Why Prefer PHP over .Net for Web Development — Latest Update

Sophia Martin
Quick Code
Published in
9 min readSep 19, 2020

With the growing trend of digitization, it has become important for all levels of companies to create their digital presence to succeed in today’s thriving market. It is true that your presence on social media platforms can help you grab the attention of the potential users but to create a brand image, you need to invest in web development.

Hold on! You don’t need to trust our words just because we are saying you to do so. Instead, you can have a look over what experts have to say about the importance of having a website.

  • It has been concluded that 46% of small businesses are not having their website and only 54% of businesses are having an official web page out of which major percentage is of Americans. Now the studies say that over 70–80% of people will research the company on the web before making a purchase decision. Users usually visit the company website to understand brand authenticity and credibility. Moreover, sometimes even a one-page website can help you build trust and enables you to showcase your product and services in a perfect way. — “Rehan Fernando, CEO at Eight25Media”.
  • No matter what type of business you are running. If you have customers, it is necessary to have some sort of information online, at least a single page describing your profile and what type of services you are offering along with the contact information. If you are thinking that hiring a web development company for your business is just an additional financial burden on you and you are ignoring the real fact, then you are easily passing your potential customers to the other businesses. — “Max Elman, Founder of Razorfrog Web Design”

Conclusion: At one side, a website can fuel the growth of your business, on the other side, poor choice of technology or badly designed website can easily turn your potential customers into annoying users. Let’s learn how:

75% of customers judge the credibility of the business through the website design.

  • 79% of shoppers expect your website load time should be less than 2 seconds.

However, this is all about the role of the website. But now the industry has come to a step ahead and web app developments are steadily paving their space in the digital world.

No matter what type of web app you are trying to construct, but the performance of the site greatly depends on the scripting that is running in the background and the software development company you hire for the project. Moreover, how the apps have been programmed can also make a great difference in website performance. Right from seamlessly watching videos on Youtube, networking with business partners on Linkedin to reading content on Wikipedia, every app has a strong background of scripts or codes that empowers them to perform well in front of users.

So when it comes to choosing the best programming languages for web app development, PHP and .Net are the two most commonly used PLs after Javascript.

Undoubtedly, PHP and .Net are the lions of the web development industry but comparing these two titans are like comparing the Apples and Oranges. But the central question is, why to hire a PHP development company over .NET for building the website?

Let’s directly jump to the detailed comparison of the PHP and .Net to understand what exactly empowers PHP over .NET…

Let the Battle Begin with the basics:

1. Understanding the Basics Of PHP and .NET

In a Nutshell: Both PHP and .NET are the widely used open-source programming languages for web development. But as PHP scripts are embedded in HTML, therefore it is widely used for web development projects. On the other hand .NET is a framework that includes many components that help in development, running and execution of the web apps.

PHP: PHP is a server-side web development language that evolved from the small open-source projects. It was introduced in 1995 by Rasmus Lerdorf and make use of most important IDEs including Eclipse, NetBeans and Zend Studio for web development.

Moreover, since it is a server-side language, it is efficient in accessing and managing the various types of database. Also, PHP provides back for other services supporting multiple protocols like POP3, HTTP, IMAP, LDAP, etc.

Due to its adaptability and flexibility, 26.2% of developers are using this programming language for web app development.

Image Source

.NET: This framework is developed by Microsoft and uses various technologies including CLR that manages code execution at the runtime. In addition, it uses some components that handle threads and memory. Today 35.1% of developers are using .NET as it supports multiple languages such as C#, Visual Basic, Visual C++ and Python.

Image Source

To wrap up this brief of both languages, it is worth saying that PHP is an open-source and free to use server-side programming language which marked its first release in Nov 1997. Whereas, .NET is a paid Microsoft Platform and came up with its first release in Jan, 2002. On one side PHP is a unique blend of programming language and a web framework whereas .NET is a straight application framework.

2. PHP Vs. .NET: Performance and Speed

Conclusion: When it comes to web development, performance and speed of the website can be a real game-changer. So if you are assuming that hiring a .NET developer is the only solution to deal with, then you might be mistaken.

The performance and speed of a platform are correlated with each other. The performance of the site is depending upon how much time a browser takes to respond to the query and the speed of the communication between the servers plays an important role in evaluation.

