as being the most reliable way to deploy PHP applications, and for this reason we see Kubernetes and
Docker Compose / Swarm as the leaders for orchestration technologies in the PHP ecosystem. We find the rise in popularity of Compose / Swarm particularly interesting, as it
demonstrates that the simpler paradigm these tools present is a good fit for many PHP applications — particularly in smaller organizations where scaling needs are less.

We also observe that adoption of cloud-specific tooling such as AWS Cloud Formation and Azure Automation has decreased. We feel this is a good trend, as it prevents vendor
lock-in, and allows for hybrid cloud deployment opportunities.

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SECURITY AND HOW CONFIDENT ARE YOU IN THE
COMPLIANCE TRENDS SECURITY OF YOUR PHP APPLICATION(S)?
In our 2024 survey, we revised and expanded our questions 1.05%
3.59%
related to security and compliance. With security and compliance
a top concern across nearly all development ecosystems, we
reformulated our questions to better understand how PHP teams 18.14%

feel about the overall security of their applications, and the

• Extremely Confident

•
26.58%
Very Confident

•
measures they take to improve and maintain application security
Somewhat Confident
and compliance.
• Not So Confident

SECURITY TRENDS
• Not At All Confident

50.63%
For our first addition to this section, we asked respondents
to share their confidence level in the security of their PHP
applications. As you’ll see in the data below, that level of
confidence is correlated with other data points from the survey –
including respondent job title categories, and the need to meet
TEAMS WITH COMPLIANCE REQUIREMENTS
compliance standards.
0.39%
Looking at the unsegmented results, over half of respondents 3.49%
noted they were “Very Confident” in the security of their PHP
applications, followed by 26.58% at “Somewhat Confident,”
17.05%

•
and “18.14% “Extremely Confident.” Combined, 95.35% 22.09%
Extremely Confident
of respondents noted positive sentiment around their PHP
• Very Confident
application security.
• Somewhat Confident

• Not So Confident
When looking at the results for respondents who identified
needing to meet compliance requirements, we saw a jump in
• Not At All Confident

56.98%
the percentage (50.63 to 56.98%) of results who were “Very
Confident” in their PHP application security.

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Next, we segmented the results by job responsibilities – specifically looking at hands-on development roles, vs. senior leadership roles. While the percentage of respondents
for each category selecting Very Confident (50% vs. 52.63%) Somewhat Confident (27.33% vs. 28.95%) and Extremely Confident (18.33% vs. 18.42%) were relatively
consistent, one area that showed a disconnect between roles were in negative perceptions of PHP application security. Developers, overall, were much more likely to select
Not So Confident or Not at All Confident than their C-Suite counterparts (4.34% vs. 0%).

The last segment we looked at was security sentiment by PHP version adoption, comparing respondents using PHP 5.6 and previous version, PHP 7.x versions, and PHP 8.x
versions. Looking at the results, teams using PHP 5.6 were far less confident in their overall PHP app security, while PHP 7.x and PHP 8.x users were much more confident.

TEAMS USING PHP TEAMS USING PHP TEAMS USING PHP

DEVELOPERS C-SUITE 5.6 AND PREVIOUS 7.X VERSIONS 8.X VERSIONS
0.67% 1.71% 0.5%
3.67% 5.33% 4.1% 3.01%

18.33% 18.42% 17.33% 17.41% 19.3%

29.95%
25.06%
27.33%
29.33% 28.33%

48% 48.46%
50% 52.13%
52.63%

• Extremely Confident
• Very Confident
• Somewhat Confident
• Not So Confident
• Not At All Confident

KEY TAKEAWAYS

We were surprised to see that the bulk of respondents are very confident in the security of their PHP applications. This speaks well to the improvements in the language and within
its ecosystem over the past 5-10 years. We also felt that the respondents having less confidence in their applications that are deployed on version 5 releases was deserved; with
the last PHP 5 release having been almost a decade ago, and security patching ending not long after, users should be looking to upgrade their applications in order to decrease
their security exposure.

While confidence is still high for PHP 7 users, they, too, should be considering their options now that PHP 7 releases are no longer receiving security patches from the open source
project.

