PHP Will Never Die — Discover Why

ByJunior MOISE

How a 30-year-old language still powers much of the web (and why it will keep doing so).

Summary: Despite sensational headlines claiming “PHP is dead,” PHP remains one of the most widely deployed server-side languages, powering over 72% of websites in 2025. Its dominance stems from WordPress and other CMS platforms, a mature ecosystem, modern language improvements (PHP 7/8), robust frameworks (Laravel, Symfony), and strong enterprise support. This article explains why PHP continues to thrive and offers practical guidance for students and professionals.

1. Historical Insights – A short history (so you understand the roots)

PHP began in juin 1995 when Rasmus Lerdorf released “Personal Home Page Tools.” Over three decades it evolved from a small set of CGI scripts to a full programming language with thousands of libraries and a massive ecosystem. Key milestones: PHP 3 (late 1990s, formalized language), PHP 4/5 (object orientation and stable libraries), PHP 7 (major performance jump and memory improvements), and PHP 8 (JIT, typed properties, attributes). These improvements show PHP’s continuous evolution rather than stagnation. (TIOBE, 2025) Its simplicity, open-source nature, and ability to integrate seamlessly with HTML made it the go-to language for millions of developers worldwide (ZenRows, 2025).

2.📊 Latest Statistics

Market share and real-world footprint — the facts that matter

  • Websites powered by PHP: Surveys of server-side languages show PHP running on the majority of sites where a server-side language is known — roughly ~70–73% of those websites use PHP as of December 2025. That large installed base comes mainly from CMSs and legacy applications. (W3Techs, 2025). 
  • WordPress Dominance: WordPress alone powers over 43% of the entire internet. Since WordPress runs on PHP, the language’s survival is effectively guaranteed for decades to come. (WordPress, 2025)
  • PHP 8 adoption is strong, powering 53.9% of PHP websites, while PHP 7 still accounts for 36.6% (W3Techs, 2025).
  • Developer usage vs. deployment: Developer surveys (Stack Overflow) show fewer developers reporting active PHP use (~15–19% in recent surveys), but that does not diminish PHP’s deployment footprint: many publicly visible sites and enterprise apps continue to use PHP in production. In short: fewer new developers choose PHP as a first language, but many production systems still depend on it. (Stack Overflow) 18.2% of developers globally continue to choose PHP as their primary programming language (ZenRows, 2025).
  • Composer / Packagist growth: Packagist (the PHP package repository) continues to host hundreds of thousands of packages and shows steady activity—indicating ongoing library development, tooling and ecosystem health. (Packagist)
  • Despite competition from Python, Node.js, and Ruby, PHP remains the dominant force in server-side scripting (Citrusbug, 2024).

The Performance Revolution: PHP 8.0 to 8.5

The “PHP is slow” argument is a relic of the past (specifically, the PHP 5.x era). The modern PHP 8.x ecosystem has undergone a massive performance evolution.

  • JIT Compiler: Introduced in PHP 8.0 and refined in subsequent versions, the Just-In-Time compiler has significantly boosted performance for CPU-intensive tasks.
  • PHP 8.3 & 8.4: The latest versions have introduced typed class constants, deep-cloning of read-only properties, and major syntax improvements like Property Hooks in PHP 8.4.
  • Benchmarks: Recent tests comparing PHP versions show that PHP 8.5 (preview) and 8.4 can handle approximately 148 requests per second on standard WordPress setups, a massive leap over the older PHP 7.4 (Kinsta, 2025).

Pro Tip: Modern PHP rivals Node.js in many web-context benchmarks, specifically when using asynchronous frameworks like Swoole or ReactPHP.

⚙️ Ecosystem Strength – Frameworks, Libraries, and CMS

PHP’s longevity is secured by its rich ecosystem, which allows developers to build enterprise-grade applications rapidly. PHP’s resilience lies in its ecosystem:

  • Frameworks: Laravel, Symfony, CodeIgniter, and Yii provide modern, scalable architectures.
  • Libraries: Composer has revolutionized dependency management, making PHP modular and future-proof.
  • CMS Platforms: WordPress (powering over 60.5% of websites), Drupal, Joomla, and Magento (Adobe Commerce) are all PHP-based, and Shopify (which uses extensive PHP in its app ecosystem) ensuring PHP’s relevance in blogging, e-commerce, and enterprise content management.

