Top 15 startups built using PHP development

PHP powers some of the world’s most visited websites, including Facebook, Yahoo, Wikipedia, WordPress, and Spotify. Almost 35.5 million websites currently run on PHP, and even 20 years after its first release it keeps solving demanding performance challenges. For businesses, PHP development services became a significant part of the web development market thanks to their cost effectiveness and speed of development, which is why so many startups build on it.

Below is a closer look at what PHP is and 15 well-known web applications built with it.

What is PHP, and why is it so popular?

PHP is a general-purpose programming language developed to suit back-end (server-side) web development needs. PHP code can be embedded directly in the HTML code of the application.

Since its appearance in 1995, PHP has been one of the most popular programming languages among developers and is constantly being upgraded and improved. There have been seven significant versions of the language, with PHP 7 being the latest one at the moment of writing.

Almost 35.5 million websites are currently running that are built using PHP, which lets it beat its competitors easily. For comparison, ASP.NET is used for 24 million websites and Ruby on Rails for less than a million.

Why do developers and startups choose PHP?

• Easily manageable coding that delivers quality outputs fast and cost-efficiently.
• A broad array of features and a wide selection of remarkable PHP frameworks for developers, including Laravel, Symfony 2, CakePHP, CodeIgniter, and Phalcon.
• Free to use, which suits beginning entrepreneurs the most during web app development.
• A solid, open-source community that supports PHP voluntarily, so finding the right PHP solution is rarely a problem.

Which startups and web applications are built with PHP?

These 15 well-known web applications rule the internet and rely on PHP:

1. Facebook, the most famous social media web application, was developed primarily using PHP. According to SimilarWeb, Facebook is visited more than 22 billion times monthly, so it has to deal with enormous traffic volumes, and PHP helps with this. Of course, this pioneering social network uses other modern technologies too (React, GraphQL, and Memcached, among others), but PHP is still at its core. At the very beginning, the entire Facebook code was written in PHP by Zuckerberg and Moskowitz. The front-end is developed using XHP, and HipHop is used for the runtime software development. HipHop was built by Facebook for the application’s needs and went open-source in 2013.
2. Yahoo, one of the leading world search engines, runs on PHP combined with other technologies (such as Apache and JavaScript). The company was launched in 1995, the same year PHP was released. Today the site is visited more than 4.57 billion times every month, according to SimilarWeb. Beyond the search engine itself, Yahoo provides a variety of services powered by PHP to a certain extent (Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, and more).
3. Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia, is developed and edited by volunteers worldwide and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. This socially significant open-source platform runs brilliantly on PHP.
4. WordPress is one of the most commonly used free content management systems, offering thousands of themes and plugins. It is among today’s most popular web publishing platforms, with 60+ million websites currently using it. PHP and MySQL are the two core technologies behind it. Developers and agencies that provide PHP development services like WordPress for its flexibility and ease of use, including features such as drag and drop editors, a media library, and a plethora of plugins available for download.
5. Flickr is one of the most famous photo sharing websites available and is considered a great source of inspiration. It became a hit right after its launch, and millions of people visit it today. This PHP-powered app hosts more than 6 billion images and handles more than 3.5 million images uploaded to the platform every day. Besides PHP, Flickr’s stack includes Java and JavaScript, among others.
6. BlaBlaCar is a social project founded in France in 2006. It is more than just a carpool web platform, it is a community-focused web application. Today BlaBlaCar provides services to 60+ million active users from the 22 countries where it is currently available. Symfony2, a feature-packed PHP framework, powers this robust web app.
7. Spotify is a world-renowned music streaming service loved by 191+ million users in dozens of countries. This freemium platform lets you access millions of songs instantly. Like BlaBlaCar, it also runs on the Symfony2 PHP framework.
8. MailChimp, the top-rated email marketing app, is powered by PHP. It automates bulk emails, from creating letters and filling in email addresses to gathering statistical data, and sends around a billion letters daily to its millions of customers around the world.
9. Tumblr is a web platform where anyone can start their microblog. It is visited 537 million times monthly and hosts 450+ million blogs, so the daily load is vast. It runs on the latest PHP 7 to ensure the highest performance.
10. Baidu, according to Alexa’s rating, is the fourth most visited website in the world. It is the Chinese answer to Google, a search engine that also offers maps, an online encyclopedia, image search, cloud storage services, and much more. PHP powers its backend and helps it deal with tremendous traffic volumes.
11. iStock is one of the largest stock websites for graphics such as photos and illustrations. Started in 2000 as iStockPhoto, it is now visited 20+ million times monthly (according to SimilarWeb), with 500+ thousand new files uploaded every month. PHP keeps iStock highly responsive and its UX at the top.
12. Cracked is a good example of a printed outlet adapting to the age of the internet. It used to be a humor magazine printed between 1958 and 2007, and it is now a website that brings you entertaining and funny content 24/7. It is visited 15+ million times per month, so PHP comes in handy to handle this traffic volume.
13. Slack is a messenger used primarily for corporate purposes. It handles 128+ million monthly visits, enabling texting, sharing images and other files, calls, and more. Slack’s main goal is to make collaboration easy and trouble-free, and PHP on the back end helps it achieve that.
14. Freepic is quite similar to iStock. It is a freemium marketplace where creators can sell their photos, illustrations, and templates, or share them for free. Websites built using PHP often have to handle massive loads of multimedia content, and PHP has proven helpful in keeping performance high.
15. Drupal rounds out the list. Drupal is a content management system, like WordPress, and it is open-source, so it stays lively with heated developer discussions and constant news. PHP, in its turn, helps it run smoothly.

The list of successful websites built using PHP could go on much longer. As you have seen for yourself, PHP powers some of the most popular websites in the world, the ones that deal with substantial performance challenges daily, which proves its potential is worth your attention.

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