20 | Zend 2024 PHP Landscape Report © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered
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TACTICAL SECURITY TRENDS
Next, we asked teams to share how they prioritize the measures they take to improve security in the development and maintenance of their PHP applications. Respondents
were asked to rate each entry on a scale of 1-5, with 1 indicating that the tactic is not important, and 5 indicating the tactic is very important.

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING SECURITY MEASURES ARE MOST IMPORTANT IN

THE DEVELOPMENT AND MAINTENANCE OF YOUR PHP APPLICATIONS?
4.35 3.99 3.46 3.4
Implementing and Monitoring and logging Conducting manual Conducting security
enforcing secure application activities for security reviews training for
coding practices security incidents and testing development teams

4.38 4.2 3.52 3.44

Implementing strong Regularly applying security Performing automated Conducting manual
authentication and patches and updates in application security policies security reviews
access controls dependencies and procedures and testing

We then looked at the weighted average for each tactic, which you can see in the chart above. The consensus top three most important tactics for PHP teams were
implementing strong authentication and access controls (4.38), implementing and enforcing secure coding practices (4.35), and regularly applying security patches and
updates in application dependencies (4.20). Rounding out the top five were monitoring and logging application activities for security incidents (3.99) and performing
automated security scanning and testing (3.52). Respondents rated conducting security training for development teams as the least important tactic (3.40).

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Identity and access management are a key concern when securing any application, and we are pleased to see so many respondents rating it as their chief security concern.
Considering the PHP language does not provide any built-in mechanisms for achieving robust access control, choosing the right libraries and the right approaches are key
architectural questions to answer.

Additionally, we were happy to see that implementing and enforcing secure coding practices is a top concern. We hope to ask what practices and standards in particular
organizations are targeting when we do future iterations of this survey, as we are curious what language features are either aiding or obstructing the ability to secure
applications. We also find it interesting that conducting security training is rated so low, considering training is necessary in order to effectively implement secure coding practices.

21 | Zend 2024 PHP Landscape Report © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered
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COMPLIANCE REQUIREMENTS
In a return question from our 2023 survey, we asked respondents to share whether they need DO YOUR PHP APPLICATIONS
to meet regulatory or industry compliance standards, and, if not currently needing to meet any HAVE REGULATORY OR INDUSTRY
compliance standards, whether they anticipate needing to meet any compliance standards within
COMPLIANCE REQUIREMENTS?
the next 12 months.

Our survey found that 54.46% of respondents noted they

38.37%
must meet regulatory or industry applications for their PHP
54.46%
applications, with 38.37% saying no, and that they don’t
currently foresee needing to meet any compliance standards. The
remaining 7.17% indicated that they don’t currently need to meet 7.17%

compliance standards but indicated that they will need to within

the next 12 months.
• Yes

• No, but we will within

the next 12 months

Looking at these results year over year, we saw relatively little movement in teams needing to • No, and we currently have no
forecast for them
meet compliance (55.21% vs 54.46%). However, we did see a jump in those not needing to meet
compliance standards and not expecting to need to meet them in the future (31.44% to 38.37%).
Conversely, we saw teams noting they don’t currently need to meet compliance standards but
expect to in the next 12 months drop year over year (13.34% to 7.17%).

Looking at compliance requirement results by segment, our survey showed the top global regions
needing to meet compliance standards for their PHP applications were North America (61.44%),
Europe (60.35%), and United Kingdom (60%).

22 | Zend 2024 PHP Landscape Report © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered
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COMPLIANCE STANDARDS
As a follow-up question, we asked those who indicated they need to meet compliance requirements to share the requirements that they adhere to for their PHP applications.
Our survey found GDPR as the top selected option at 69.68%, followed by ISO 27001 at 20.65% and PCI DSS at 20.32%. Rounding out the top five, Internal compliance
standards and EU e-Privacy Directive attracted 19.68% and 16.31%, respectively

WHICH COMPLIANCE STANDARDS ARE YOU REQUIRED TO MEET FOR YOUR PHP APPLICATIONS?

