ASP.NET Vs. PHP: Which is Better?

ASP.NET vs. PHP is one of the hottest comparisons developers come across while selecting from these leading technologies for their business or project, as they both have broad bases and comprehensive tool support.

Since both are popular in the web development world, selecting the right one is tricky. We aim to highlight-guide you in choosing the best one for your organization.

What is ASP.NET?

ASP.NET is a popular web development platform and provides a comprehensive software infrastructure, a programming model, and various other mandatory services to create robust web applications for mobiles and desktops.

ASP.NET was released in early 2002 as a successor to Microsoft’s ASP (Active Server Pages). Creating .NET applications is relatively easy with ASP.NET as it is a language-independent software allowing developers to select any .NET supported language.

Apart from its different libraries, ASP.NET also provides several development toolkits that make the app, dynamic web pages, microservices, and REST APIs creation more accessible and seamless.

Some popular websites built through ASP.NET are Visual Studio, DELL, Microsoft, StackOverflow, and GoDaddy.

Advantages of ASP.NET

• ASP.NET is highly scalable and gives tough competition to PHP in scalability.
• Support almost all major programming languages, including C#.
• Capable of highlighting mistakes made by the developers during the coding part before compiling.
• Support programmers with popular tools and advanced features.
• ASP.NET works smoothly with Windows OS.
• Provides the best platform for Enterprise applications.
• Pre-coded features for fast development.
• Smart UI to navigate and use different features seamlessly.

Disadvantages of ASP.NET

• Tough to understand and learn for new developers.
• A small support community to help developers.
• The Microsoft license makes it more expensive.
• Not as suitable as PHP for website or application development.

What is PHP?

PHP started as an open-source web development project and later evolved over the years with new features and tools. It’s the same reason PHP comes to everyone’s mind when discussing web projects. PHP allows integration with several popular databases efficiently. To interpret PHP code, there’s a PHP interpreter implemented in the web server as a module.

The web server first combines the results of both executed and interpreted PHP code. These codes could be of any type, including images too. In its execution, you may find PHP smugly zippy; however, the execution works even smoother on the Unix side when compiled as an Apache module. PHP also supports major protocols like- LDAP, POP3, and IMAP.

PHP is a recursive acronym for HTTP processors, and as a web development framework, PHP is embedded in HTML. PHP developers are provided with various open-source libraries and applications to make web designing more efficient and easy. Therefore, PHP is compatible with different web applications, and unsurprisingly, many of our favorite social media sites are written in PHP code.

Some popular websites powered by PHP are MailChimp, Facebook, Flickr, Wikipedia, and WordPress.

Advantages of PHP

• PHP is a free, open-source server-side scripting language
• A larger support community to help developers, programmers, and hiring teams.
• It is perfect for large projects and socializing sites.
• Perfect for building scripts, primarily web-based ones like- WCMS (Web Content Management Systems), because it is highly effective at communicating and accessing various database types.
• PHP is highly scalable, which makes customization easier.
• Experts to support in case of any issue or bug.
• Low-cost software tool.
• Powerful frameworks such as Laravel and Symfony make it even more popular.

Disadvantages of PHP

• Not suited for building desktop applications/software.
• PHP applications lag a bit more than other frameworks and languages.
• It enables customization, which results in poor coding and sometimes hard bugs.
• Approaching, managing, and fixing errors in PHP is poor.

What are Some Standard Criteria for Comparing PHP and ASP.NET?

Here are some parameters that help to understand ASP.NET and PHP-

Cost:
Cost plays a crucial role when working on a large project. Regarding cost-effectiveness, PHP has a distinct advantage over ASP.NET as PHP is free, while ASP.NET comes with a web hosting fee.

Scalability:
A scalable technology is more flexible and covers a wide area. Compared to ASP.NET and PHP, ASP.NET can handle various web applications, which is impossible with PHP. ASP.NET is a more flexible language, and thus many developers choose it over PHP.

Performance:
In PHP, scripts are executed faster than ASP.NET because PHP uses its memory, and performance depends on the level of interaction between the script, the database, and the server.

Moreover, PHP web application implementation takes the LAMP format, offering increased performance.

Speed:
PHP programs run on their own memory space and do not require any other system resources, resulting in less execution time than ASP.NET. Whereas ASP.NET is a bit slow because it is built on a COM-based system that requires different storage areas.

Popularity:

PHP is hugely popular and used by almost 76.0% of all the websites whose server-side programming language we know, whereas ASP.NET is used by 7.6% of total websites whose server-side programming language we know, as per the recent stats.

Learning Curve:
If your organization has new developers, PHP is a better choice as it is easy to learn and understand for beginners, whereas ASP.NET is quite challenging to learn and needs time to master. Also, PHP has large community support to make your learning curve more smooth.

Security:
ASP.NET is the best pick for your organization if your applications primarily focus on security and functionality, whereas PHP is better for user interfaces, speed, and performance.

Market Share:

PHP has a higher market share than ASP.NET since PHP is a free, open-source scripting language, whereas ASP.NET is a paid web application framework.

According to SimilarTech, there are 4,956,798 websites supported by PHP and 1,681,045 by ASP.NET. Overall, as shown by W3Techs, ASP.NET powers 2.73% of websites, and PHP powers 8.33% of websites.

Comparing ASP.NET and PHP

Which Should You Choose – ASP.NET or PHP?

For large-scale organizations and enterprises where security is vital, ASP.NET is more suited.

Startups and small organizations focusing on performance, speed, and cost optimization can use PHP for their business.

Also, if you are looking for a general scripting language, PHP is more suited since it is free, open-source, and has an easier learning curve. Whereas, if you want a complete web development programming framework, ASP.NET will do half your job with brand trust from Microsoft.

Trouble deciding between ASP.NET and PHP? Partner with OnGraph

Both ASP.NET vs PHP are great solutions for your business projects with slight differences, but a small difference can bring a significant change when things are done on a large scale.

If you’re facing challenges in choosing the most suited development framework for your business, OnGraph can help you make the right choice and assist in hiring the best developers for your organization’s web application development.

OnGraph Technologies partners with startups and enterprises to provide seamless mobile and web application development backed by the best technology practices and enhanced user experience. Hire PHP developers with us today.