1. Why PHP Refuses to Die: Mythbusting the “Dead Language” Label
If you’re reading this, you’ve already seen the meme.
“PHP is dead.” “No one ships real products in PHP anymore.” “Modern engineers hate PHP.”
Scroll any startup forum, Twitter thread, or LinkedIn hot-take carousel and you’ll find the same refrain.
Let’s be honest.
PHP is the “whipping boy” of modern programming.
It’s the language everyone loves to hate—except, quietly, the language everyone’s business depends on.
When I started ShipleeCargo (now evolved into Shiplee.ai), I too thought:
Should I use Node? Should I hire Python devs? Is PHP too old-school?
But here’s what no Twitter thread will tell you:
- PHP isn’t just alive—it’s everywhere.
- The biggest websites on Earth (Facebook, Wikipedia, WordPress.com, Slack’s old backend) still run PHP.
- Most Indian SMEs running eCommerce, logistics, SaaS? Their first control panel is PHP.
- Why? Because it just works.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
- Over 75% of the web runs on PHP.
- WordPress alone is 40%+ of ALL websites—thousands of devs, millions of plugins, endless integrations.
- Most big brands in logistics, travel, retail, insurance: their backend is PHP at least somewhere.
Why Do People Still Hate PHP?
- The early days (PHP 4, 5) had “spaghetti code.”
- Too easy to write bad code, so many did.
- Modern dev culture worships “shiny new” (Rust, Go, Elixir, you name it).
But PHP has quietly evolved.
- Composer made package management easy.
- PHP 8 brought strong typing, real OOP, better performance.
- Frameworks like Laravel changed the game.
Why Does the Meme Persist?
It’s simple.
Every new wave of devs learns the fashionable stack of their generation.
But the world runs on old tech—because businesses care about uptime, ROI, and getting things done.
2. What Really Kills or Grows a Tech Stack
So what actually kills a language or stack?
It’s not memes.
It’s not age.
It’s not even performance benchmarks.
It’s three things:
- Community: Are there still people maintaining, documenting, and supporting it?
- Ecosystem: Can you get stuff done—payments, auth, APIs, integrations?
- Business Reality: Can you hire, build, and ship what you need, when you need it, without breaking the bank?
PHP nails all three.
- Its community is huge, especially in India, South-East Asia, Latin America.
- Its ecosystem covers everything—from SMS gateways to GST invoicing to government e-way bills.
- Its cost-to-build is way lower for most startups, especially those targeting Indian SMEs.
The “Boring is Good” Principle
Most unicorns don’t run on whatever is hyped at the next JSConf.
They run on stuff that was boring 10 years ago: PHP, Java, C#, .NET, Postgres, MySQL.
Because business is about uptime, margin, support, and getting to market first—not “most elegant code.”
My First CTO Reality Check
When we built the first ShipleeCargo control panel, my main concern was speed:
- Could we launch before the market shifted?
- Could we iterate as clients screamed for feature X or Y?
- Could we survive when AWS failed, a courier API broke, or the hosting bill came due?
With PHP, the answer was always yes.
With more “modern” stacks, we’d still be stuck hiring, debugging, “learning.”
3. Lessons from the Indian SaaS Battlefield
There’s a massive difference between what works in Silicon Valley and what works in India (or Indonesia, Brazil, Africa…).
- Indian logistics? You’re integrating with old-school APIs, legacy ERP, “Excel file uploads,” WhatsApp notifications, and users on 3G.
- Your clients are not engineers—they’re SME owners, D2C founders, shopkeepers, logistics agents, and family businesses.
- The only thing they care about: Does it work? Can you support me if it breaks?
How PHP Solves Real Problems
- Speed of Change: Need a new report for GST compliance? Add a PHP script, push to server, done.
- Hosting: Shared hosting, low-cost VPS, on-prem server in a warehouse? PHP runs everywhere.
- Integration: From Razorpay to Paytm, Delhivery to SmartShip, WhatsApp to India Post—PHP libraries exist for everything.
- Hiring: PHP devs are everywhere, from tier-1 cities to small towns. Remote, affordable, proven.
The Hidden Value of PHP
- Your support team can learn to troubleshoot basic panels in weeks.
- “Low-code” panels can be hacked together for your operations team.
- No need for complicated devops—upload files, fix bugs live, keep moving.
The Cost of “Cool” Tech
We tried “modernizing” fast—migrated small modules to Node, Python.
Here’s what we got:
- More bugs.
- Harder hiring.
- Slower delivery.
Clients don’t care. Investors don’t care.