GDPR 69.68%

ISO 27001 20.65%

PCI DSS 20.32%

Internal Compliance Standards 19.68%

EU e-Privacy Directive 16.13%

HIPAA 13.23%

Other 7.74%

CCPA 7.42%

SOX 6.77%

FERPA 5.81%

FedRAMP 4.52%

NIST 3.55%

CIS Benchmarks 3.23%

FISMA 1.61%

.
23 | Zend 2024 PHP Landscape Report © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered
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Not surprisingly, compliance requirements varied by region –
with respondents in North, Central, and South America much less THE AMERICAS
likely to select GDPR (45.22% vs. 95%) and EU e-Privacy Directive
GDPR 45.22%
(5.22% vs 25.62%) than respondents from Europe and the UK.
PCI DSS 34.78%

KEY TAKEAWAYS Internal Compliance Standards 19.13%

It’s clear that PHP is powering global businesses. Government-

HIPAA 24.35%
led regulatory requirements such as GDPR, ISO 27001, the EU
e-Privacy Directive, and HIPAA are governing how organizations SOX 14.78%

deploy their applications. Additionally, money talks: PCI DSS, SOX,

and NIST are required to interact with financial institutions, and
compliance is a cost of doing business. UK AND EUROPE
If your PHP application is working with any sensitive customer GDPR 95%
data, you have compliance requirements, and with the globally
ISO 27007 25.62%
connected world of the internet, you’re likely falling under many
regulatory umbrellas. PCI DSS 11.25%

Internal Compliance Standards 16.88%

EU e-Privacy Directive 25.62%

REST OF WORLD
GDPR 34.29%

ISO 27007 25.71%

PCI DSS 14.29%

Internal Compliance Standards 34.29%

CIS Benchmarks 14.29%

24 | Zend 2024 PHP Landscape Report © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered
trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (0220JB24)
PHP VERSION ADOPTION AND MIGRATION TRENDS
Measuring PHP version adoption within the PHP ecosystem is the cornerstone of our annual PHP Landscape Report — and our 2024 report is no different. This year we again
asked teams to share the PHP versions they use, and their plans around PHP upgrades or migrations. New this year, to better understand PHP migration trends, we asked users
to share the PHP versions they migrated to and from. But before we get to that, let’s dive in with the top PHP versions.

PHP VERSION ADOPTION

In this question, we asked teams to identify the PHP versions used in their PHP applications, with the option to select multiple PHP versions if applicable. Respondents reporting
using 2.43 different PHP versions, on average (not accounting for answer selections that had multiple PHP versions included). This was lower than our 2023 survey, which found
respondents selecting an average of 2.65 PHP versions.

The top version selected was PHP 8.2, at 57.17% of responses, followed by PHP 8.1 at 53.67%, and PHP 7.4 at 47.73%. Next were PHP 8.0, PHP 7.0-7.2, and PHP 7.3 at 34.79%,
18.36%, and 16.08%, respectively. Last on the list were PHP versions 5.6 and earlier at 15.91% of respondents.

WHICH VERSIONS OF PHP DO YOUR PHP APPLICATIONS USE?

15.91%
18.36%
57.17% 53.67% 34.79% 47.73% 16.08% PHP
PHP
PHP 8.2 PHP 8.1 PHP 8.0 PHP 7.4 PHP 7.3 5.6 and
7.0 - 7.2
Earlier

25 | Zend 2024 PHP Landscape Report © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered
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Overall, 54.55% of respondents noted using an end of life PHP version, marking a year over year decrease of 7.31%. Taking a closer look at end of life PHP version adoption
year over year, PHP 7.4 usage dropped by 22.88%, PHP 7.3 dropped by 32.35%, and PHP 7.0-7.2 dropped by 45.08%.

Year over year, we saw adoption of PHP 8.x versions climb 56.58%, while adoption of PHP 7.x versions dropped 31.04% and adoption of PHP versions 5.6 and earlier dropped
49.44%.

Looking at EOL PHP version adoption by company size, we saw EOL PHP usage higher for companies with under 100 employees (55.56%), and lower for companies with over
100 employees (52.73%).