🏢 Industry Adoption – Giants in the Playground: Who Still Uses PHP?

It’s not just small blogs. Some of the world’s largest, most high-traffic tech platforms rely heavily on PHP (or its forks) in 2025. Many global platforms continue to rely on PHP:

  • Facebook originally built its backend in PHP (later optimized with HHVM). Meta (Facebook) created Hack, a dialect of PHP, to manage billions of users. The core DNA of their stack remains rooted in PHP concepts.
  • Wikipedia One of the top 10 visited sites in the world runs entirely on PHP. runs on MediaWiki, a PHP-based platform.
  • Slack relies on a massive PHP backend to handle millions of concurrent connections and messages daily. Their 2025 engineering updates confirm continued investment in this stack.
  • Etsy A pioneer in “continuous deployment,” Etsy’s engineering culture (“Code as Craft”) is built on a sophisticated PHP infrastructure that serves millions of global e-commerce transactions.
  • Vimeo The video platform continues to innovate with PHP at its core, recently rolling out major 2025 release features supported by their established backend.
  • Mailchimp integrate PHP in their stacks.
  • Countless e-commerce platforms, educational portals, and SaaS products still depend on PHP’s reliability.

(These three points are crucial: deployment footprint, developer survey numbers, and package ecosystem activity.)

3. Why the “PHP is dead” myth persists — and why it’s misleading

  • Buzzer headlines often equate “fewer new developers using X” with “X is dead.” That shortcut ignores installed base and product-market fit. PHP’s dominance in CMSs and shared hosting makes it ubiquitous for web publishing, e-commerce, and many internal apps. (W3Techs)
  • Language popularity rankings (TIOBE, GitHub trends) measure different signals: search engine mentions, GitHub activity, and experimenter interest. Modern web development trends (TypeScript, Python for data, AI tooling) shift developer focus, but they don’t erase the billions of lines of PHP running in production. (TIOBE)
  • Perhaps the strongest signal of PHP’s future is the formation of the PHP Foundation. Established in 2021 and actively funding development in 2025, this non-profit organization pays core developers to work on the language full-time.
  • Backed by giants like JetBrains, Automattic, and Symfony, the Foundation ensures that PHP is no longer reliant on volunteers alone. They are currently funding security audits, the new “PIE” installer project, and the roadmap for PHP 9.0.

4. The ecosystem that keeps PHP alive

  • CMS domination: WordPress (and other PHP CMSs like Drupal, Joomla) run a huge fraction of the public web. Where content publishing, blogs, and many small-to-medium e-commerce sites exist, PHP is frequently the underlying platform. This creates sustained demand for PHP developers, theming, security patches and plugin development. (W3Techs)
  • Frameworks and architectures: Modern frameworks (Laravel, Symfony, and others) provide expressive, modern development patterns, robust testing and a large set of libraries. Laravel in particular drives a lot of new PHP app development thanks to its developer ergonomics and ecosystem (Eloquent ORM, queues, packages). (devabit)
  • Composer & Packagist: Composer made PHP modular and dependency-driven. The sheer number of packages and active updates demonstrates an active ecosystem. Companies still build on this foundation rather than rewriting everything in a new language. (Packagist)

5. Modern PHP features that make it relevant (short technical tour)

PHP 7 and PHP 8 introduced features that close many gaps with “modern” languages:

  • Scalar and union types, typed properties, return types
  • Attributes (annotations), constructor property promotion
  • Improvements in performance and memory (PHP 7), JIT and additional optimizations (PHP 8)
  • Stronger error handling and modern standard libraries
     These features allow PHP to be used for performance-sensitive web apps, microservices, APIs, and enterprise systems. (Stitcher)

Tiny example (PHP 8 style):

<?php
declare(strict_types=1);
final class Article
{
    public function __construct(
        private int $id,
        private string $title,
        private ?string $body = null
    ) {}
    public function summary(int $max = 120): string {
        return mb_strlen($this->body ?? '') > $max
            ? mb_substr($this->body ?? '', 0, $max) . '…'
            : ($this->body ?? '');
    }
}
$article = new Article(1, 'Why PHP Will Never Die', 'Long content...');
echo $article->summary(50);

