Are you a business owner looking for PHP web development services or ASP.Net development services, but unable to decide the right technology for your project? Are you looking for the pros and cons of ASP.Net and PHP to take an effective decision? I have tried to make this task easy for you by comparing ASP.Net and PHP in a very simple way.
There are a number of articles and blogs available over the Internet with a large amount of information about PHP Vs ASP.NET. Unfortunately, most of these blog posts are biased and typically based on promoting one over the other.
In this blog post, I have done an unbiased comparison between the two most popular technologies i.e. PHP and ASP.NET in today’s world.
On one side, we have PHP, the world’s most used and popular technology on the internet with billions of dedicated PHP developers across the world. On the other side, we have ASP.NET, a Microsoft platform. Sometimes, it becomes quite difficult to have a clear decision about which technology (Php or Asp.net) should we prefer for our application or website development project?
Here is an elaborative comparison guide that helps you figure out the best technology for your next web app development project. I can assure you that after reading this article, you’ll have a clear idea about which technology suits you better. Moreover, you can share your thoughts and feedback in our comment box. We welcome your positive feedback for appreciating our work. Also, I will be happy to hear from you if you want us to do some improvements to my article.
PHP vs ASP.NET: A Small Brief
We have no doubt about the fact that both of these technologies have become successful ventures, and have developed great websites.
But, the question still remains fresh for all of us, especially those from a non-technical background and the question is: Which platform should we choose at the time of starting with web-apps exercise?
On one side, PHP is a free and open-source platform while ASP.Net is a paid Microsoft platform. PHP is a mix between a programming language and a web framework whereas .NET is a straight application framework.
Now, Let’s have a neat and clean comparison on PHP & DotNet on different parameters.
PHP V/s ASP.NET: Speed & Performance
To begin with, one common misconception about website performance and speed is that the language you choose to code in determines your website’s overall performance.
In reality, however, there is very little difference between the performance of PHP websites and ASP.NET websites.
For example, take one of the most common tasks of any web application which is to query a database and output the results on the web server— and ultimately to the end user’s browser.
In the aforementioned scenario, the coding language is simply communicating with the database and web servers to produce the desired outcome.
Both PHP and ASP.NET web development are equally equipped to access file systems, find images, and display pages on a web server and the speed of these performances relies much more on the database server, end user’s computer, and bandwidth, etc.
That being said there are common myths in the industry about ASP.NET web development being a more elegant language than PHP.
While strictly speaking ASP.NET doesn’t allow for as many irregularities in its code while still being able to run (which technically does make PHP web development services is an easier language for beginners to pick up) the actual business applications of being able to write “prettier code” are negligible.
While many expert PHP coders out there will guffaw at the prospect of building a site in PHP the fact that humongous sites such as MailChimp and Facebook are written in PHP should be enough evidence to dispel any notion that PHP sites run more poorly than ASP.NET sites.
PHP vs ASP.NET: Market Share
Let’s find out usage or market share of these programming languages as of June 2019:
PHP V/s ASP.NET: Scalability
Both ASP.NET and PHP web applications are extremely scalable languages. What matters more to scalability than the language you choose is the development talent you hire. In this regard, you should take into consideration the state of your business.
If you are a DIY Entrepreneur and want to take a crack at developing with Drupal then PHP is clearly the preferred option over ASP.NET as it is the language that comes with the lowest learning curve.
If you are looking to hire a lead developer or team of developers to build your website then you should defer to the best available talent. Whether that talent works in PHP or ASP.NET should only matter if your company culture veers towards using one language or the other already.
While detractors of PHP will point to the fact that it, as a language, is more clunky than ASP.NET, this will only show itself as a weakness to your website’s overall framework if you hire PHP programmers.
Likewise, the fact that ASP.NET is more of a demanding language than PHP web development doesn’t mean that you’re automatically more likely to find better talent within the ASP.NET development pool.
PHP V/s ASP.NET: Support
PHP is open-source and its pool of developers is far larger than ASP.NET(which is windows based). That being said both boast vibrant communities that post regularly to online forums, so if you are looking for answers to problems, you’re likely to find both communities helpful.
That being said, while the ASP.NET community is comprised of dedicated developers there are quite a few fewer support contributors who are willing and able to post to the forums and answer questions about ASP.NET challenges.
In contrast to this, PHP is such a widely used language that there are plenty of friendly developers active on different forums who are more than willing to offer free advice and guidance to those who ask for it.
The biggest takeaway here is that while you’ll most likely be able to find answers to your questions in both communities, you’ll almost assuredly get those answers back more quickly when working within PHP forums.
PHP V/s ASP.NET: Cost
This is the only area where PHP has a distinct advantage over ASP.NET. PHP is an open-source, and thus, completely free, while ASP.NET is owned by Microsoft and comes with a web hosting fee.
However, the costs of those fees shouldn’t be exorbitant enough to deter you from the Outsource ASP.NET development company pool if you’re already leaning that way for your project development.
Also worth noting here is that PHP can be used on Mac, Windows, or Linux machines while ASP.NET development services are only meant to be run on Windows machines. That being said if you use a Mac or Linux you can use the Mono project to use ASP.NET.
A Good Read: Advantages of Hiring a PHP Developer
PHP V/s ASP: Popularity
This is another huge difference between PHP and .Net. In the following diagram, it is clearly mentioned that PHP has more popularity than ASP.
PHP V/s ASP.NET: Suitable Websites
PHP Development: Pros and Cons
Pros
— It is an open-source that means it’s free to use and is constantly being improved by a large number of people rather than a single company
— PHP has a large support community of programmer
— PHP is great for large projects like Facebook, White House websites.
— PHP is highly effective at accessing and communicating with various database types. This makes it perfect for web-based scripts, such as website content management systems.
— It's is highly scalable and you can easily customize according to your need
— There are thousands of Expert PHP developers available in the market.
— Low cost easy to learn, code and pick up.
— There are a number of online support groups to help speed up the learning process.
Cons
- One of the main disadvantages of PHP is that it is generally not suitable for making desktop applications.
- Compared to other languages, PHP applications tend to run slower.
— It allows customization that causes bugs and poor coding than ASP.NET.
— PHP error handling is traditionally considered poor when compared to other programming languages which means it can take more time to discover why a particular piece of code isn’t working as expected.
ASP.NET: Pros and Cons
Pros
- ASP.NET is highly scalable; its scalability index even posing a stiff competition to its rival PHP.
— Microsoft owns it.
— Support all programming languages and works well with either app or C#
— It informs developers if they made any mistake in coding before compile.
— It comes with lots of tools and features to support programmers.
— Works extremely well with Windows
— Excellent platform for Enterprise applications.
— Fast development with a lot of pre-coded options
— An excellent UI for developers
Cons
— Not easy to learn and harder to understand
— Smaller support community
— It operates only on a Microsoft server
— It is slightly expensive because of its Microsoft license
— Not as good as PHP for website development
— Based on closed source technology.
Wrapping Up
I hope the above differentiation parameters between the two languages help you choose the best one as per your needs and requirements. If you are still not sure, you can contact a renowned and reputed IT consulting company to help you decide between the two as per the web application development requirements.
If you need any further assistance, you can contact PixelCrayons. We are always ready to help you with your web app development project. We have 12+ years of experience in mobile & web app development. Contact us to know more about PHP and ASP.Net web development. Our approach and rich domain expertise will definitely help you.
I hope you like this blog. If you do, don’t forget to like, comment and share.