PHP VERSION ADOPTION BY PHP VERSION ADOPTION BY

PHP VERSION ADOPTION PHP VERSION ADOPTION COMMUNITY SUPPORT STATUS COMMUNITY SUPPORT STATUS
BY COMMUNITY SUPPORT STATUS BY MAJOR VERSION Over 100 Employees Under 100 Employees

54.62% 52.73% 55.56%

59.76%
EOL EOL EOL
PHP 8.x

45.38% 47.27% 44.44%

33.72% PHP 7.x
Not EOL Not EOL Not EOL

6.53% PHP 5.x and Earlier

KEY TAKEAWAYS

We are currently in the second year where the only community-supported versions of PHP are in the version 8 series. When the last major release cycle happened (PHP 5 to PHP
7), it took until version 7.3 or 7.4 before we started observing significant migration off of PHP 5. With PHP 7 to PHP 8, we’re seeing a faster uptick in adoption of the new version.
While PHP 8 introduced a number of backwards incompatible changes, they were fewer and had less of an impact than we experienced with the release of PHP 7, which has led to
greater success in adopting PHP 8.

As noted elsewhere in this report, we see a higher adoption of community-supported versions by larger organizations. We expect this is due to having more staff capable of
maintaining applications and providing updates for compatibility.

Finally, we would like to note that among teams who indicated a lack of confidence in the security of their PHP applications, 72% of those respondents also noted usage of end-of-
life versions of PHP. Clearly, keeping applications on supported PHP versions goes hand in hand with good security practices.

26 | Zend 2024 PHP Landscape Report © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered
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PHP UPGRADE AND MIGRATION TRENDS
In our next set of questions, we asked teams to share details on their PHP migration efforts, including whether or not they’ve completed a migration within the last 12 months,
and, if so, which PHP versions they migrated from and to. We also asked teams to share if they have plans to migrate PHP versions within the next 12 months. Finally, we asked
teams to share the biggest obstacles to their PHP migrations.

PHP Migrations Within Last 12 Months

In our first question for this section, a new question in this year’s survey. We asked teams to share whether or not they have completed a PHP migration within the last 12
months. Our survey found that the vast majority of respondents (72.28%) had completed a PHP migration during that period.

Looking at migration activity in large companies versus small companies, we saw large companies much more likely to have completed a PHP migration within the last 12
months when compared to small companies (78.28% vs 68.50%).

HAVE YOU COMPLETED A PHP MIGRATION WITHIN THE LAST 12 MONTHS?

72.28% 27.72%
Yes No

COMPANIES WITH COMPANIES WITH COMPANIES WITH COMPANIES WITH

OVER 100 EMPLOYEES UNDER 100 EMPLOYEES OVER 10 DEVELOPERS UNDER 10 DEVELOPERS

78.13% 68.5% 80.12% 69.19%

Yes Yes Yes Yes

21.88 31.5% 19.88% 30.81%

No No No No

27 | Zend 2024 PHP Landscape Report © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered
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 Digging deeper, we looked at results by development team size and found
even more pronounced separation. Respondents who indicated they had
fewer than 10 developers on their development team were far less likely to
have performed a migration in the last 12 months (69.19% vs. 80.12%).
22.46%
No Looking at migration activity for companies who noted usage of
COMPANIES USING containerization and orchestration technologies, we noted that they were
CONTAINER/ more likely to have completed a migration than those not using those
OCHESTRATION technologies.
TECHNOLOGES
77.54% KEY TAKEAWAYS
Yes
As noted in the commentary, respondents with small teams are less likely
to perform and complete PHP migrations; this was mirrored in the results
of teams who have not adopted containers or orchestration technologies.
Migrations not only involve ensuring that the code works correctly on the
new version, but also involve infrastructure provisioning and configuration
— which containers and orchestration can help achieve in testable and
repeatable ways. Often, changing a PHP version in such systems is a small
change in configuration, and the results can then be tested in existing CI/
CD pipelines.
32.61%
No COMPANIES NOT USING We strongly feel that container adoption and/or usage of orchestration
CONTAINER/ tooling helps organizations be more successful in PHP migrations, and also
OCHESTRATION
contribute to greater application security practices.
67.39% TECHNOLOGES
Yes