6. Job market, salaries and professional opportunities

  • PHP skills remain in demand especially for WordPress, Laravel and Magento jobs. Specialist roles (e.g., Symfony for enterprise, Magento for e-commerce) often command competitive compensation. Reports and market articles indicate continued paid opportunities for experienced PHP developers and framework specialists. (Kinsta®)

7. Risks & challenges — and how to overcome them

  • Aging codebases & technical debt: Many PHP apps are legacy (old PHP 5 era). Maintain and upgrade to supported PHP versions (7.4 → 8.x) and apply security patches. Use automated tests, CI/CD and static analysis (PHPStan, Psalm).
  • Perception & hiring: New developers often prefer languages touted for modern stacks. Bridge this by teaching modern PHP idioms, adopting frameworks like Laravel, and using typed code + tests to make onboarding smoother.
  • Ecosystem fragmentation: Use Composer and semantic versioning; prefer well-maintained libraries; rely on community-trusted frameworks.

8. Practical advice for students and professionals

  • Students: Learn modern PHP (8.x), object-oriented design, Composer, and at least one framework (Laravel or Symfony). Learn to deploy on shared hosting and on cloud (Docker, PHP-FPM + nginx). Build WordPress plugins/themes to learn real-world patterns.
  • Professionals: Specialize where demand is strong (e.g., Laravel dev, Symfony for enterprise, Magento for e-commerce, or WordPress plugin/agency work). Invest in secure coding, test automation, and refactoring old codebases to PHP 8. Profile and optimize for performance (opcache, PHP-FPM tuning).
  • Both: Follow ecosystem signals (Packagist stars, framework adoption) and keep PHP versions up to date.

10. The bottom line — why PHP won’t disappear

  1. Installed base: A very large share of the web runs on PHP-powered CMSs and platforms — replacing that overnight is unrealistic. (W3Techs)
  2. Massive Installed Base: With millions of legacy systems, PHP remains irreplaceable.
  3. Community Support: A vibrant open-source community ensures continuous updates and security patches.
  4. Evolving language: PHP has modernized (7.x/8.x) and added features that attract professional development practices. (Stitcher)
  5. Ecosystem & tooling: Composer, Packagist, and mature frameworks (Laravel, Symfony) make PHP a practical choice for many projects. (Packagist)
  6. Business inertia: Hosting, third-party plugins, and developer knowledge create inertia that sustains PHP’s presence for years. (W3Techs)
  7. Ease of Learning: PHP’s syntax is beginner-friendly, making it ideal for students and professionals.
  8. Integration Power: PHP works seamlessly with MySQL, MariaDB, and cloud services.
  9. Cost Efficiency: Hosting and deployment are cheaper compared to many alternatives.

Because of these factors, PHP is unlikely to “die” — it will continue to evolve and remain a major engine of the web for the foreseeable future.

11. Quick checklist (for blog readers who want next steps)

  • Update any production systems to supported PHP 8.x versions. (Security + performance)
  • Adopt Composer and remove manual library management.
  • Use a modern framework or framework components for new projects (Laravel/Symfony).
  • Add static analysis and automated testing (PHPStan, Psalm, PHPUnit).
  • Invest in learning WordPress internals if you target CMS / agency markets.

Conclusion

PHP will not die because it has successfully transitioned from a simple scripting language to a high-performance, strictly typed, enterprise-capable tool. It powers the majority of the web, is backed by a funded foundation, and drives the revenue of billion-dollar companies.

For students, learning PHP is a gateway to immediate job opportunities. For professionals, modern PHP is a joy to write—clean, fast, and incredibly productive.

Next Step: Would you like me to generate a “PHP 8.4 vs. Python” comparison table to include in your next blog section?

#PHP #Laravel #WordPress #WebDevelopment #PHP8 #Composer #DevOps #TechMasterSystems #Coding #Programming #PHPForever #WebDevelopment #OpenSource #CMS #PHP8 #FutureOfWeb

Sources and references : W3Techs, Stack Overflow, Packagist, Stitcher, The JetBrains Blog, devabit, Citrusbug Technolabs, ZenRows, W3Techs, WordPress, JetBrains, Kinsta, PHP Foundation, Trio, W3Techs.

    Similar Posts