So here are the three factors that help you evaluate the performance and speed of the PHP and .Net:

  • While comparing the ease of accessing the file system, PHP and .NET merely have any major difference, but accessibility will be better when the developer is using a Linux system with ext4 file for operating servers, instead of window operating system and NTFS system.
  • PHP uses LAMP stack, i.e., MySQL, Apache, Linux and its script runs on its own memory space, which brings out better performance. But on the other side, a .NET program is created on the COM-based system that slows down the entire program execution process.
  • Thirdly, the performance and speed of the web greatly depend on the code writing skills of the developer. The coding expertise with both PHP and .NET is crucial to attaining the high standard performance of the web app. So it is always recommended to hire an expert software development company that has solid command over leading programming languages.

To wrap up this point, it is fair enough to say that the performance and speed of the website with both PHP and .NET stand almost equal in a few ways. But the choice of server operating system, bandwidth and coding expertise can easily affect the performance of the web app.

3. PHP Vs .NET: Which One is Affordable?

Conclusion: Whether you are a bootstrapper or an entrepreneur, the web app development cost is the biggest concern for of everyone. And this is where PHP steals the show as it is free to use and an open-source web programming language, whereas .NET is a paid product of Microsoft.

PHP: Being an open-source programming language, there is no need to bear any development cost while hiring PHP development company as there is no license fee associated with it.cost required. Moreover, upgrading and updating a web app can be far simple and free with PHP. This is why most businesses prefer PHP for web app development comparatively .NET.

.NET: Since it is It is a baby of Microsoft, thus naturally comes up with the licensing charges. Moreover, all the third-party tools of .NET have attached license cost that will immediately uplift the development budget cost.

4. PHP Vs .NET: Market Share

Conclusion: PHP is more popular among developers and acquiring the largest segment of the market due to its inbuilt features and various other reasons. But, overall both of these languages are acquiring 91% of market share.

Image Source: https://trends.builtwith.com/framework/programming-language

PHP: The forecast from the BuiltWith data source, reveals that PHP is considered as one of the most loved programming languages in the market. In top 1M sites, there are 554,769 websites built with PHP and capturing the market share of 58%.

.NET: This programming language has also secured its place in the list of popular technologies but acquired only 26.36% of market share.

5. PHP Vs .NET: Best Recommended For

Conclusion: When it comes to web app development solutions, PHP is majorly used by the small to medium sized organisations whereas .NET is considered by the large size organizations, but sometimes it can be used by the medium sized business for web app development.

PHP: According to the report, 58% of small size businesses with the employee strength of 1–10 are using PHP and 22% are medium size businesses using it for web development. However, it doesn’t underestimate its potential for developing large scale applications and one of the best examples is Facebook application build with PHP.

Image Source: https://enlyft.com/tech/products/php

.NET: Since it is integrated with various components and technologies that help in managing codes at the runtime and handle threads, therefore, it is widely used for the large scale applications. But still PHP has a greater reach in comparison to .NET as more than 7500 verified companies are using PHP for the web development.

6. PHP Vs .NET: Compatibility

Conclusion: Again PHP overtakes .NET in terms of compatibility as PHP works on multiple platforms like linus, windows and more whereas .NET works with Linux, and window based applications.

PHP: The reason being for hiring web developers for PHP is,it is based on a simple principle “Write Once To Use Anywhere” and works on multiple platforms like Unix, Solaris, Windows and Linux. In addition, it has the capability to work with various web servers and database systems that ultimately improves the flexibility.

.NET: It works with LINUX and other windows-based applications that make it popular among developers.

7. PHP Vs .NET : What Coding Expertise is Required?

Comparison: To enhance the performance of the web app, it is important to have a solid command over a programming language. In comparison, PHP is easier to learn which is why it is used world widely.

PHP: Being one of the most mature and old programming languages, it is easier to learn and understand. Moreover, if coding is simple, developing a web app or program also becomes easier and simpler.

.NET: Since it is based on #C language, which is not only difficult to understand but also requires high skills to learn this language. To develop a web app with .NET, you need to hire a mobile app development company equipped with pro developers having a rich experience of working with .NET.

Conclusion

The simple aim of writing this blog is not to declare any winner, instead, we have concluded few important points that make you understand why PHP is widely used over .NET for web development.

Hopefully, you have understood what exactly empowers PHP and why developers are widely using this language for web development. If you still have any doubt in this blog, then it would be recommended to get in touch with the expert web development company who will further suggest to you the best solutions.

--

--

Sophia Martin
Quick Code

Sr. Business Analyst & Tech Writer— Xicom.biz | Write on Trending Technologies | Sr. IT Consultant. 14+ Years of Exp. | LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2TVwiBW