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PHP MIGRATION TRENDS BY VERSION
New to the survey this year, we asked teams who indicated they had performed a migration in the last 12 months to select which version(s) they had migrated from and to.
Looking at our results, the top PHP versions respondents migrated off of were PHP 7.4 (54.59%), PHP 5.6 or older (25.81%), and PHP 8.0 (25.06%). Rounding out the top five
were PHP 7.2 and PHP 7.3, at 19.35% and 17.37%, respectively.

The top PHP migration destinations for those versions were all PHP 8.x versions, with PHP 8.2 as the top choice at 56.33%. PHP 8.1 and PHP 8.0 followed at 46.40% and
21.34% respectively. Lastly, 15.63% of respondents noted that they had performed a migration to PHP 7.4 in the last 12 months.

WHICH PHP VERSION(S) DID YOU MIGRATE OFF OF? WHICH PHP VERSION(S) DID YOU MIGRATE TO?

PHP 8.1 19.11% PHP 8.2 56.33%

PHP 8.0 25.06% PHP 8.1 46.4%

PHP 7.4 54.59% PHP 8.0 21.34%

PHP 7.3 17.37% PHP 7.4 15.63%

PHP 7.2 19.35% PHP 7.3 3.97%

PHP 7.1 13.9% PHP 7.2 3.97%

PHP 7.0 12.9% PHP 7.1 3.47%

PHP 5.6 and Earlier 25.81% PHP 7.0 4.22%

PHP 5.6 and Earlier 2.48%

29 | Zend 2024 PHP Landscape Report © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered
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Looking at migration destinations for teams who indicated
they migrated off of PHP versions 5.6 and Older, we found the
TOP MIGRATION DESTINATIONS FROM PHP 5.6 AND OLDER
top three migration destinations as PHP 8.2 (22.23%), PHP 8.1
(20.24%), and PHP 7.4 (18.6%). For teams that indicated they PHP 8.2 22.33%
migrated off of PHP 7.4, the top migration destinations were PHP
8.2 (42.11%), PHP 8.1 (39.32%), and PHP 8.0 (18.58%). PHP 8.1 20.47%

Lastly, looking at teams who indicated migrating off PHP 8.0, PHP 8.0 13.49%

the top choice was PHP 8.2 at 54.74%, followed by PHP 8.1
PHP 7.4 18.6%
at 45.26%. It is worth noting, however, that PHP 8.3 was not
included as a potential option because it had not been released PHP 7.3 6.05%
by the launch of our survey.
PHP 7.2 6.05%

KEY TAKEAWAYS PHP 7.1 5.58%

While it should be the goal of most organizations deploying PHP

PHP 7.0 7.44%
applications to be on versions of PHP under current community
support, we also note that for those on older PHP 7 versions or
PHP 5 versions, the logical waypoint for migrations is to get to PHP
7.4. A number of long-term support offerings exist for PHP 7.4,
including from Zend by Perforce, and getting to this version and TOP MIGRATION TOP MIGRATION
addressing language deprecations will set your business up for
DESTINATIONS DESTINATIONS
FROM PHP 7.4 FROM PHP 8.0
success when preparing for a migration to PHP 8.

PHP 8.2 42.11% PHP 8.2 54.74%

PHP 8.1 39.32% PHP 8.1 45.26%

PHP 8.0 18.58%

30 | Zend 2024 PHP Landscape Report © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered
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Forward-Looking PHP Upgrade and Migration Trends
In our next question, we asked respondents to share their plans regarding PHP version upgrades and migrations within the next 12 months. 68.17% of respondents indicated
that they have plans to upgrade within the next 12 months. 23.33% of respondents noted that they have no upgrade planned at this time.

Looking at upgrade/migration plans by company size, we noted two minor shifts between large and small companies, namely that large companies were more likely to have
migration plans than small companies, and less likely to have no upgrades planned.

