PHP Vs ASP.NET: How to Choose the Right One?

Are you a business owner looking for PHP web development services or ASP.Net development services but unable to decide on the right technology for your project? Are you looking for the pros and cons of ASP.Net and PHP to make an effective decision? Being a leading software development company in India, we have made this task easy for you by comparing ASP.Net and PHP in a very simple way.

Many articles and blogs are 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, we have unbiasedly compared 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 worldwide. On the other side, we have ASP.NET, a Microsoft platform. Sometimes, it becomes quite difficult to decide which technology (PHP or Asp.net) 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 application development project in India. After reading this article, you’ll know 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. If you want us to make some improvements to our article, we will be happy to hear from you.

PHP vs. ASP.NET: A Small Brief

We do not doubt that both of these technologies have become successful ventures and developed great websites. 

But, the question that remains fresh for all of us, especially those from a non-technical background, and the question is: Which platform should we choose when starting with the web apps exercise?    

On one side, PHP is a free and open-source platform, while ASP.Net is a paid Microsoft platform. PHP mixes a programming language and a web framework, whereas .NET is a straight application framework.    

Here is a quick overview of PHP Vs. ASP.NET

Now, Let’s have a neat and clean comparison of PHP & DotNet on different parameters.

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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 and ASP.NET websites.

For example, one of the most common tasks of any web application is to query a database and output the results on the web server— and ultimately to the end user’s browser.

In the scenario mentioned above, the coding language simply communicates 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. The speed of these performances relies much more on the database server, end user’s computer, bandwidth, etc.

The industry has common myths 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 web development services 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, humongous sites such as MailChimp and Facebook written in PHP should be evident enough to dispel any notion that PHP sites run more poorly than ASP.NET sites.

Also Read: PHP vs Node.JS: The War of Server-side Scripting

PHP vs. ASP.NET: Market Share

Let’s find out the 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. The development talent you hire matters more to scalability than your chosen language. In this regard, you should consider the state of your business.

If you are a DIY Entrepreneur and want to dig a crack at developing with Drupal, PHP is the preferred option over ASP.NET as it is the language 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.

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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). 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.

While the ASP.NET community comprises dedicated developers, fewer support contributors are willing and able to post to the forums and answer questions about ASP.NET challenges.

In contrast, 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 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 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. If you use a Mac or Linux, you can use the Mono project to use ASP.NET.

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.

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PHP Development: Pros and Cons

Pros

• It is open-source and 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, and White House websites.
• It 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 is highly scalable and you can easily customize it 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 several 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 compared to other programming languages, so 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 poses 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 compiling
• 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 and
• 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

Also Read: PHP vs Python vs Ruby: Detailed Comparison

Wrapping Up

I hope the above differentiation parameters between the two languages help you choose the best one per your needs and requirements. If you are unsure, you can contact a renowned and reputed IT consulting company to help you decide between the two as per the web application development requirements.

PixelCrayons is ready to help you with your web app development project. We have 15+ years of experience in mobile & web app development. Contact us to learn more about PHP and ASP.Net web development.

I hope you like this blog. If you like this blog, don’t forget to like, comment and share.

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