You will agree with me that building a complex web application from scratch is a very time-consuming process and requires a lot of development effort. As a result, there was a need for a simple and structured way of developing web applications that can be adopted by all web developers. That is how PHP frameworks came into existence.

PHP is the most popular server-side scripting language for building modern, robust and sophisticated web applications. Its popularity has seen a lot of high-end PHP frameworks to be developed over time to simplify the overall web development process.

PHP frameworks allow you to build your application from templates that contains generic components and significant your time in developing specific tasks and functionalities according to your application requirements.

Why you need to use a PHP framework

• Rapid development while making use of already proven and working practices.
• Follow the Model View Controller that allows you to separate logic from presentation.
• Organize your code in a standard structure leading to reusable and maintainable code.
• Reduce your average development time by reusing code and focusing on your specific task.

Popular PHP Frameworks

Laravel

At the top of our list is Laravel. Laravel is the most popular PHP development framework as shown by SitePoint's online survey thanks to its vast ecosystem and extensive online community of developers.

Pros

• Files and code are well organized
• Uses MVC architecture
• Extensive documentation
• Rich functionality
• Supports payment integrations
• Overloading capabilities
• Security and strong encryption

Cons

• Cannot be deployed on shared hosting plans
• Too much database queries

Phalcon

One of the reasons why you will like Phalcon is its speed, and it is as fast as a falcon. This is because Phalcon was built as a C extension, therefore, provides the highest level of performance optimization and takes advantage of the speed C language is known for.

Pros

• Very fast with low resource usage
• Low overheads
• Autoloading
• Well documented and easy to use

Cons

• HHVM not supported
• Not open source
• Bugs fixed only by Phalcon developers

Resources to Get Started

• Udemy course: from beginner to advance
• Learning PHP 7 by Antonio Lopez
• PHP 7 Simplified

Conclusion

These are the best PHP frameworks available, and you can choose to develop your web applications. As depicted, the frameworks can be classified into sets of micro frameworks, fully-fledged frameworks, level of security, those suitable for enterprise web applications or small web apps and APIs. Each PHP framework will have generic functionality and unique features to its name to make it stand out from the others. As a developer, it is your job to understand what the strengths and weaknesses of each framework are and decide on one that will meet your application requirements and fits your skill set.