Next, we looked at migration plans for respondents that noted they had performed a migration within the last 12 months. We found that, even for teams that had recently
performed a migration, 71.61% have a migration planned within the next year. A further 7.79% indicated that they have a migration planned, but not within the next 12 months.

ARE YOU PLANNING A PHP VERSION UPGRADE OR MIGRATION WITHIN THE NEXT 12 MONTHS?

68.17% 8.5% 23.33%

Yes, within the Yes, but not within No upgrade
next 12 months. the next 12 months. planned at this time.

COMPANIES WITH OVER 100 EMPLOYEES COMPANIES WITH UNDER 100 EMPLOYEES

8.84% 20.93% 8.28% 24.85%

70.23% 66.86%
Yes, but not No upgrade Yes, but not No upgrade
Yes, within the Yes, within the
within the planned at within the planned at
next 12 months. next 12 months.
next 12 months. this time. next 12 months. this time.

TEAMS WHO PERFORMED A MIGRATION WITHIN THE LAST 12 MONTHS

71.61% 7.79% 20.6%

Yes, within the Yes, but not No upgrade
next 12 months. within the planned at
next 12 months. this time.

31 | Zend 2024 PHP Landscape Report © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered
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MIGRATION PAIN POINTS
In our next question, we asked teams to share the most time-consuming component of their last PHP WHAT WAS THE MOST
upgrade – with responses limited to a single selection per respondent. The top two time-consuming TIME-COMSUMING COMPONENT OF
elements of migrations noted by our respondents were Refactoring, at 37.31%, followed by Testing at YOUR LAST PHP UPGRADE?
37.12%. Trailing significantly behind our top two choices, Infrastructure Provisioning, Planning, and
Refactoring 37.31%
Compliance Renewals, were the next most popular choices at 9.23%, 9.04% and 3.65%, respectively.
Among those who selected “Other,” dependencies were noted as the most time-consuming element Testing 37.12%
of their last PHP upgrade.
Infrastructure Provisioning 9.23%
While Refactoring and Testing were neck and neck as the top pain point for all respondents, when
segmenting responses by teams who had migrated off of PHP 7.x versions, we noted that Refactoring Planning 9.04%

(42.75%) was selected at a higher rate than Testing (35.69%), climbing above the 37.31% noted in the
Compliance Renewals 3.65%
non-segmented results.
Other 3.65%
KEY TAKEAWAYS

While the results for planned upgrades/migrations do not change much year over year, one thing to note
is that even with companies that have completed a migration in the past year, another is planned for the
coming year. In working with our customers, we’ve noted that migrations often are staged: companies
PAIN POINTS FOR TEAMS WHO
need to go to an intermediary version before getting to their target version, and each stage can be a MIGRATED OFF PHP 7.4
months or years long project.
Refactoring 42.75%
Additionally, we note that this churn is largely a by-product of the PHP release cycle itself. A little over a
10 years ago, the project adopted a regular release cadence that includes a yearly feature release, with Testing 35.69%
each such release receiving 2 years of active support with 1 additional year of security-only support. As
Infrastructure Provisioning 8.18%
such, this means migrations every 2-3 years at a minimum.

When it comes to the details of migration, refactoring was rated as the biggest pain point. Again, this Planning 8.18%

can be attributed to the pace of change in the language: every feature release can potentially introduce
Compliance Renewals 2.6%
deprecations, and if it represents a new major release, backwards incompatible APIs. These can require
refactoring your code in order to work under the new (or a future) version. Additionally, some features, Other 2.6%
when adopted, can increase code readability or predictability (as examples, the type improvements
from PHP 7 and PHP 8; read-only properties and classes in PHP 8; and more); refactoring your code to
take advantage of these may give your team greater ability to produce new features in the future.

32 | Zend 2024 PHP Landscape Report © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered
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DEVELOPMENT PRIORITIES
In the penultimate section of our 2024 PHP Landscape Report, we asked teams to share the focus areas they have today, and the development priorities they have set for the
rest of 2024.

