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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Laminas Project

    Score7 out of 10
    N/AZend Framework was a PHP framework developed by Zend Technologies and acquired by Rogue Wave Software. The Laminas Project is the community managed Open Source Continuation of Zend Framework managed by the Linux Foundation. Transition initiated after Rogue Wave was acquired by Perforce in 2019.N/A

    Laravel PHP Framework

    Score8.6 out of 10
    N/ALaravel is a free, open source web application PHP framework.N/A
    Pricing
    Laminas ProjectLaravel PHP Framework
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
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    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Laminas ProjectLaravel PHP Framework
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Laminas ProjectLaravel PHP Framework
    Considered Both Products
    Open Source
    Chose Laminas Project
    Zend Framework is great to be used a library on any PHP project architected with any of those frameworks. When the project started, Zend Framework was the most advanced PHP framework around, and it stuck with us. Today there are multiple high-quality options and Zend Framework …
    Incentivized
    Chose Laminas Project
    Laravel is simpler but has less mature components. For example, the event modeling and dependency injection in Zend Framework 2 seems to handle many more advanced cases a lot easier - where as in Laravel you will have to probably build much more on top of what they provide. Code…
    Incentivized
    Chose Laminas Project
    While Zend Framework is similar to Laravel and Symfony, and seemingly more popular among businesses, I feel like it is harder to use compared to these two. Laravel and Symfony seem more friendly to the developer in terms of documentation and ease of use, though Zend Framework …
    Incentivized
    Open Source
    Chose Laravel PHP Framework
    Originally, it was a decision between Zend, CodeIgniter, and CakePHP for me. I chose CakePHP and used it as my main PHP framework for at least a couple of years before noticing and giving Laravel a fair try. Ultimately I selected Laravel because I felt it fit with my preferred …
    Incentivized
    Chose Laravel PHP Framework
    Laravel PHP Framework is the most developed, updated framework right now, with lots of features. Using older versions is less appreciated by the developer community. It is well documented, and Laravel has a pretty big community of supporters getting your query solved faster and …
    Incentivized
    Chose Laravel PHP Framework
    Supporting unit testing is bigger plus point in Laravel than any other framework. Developing with Laravel is much easier. Other frameworks have value in market, but Laravel has taken the lead in popularity among PHP developers in recent years. The large community supports you …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
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    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
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    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
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    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
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    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
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    Best Alternatives
    Laminas ProjectLaravel PHP Framework
    Small Businesses
    Laravel PHP Framework
    Score8.6 out of 10
    CodeIgniter
    Score10 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Laravel PHP Framework
    Score8.6 out of 10
    Symfony
    Score10 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Laminas ProjectLaravel PHP Framework
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (6 ratings)
    7.7
    (17 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Laminas ProjectLaravel PHP Framework
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Open Source
    I would say you can use Zend with any project of any size but in a personal experience I would recommend it more for small or medium sized projects. Since the code you will be writing with Zend has more verbosity than the one you can write with other frameworks, that might be a problem to maintain larger projects.
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    Laravel is ideally suited for fluent PHP developers who want a framework that can be used to both rapidly prototype web applications as well as support scalable, enterprise-level solutions. I think where it is less ideal is where the client has an expectation of using a certain CMS, or of having a certain experience on the admin side that would perhaps be better suited to a full CMS such as Drupal or WordPress. Additionally, for developers who don't want to write PHP code, Laravel may not be the best solution.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Open Source
    • Excellent interface for databases. I trust that no bad data will accidentally be injected causing the databases to become corrupt or drop.
    • The routing is really great. We have a lot of custom routing and it makes it very easy to add or adjust routes and ensure they're getting where they need to go.
    • Zend provides so much flexibility in the controllers for dealing with the view. It's so easy to customize the view to render just how you want it. Especially when dealing with a request that may or may not be ajax.
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    • Many libraries available which simplify integration of SaaS APIs within your application (eg, MailChimp, Mandrill, Stripe, Authorize.net)
    • Pre-packaged tools to facilitate common tasks when building applications (eg, User Authentication and Authorization, Background Jobs, Queues, etc)
    • Support for a broad set of technologies out of the box (eg, PostgreSQL, MySQL/MariaDB, MemcacheD, BeanstalkD, Redis, etc)
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    Open Source
    • Zend Framework 2 is overly complex for small projects.
    • Zend Framework 2 documentation sometimes overlooks small details, which means you will need to delve into the code directly.
    • Zend Framework 2 bug fixes on GitHub usually take quite a long time to get patched.
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    • Significant learning curve. You cannot be an expert in a week. It takes many experimentations to properly understand the underlying concept. We ourselves learned it by using it on the job.
    • Too much to soak in. Laravel is in everything. Any part of backend development you wish to do, Laravel has a way to do that. It is great, but also overwhelming at the same time.
    • Vendor lock in. Once you are in Laravel, it would not be easy to switch to something else.
    • Laracasts (their online video tutorials) are paid :( I understand the logic behind it, but I secretly wish it would be free.
    • The eloquent ORM is not my recommendation. Let's say you want to write a join, and based on the result you wish to create two objects. If you use Laravel to do automatic joins for you, Laravel internally actually makes two calls to database and creates your two object rather than making one join call and figuring out the results. This makes your queries slow. For this reason, I use everything except eloquent from Laravel. I rather write my own native queries and control the creation of objects then rely on Laravel to do it. But I am sure with time Laravel will make fewer calls to DB.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Open Source
    I absolutely love Zend Framework. However we are using Zend Framework 1 and when we get to the point that we need to go Zend Framework 2 (for PHP namespacing) I may explore other frameworks. When we chose Zend it was the best option for us. I'd like to see if maybe there's a better fit that doesn't have the same complicated overhead of Zend Framework
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Open Source
    Zend is very usable once you learn how to use it. I've had moments where I thought what I want to do isn't possible but I've learned I haven't looked in the correct place yet. Zend is a Catch-22. It's very usable once you know how to use it. But I strongly feel it's worth learning
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Open Source
    Zend Framework has the best (paid) support and ecosystem I've ever seen in a PHP framework. The company has developed many products, including Zend Server, Zend Debugger, and an Eclipse-based IDE that extends the framework to create an entire development platform that can improve developer productivity and software quality while maintaining the clean architecture that characterizes the framework.
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Open Source
    While Zend Framework is similar to Laravel and Symfony, and seemingly more popular among businesses, I feel like it is harder to use compared to these two. Laravel and Symfony seem more friendly to the developer in terms of documentation and ease of use, though Zend Framework isn't too far behind and can be more powerful.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Open Source
    Supporting unit testing is bigger plus point in Laravel than any other framework. Developing with Laravel is much easier. Other frameworks have value in market, but Laravel has taken the lead in popularity among PHP developers in recent years. The large community supports you if you have problems. Using Laravel, integration became easy with third-party libraries, but it was costly too.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Open Source
    • Overall, Zend PHP Engine has had a positive return on our business objective of creating a medium sized web-application, debugging the application to assess problems before they occur, and to create dynamic API calls via our backend custom software.
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    • Laravel allows us to rapidly prototype and build complete, scalable applications internally, which saves us time and allows us to have internal tools that fit out precise needs. We use Symfony for a similar purpose, but Laravel is an even higher-level framework that we find saves us substantially more time when building many types of web applications.
    • Laravel solves many of the underlying concerns of building a large application (such as authentication, authorization, secure input handling) in the right ways. It saves us from handling those low-level concerns ourselves, potentially in a way that could take a lot of time or sets us up for issues in the future. It's tough to assign an ROI to this, but I'm sure it has prevented issues and saved time, which both have an impact on our financial situation.
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