What are the Advantages of Laravel Framework vs. Native PHP?

Developing a new web application project is not an overnight thing. It requires building multiple strategies, hiring an on-site or freelance PHP developer (depending on your project needs), and choosing the right tools and technologies.

Please remember, there is no one-size-fits-all solution because requirements vary from one project to another. Below, we will explain choosing the most suitable back-end framework for your web app.

While the perfect front-end framework builds an eye-catchy application, the ideal back-end framework ensures viability. With countless frameworks in the market, enterprises find it puzzling to choose the best one for their projects. Laravel and PHP have emerged as the most preferred options. Both are robust server-side frameworks. However, several experts hoot for the former, and many support the latter.

This ongoing war between Laravel and PHP has confused businesses. If you are one of them, do not worry! We will help you decide what is good for you and your business. Here is a comparison between Laravel and PHP based on performance, scalability, efficiency, and more. Without further delay, let us get going.

The introduction

Laravel is an open-source PHP server-side web framework. It comes with excellent capabilities such as HTML authentication, routing, templating, etc. Besides this, it uses Symfony that offers a set of reusable PHP components. Hence, developers can build various applications, such as web portals, pre-defined architectures, templates, SaaS products, and full-stack apps.

When it comes to PHP (Personal Home Page), it is also known as Hypertext Preprocessor. Laravel is an automated web templating framework, whereas PHP is a pre-written script framework. It helps in automating several tasks on the back-end web development.

Also, it can embed with HTML codes easily and work well with Oracle, MySQL, and other database services. If you choose PHP, you can build robust e-commerce web apps, web pages, and database-driven applications.

Market usage
To understand the popularity of Laravel and PHP, let us look at market usage statistics.
- Market usage of Laravel
  - Currently, Laravel has 0.32% of the market share.
  - Laravel powers nearly 723,606 live websites on the internet. The number is still increasing.
  - Do you know Laravel flaunts 63.5K GitHub Stars, along with 20.3k live projects?
- Market usage of PHP
  - As per the survey conducted by the Stack Overflow Developer in 2022, PHP is one of the top programming languages. And it holds a 26.2% of market share.
  - According to W3Techs, PHP empowers nearly 79% of websites across the globe.
  - 8 out of 10 WordPress websites use PHP as a scripting language. https://kinsta.com/wordpress-market-share/

Speed & performance

The Laravel-based web applications are likely to perform significantly slow. As a result, this can affect the success of your project. Laravel experts recommend optimizing the application appropriately for better performance. With this, your Laravel-built application will perform seamlessly even under 20ms.

One of the ways to ensure faster loading of your application is using Cache tags. They allow your pre-stored information to load quickly, which leads to speedier response time. As a result, the performance of your web app improves.

Compared to Laravel, PHP-based applications have better performance, thanks to their higher concurrency.

But what is concurrency in the first place? It refers to the number of devices or machines a scripting language can manage for client requests. Initially, PHP could not operate concurrency efficiently. The latest versions can do it with ease.

Scalability

Since Laravel is a PHP-based framework, it inherits excellent scalability capabilities. Businesses using Laravel can scale up their applications with no limits. If ever you want to expand your web app, this framework can meet all your needs. However, with a load balancer and a good database, Laravel can offer immense horizontal scalability.

When it comes to PHP, it is known for its exceptional scalability. For this reason, it is a preferred choice of both small and large-scale enterprises. PHP uses Autoloader and Opcode cache to interpret the code for scaling an application.

Architecture

Laravel runs on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture. It helps developers to split their roles to ensure smooth web development. For example, a front-end developer can work on the views, whereas the back-end developer can handle the controller logic concurrently.Besides this, the MVC patterns offer plenty of benefits for development process. Some of them are:

Developers can have full control over the application. It allows them to customize the application’s appearance while choosing the best routes.
It provides an effortless implementation of external APIs and reusing of application logic.

On the contrary, PHP uses various frameworks like Zend, Ubiquity, Codeigniter, Laravel, CakePHP, and others that run on MVC architecture. The model deals with the application’s data, the view helps in extracting data from the model, and the controller handles the execution of requests. With this architect, PHP can create unchangeable support for any web application.

In closing

Based on the above discussion, it is clear both are dynamic back-end web frameworks for building PHP-based applications. However, the choice is based on your project goals and needs. For example, if you want to create a highly responsive application with an eye-pleasing layout, go for Laravel. To build an interactive website from scratch, hire an experienced full-time or freelance PHP developer.

If you are searching for a reliable on-site or freelance PHP development for your upcoming project, get in touch with SoftProdigy. We house a team of PHP developers who are committed to delivering quality and customer satisfaction.

FAQs

1. What are the popular use cases of PHP?

You can use PHP to develop a wide range of products on the internet. These are desktop (GUI) applications, websites, web applications, websites having custom scripting of codes, and more.

2. Which big brands use PHP as the back-end technology?

PHP is a preferred back-end framework of many brands, both small and well-established. Some of the leading companies that use PHP are Facebook, Slack, WordPress, Wikipedia, Flickr, etc.

3. Which companies use the Laravel framework?

Like PHP, Laravel is also a well-known back-end technology. Currently, it is used by big companies like Laracasts, AsgardCms, World Walking, Barchart, and so on.

4. Which type of applications can you build with Laravel?

Laravel has excellent web development capabilities. It enables developers to build a variety of applications – e-learning web apps, on-demand streaming web apps, multilingual CMS, SaaS-based web applications, and more.

5. Is it convenient to hire Laravel developers?

With a huge community of PHP and Laravel, you can find a Laravel developer in every corner of the world. The best thing is the framework comes with a platform to find Laravel developers.

6. How much does a Laravel developer cost you?

The hourly basis rates of a senior-level Laravel developer can cost you from $40 to $90$. On the other hand, you can expect full-time rates of a minimum of $5,000 per month.