MAINTENANCE VS. FEATURE DEVELOPMENT

In our first question for this section, we asked respondents to share how they prioritize maintenance of their PHP applications, including bug/issue resolution, vs. the
development of new functionalities. The top selection in this year’s survey, with 42.19% of responses was “25% maintenance, 75% new functionalities”. Next was a 50/50
split, at 27.64%. In third, 10%/90% split attracted 14.77% of responses. Overall, our survey found 84.6% of respondents commit at least half of their time to developing new
features.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

With 7 out of 8 respondents indicating they commit at least half their time to new features, businesses can expect that PHP developers are producing business value for them, first
and foremost.

HOW MUCH OF YOUR TEAM’S TIME IS SPENT ON MAINTENANCE AND PRODUCTION

BUG/ISSUE RESOLUTION VS. DEVELOPING NEW FUNCTIONALITIES?
10% maintenance, 25% maintenance, 50% maintenance, 75% maintenance, 90% maintenance,
90% new functionalities 75% new functionalities 50% new functionalities 25% new functionalities 10% new functionalities

14.77% 42.19% 27.64% 9.07% 6.33%

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 2024 DEVELOPMENT PRIORITIES
WHAT ARE THE TOP PRIORITIES FOR YOUR PHP In our next question, we asked teams to share their 2024 development
DEVELOPMENT TEAM IN 2024?
priorities. Users were asked to rate each category on a scale of one to
five, with one indicating the lowest level of priority, and five indicating the
44.3%
highest. Echoing the results from our previous question, we found 44.30%
40.72% of respondents setting the highest priority on Building new features. In
second, trailing our first place option by 3.58%, was Security at 40.72%.
22.36%
Improving code quality, Improving performance, and Deployment
18.78% automation / orchestration represented 22.36%, 18.78%, and 11.18% of
respondents, respectively. Looking at development priorities by company
11.18%
size, we didn’t note any substantial shifts.

• Building New Features KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Security

• Improving Code Quality With new feature development and security being on par as priorities, the

• Improving Performance

•
question we have is whether respondents were thinking about security-
Deployment Automation/Orchestration
oriented features (such as identity and access management), or if they are
expecting security audits, and resulting mitigations, of their applications.

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THE STATE OF PHP IN 2024 WHAT FEATURES OF PHP ARE MOST
In our final section of our survey, we asked respondents to share what they consider to be IMPORTANT TO YOU?
the most important components of PHP as a language, the challenges they encounter in
working with PHP, and their views on the state of PHP today. 4.51

4.12
MOST IMPORTANT PHP FEATURES
4.07
In our first question for this section, we asked respondents to rank in order of importance
a series of PHP features and qualities ranging from Database connectivity to Syntax. The
3.65
top feature again in this year’s survey was Database (and other service) connectivity, which
attracted a weighted average of 4.51. Next was object-oriented programming features at 3.58

4.12, followed by Web request features (cURL, sockets, etc.) at 4.07. Syntax and Ease of
3.48
Learning were next at 3.65, and 3.58, respectively. Looking at results year over year, we
noticed a few movements. Web request features dropped from the 2nd most important 2.84

feature to 3rd, replaced by OOP features. We also noted that Syntax climbed from 6th to
2.53
4th, while Web server integrations fell from 4th to 6th.

KEY TAKEAWAYS • Database (and other service) connectivity

As usual, the ability to integrate with a variety of services and systems is a leading feature of
•
•
Object-oriented programming (OOP) features
Web request freatures (cURL, sockets, etc.)

• Syntax

•
PHP. We are pleased to see that respondents are increasingly finding the language features
Ease of Learning
and syntax an important part of choosing the language, as it demonstrates that the change
• Web server integrations (mod_PHP, FastCGI, etc.)
in focus by the project has benefited users.
• Just-in-Time (JIT) compilation

Finally, we note that the drop in importance of web server integrations is likely due to these • Async capabilities (Fibers, Open/Swoole, ReactPHP, etc.)

being a given, particularly with the two most popular servers used when deploying PHP
(Apache HTTPD and nginx).

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 BIGGEST PHP CHALLENGES
WHAT ARE YOUR Next, we asked teams to weigh in on the biggest challenges they face
BIGGEST CHALLENGES C-SUITE in working with PHP, with the option to select multiple challenges as
AROUND PHP? applicable. Our survey found the top challenge for respondents to
be Performance issues, at 37.8%, followed by Debugging at 33.26%.
37.8% 45.95%
Dependency management, Security, and Hiring were the next most
33.26% 24.32% common challenges at 26.78%, 25.70%, and 23.76%, respectively.

While the top two challenges for teams stayed consistent year over year,
26.78% 13.51%
Dependency management jumped from 5th to 3rd, while hiring dropped
25.7% 21.62% from 4th to 5th. Integrations with other systems dropped from 3rd in
2023, to 7th in 2024.
23.76% 32.43%
When looking that top challenges for executive level positions, we found
21.17% 13.51%
that Hiring jumped nearly 10%, and from the 5th most common challenge

20.09% 13.51% to 2nd.

15.33% 10.81% KEY TAKEAWAYS

8.42% 8.11% We note that dependency management jumped two positions this year.
While dependency management is a largely solved problem due to

• Performance Issues
the ubiquity of the Composer dependency manager, we wonder if the

• Debugging challenge posed here is more around keeping up-to-date with secure

• Dependency Management versions of dependencies.

• Security

• Hiring We are also surprised by the increased challenge in hiring. We are curious if
• Release cadence/community support lifecycle

•
this is indicative of a decrease in PHP developers, or if the demand for PHP
Integrations with other systems (databases, caching, etc.)

• Deployment developers has increased in the past year.

• Other

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THE STATE OF PHP
In our final question for the 2024 PHP Landscape Survey, we asked
TO WHAT EXTENT DO YOU AGREE WITH
teams to share their level of agreement with four prompts regarding PHP. THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS?
Respondents were asked to rank each category from one to five, with
one representing the lowest level of agreement and five representing the
highest level of agreement.

Our survey found that respondents strongly agreed with the first three
prompts, in that they enjoy working with PHP, that it is easy to learn, and
4.49
that if they were developing a new web app, they would use PHP. Most I enjoy working
respondents disagreed with the statement that PHP is evolving too slowly. with PHP.

Looking at these results year over year, we found that these opinions
remained consistent. The statements “I enjoy working with PHP” and “PHP
is easy to learn” increased in agreement year over year, while more people
disagreed with the statement “PHP is evolving too slowly.” 2.34
PHP is
evolving too
KEY TAKEAWAYS slowly.

The PHP language has been receiving a plethora of useful features over
4.25
the past few years, many of which make it easier to write maintainable and If I were designing
a new web application,
secure software. The annual drop of new features keeps many developers I would use PHP.
excited about the language, and invested in learning and increasing their
efficiency in developing business critical software.

4.39
PHP is easy
to learn.

37 | Zend 2024 PHP Landscape Report © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered
trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (0220JB24)
Final Thoughts
Whether your business has a web presence managed by a CMS, or exposes APIs for business-to-
business enablement, you likely have PHP somewhere in the stack. We have observed it in wide use
across all industries, from automotive and industrial companies to educational institutions and the
public sector. Its ability to glue together data and services from a variety of sources keeps it relevant,
and we continue to see it evolve to suit complex needs.

With PHP 8, we’ve seen increased stability in the language, and a number of forward-thinking
features such as the Just-In-Time compiler and Fibers, which should enable new use cases and
paradigms in the future. All of this has been done in a way that allows PHP to continue shining where
it always has: enabling scalability, which in turn helps businesses control their costs.

What will another year bring to PHP? Let’s find out together!

ABOUT ZEND
Zend by Perforce helps organizations use enterprise PHP to build innovative web
and mobile solutions and modernize existing applications. Used by multiple
Fortune 100 companies, our proven enterprise PHP offerings include
secure, fully-supported PHP runtimes, software infrastructure, tools,
training, and enterprise long-term support for PHP 7.2, 7.3, 7.4,
and 8.0. For more information, visit www.zend.com today.

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38 | Zend 2024 PHP Landscape Report © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered
trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (0220JB24)