Your business only cares: can you ship, can you grow, can you keep the lights on?
4. PHP’s Place in the Modern Stack (2025 and Beyond)
Let’s get one thing straight—the tech world loves to declare things dead:
- Windows is dead.
- Java is dead.
- PHP is dead.
- Even HTML “is dead” (thanks, mobile apps).
And yet…
- Most business software in India runs on Windows.
- Java powers the backbone of every bank, insurance firm, and government portal.
- HTML? You’re reading this on a browser.
PHP sits in the same paradox.
If you look at a chart of programming language popularity over the past 25 years, you’ll see PHP never leaves the top 10.
Sure, it’s not flashy. But it’s always there—stable, boring, and indispensable.
Why?
- Low Barrier to Entry: PHP can be learned by anyone with a laptop, a text editor, and an internet connection. This is a massive advantage in emerging economies where access to tech is still not universal.
- Ubiquitous Hosting: Almost every hosting service supports PHP. No need for custom Docker images, no endless “Node version conflicts.”
- Ecosystem for Everything: You need a PDF? There’s a PHP package. E-invoicing, SMS, government APIs? There’s a package, or three.
- Easy to Deploy, Easy to Fix: When your SaaS breaks at midnight, you don’t want a complicated CI/CD chain. Upload a new PHP file, and you’re back.
For a CTO building in the Indian SaaS space, these factors matter more than language fashion.
They’re why so many Indian logistics, fintech, and eCommerce success stories quietly rely on PHP.
5. The Untold Power of “Boring” Tech
Let’s talk about a dirty little secret in the tech industry—“boring” tech makes you money.
All the unicorns you see in the news—Ola, Flipkart, Swiggy, Byju’s, Zomato—didn’t start on some obscure, cutting-edge stack.
They started with tools that got the job done.
As a CTO, you’re measured on:
- Uptime.
- Customer trust.
- Cost to serve.
- How fast you can launch, iterate, and fix.
No one cares if you’re running the latest JavaScript framework if your platform is down on the day of a mega sale.
No one thanks you for using Rust if your feature releases lag behind the competition.
When I chose PHP for ShipleeCargo’s first panel, it wasn’t because I loved the syntax or wanted to be different.
It was because “boring” meant:
- Reliability: Fewer moving parts.
- Cost Savings: Cheap hosting, easy hiring.
- Predictability: Known ecosystem, tested at scale.
The best products in the world are built on stacks their founders barely talk about.
You win by getting things done, not chasing the latest buzzword.
6. Building for Bharat: The Real-World Indian Tech Context
If you’re building SaaS in India (or any large, diverse, developing market), your reality is different from that of a Silicon Valley startup.
Here’s what you deal with:
- Diverse Users: Your platform will be used by college kids, 60-year-old shopkeepers, Tier 1 city D2C brands, and rural entrepreneurs.
- Patchy Internet: Yes, 5G is coming, but many users are still on slow, unreliable mobile data—your app needs to be fast and light.
- Legacy Integrations: Most “digital” companies in logistics, retail, manufacturing still rely on CSV, Excel, and basic APIs.
- Budget Sensitivity: Startups want value. SMEs and family businesses want features, not fancy engineering.
PHP fits this context like a glove:
- Lightweight, fast-loading panels that work on any browser.
- Simple server requirements—run on any cheap host, even a ₹300/month VPS.
- Easy fixes: When something breaks, your support team can fix or escalate—no need for DevOps engineers at every branch.
“Building for Bharat” means being practical, being fast, being affordable—and PHP helps you deliver on all three.
7. Panel Evolution: From Bootstrap to Blazing Scale
Here’s a CTO truth:
Your first version is never your last.
The first ShipleeCargo panel?
- Simple PHP scripts, Bootstrap for UI, MySQL backend.
- Everything on a single server.
- No fancy JavaScript, just forms and tables.
But as you grow, things change:
- Sellers demand more features (custom reports, order bulk uploads, real-time status).
- You add more integrations—couriers, payment gateways, GST compliance.
- Support team grows, internal tools multiply.
With PHP, this evolution is incremental.
You don’t have to throw everything away; you refactor, optimize, and migrate when necessary.
How we did it:
- Introduced Laravel for new features as the product matured.
- Gradually moved heavy-lifting tasks (like analytics, real-time tracking) to microservices (Node, Python).
- Kept the core admin panel, billing, and operations flows in PHP because they “just worked.”
PHP is uniquely suited for this kind of step-wise modernization.
You’re never locked in. You modernize on your terms.
8. The Human Side: Growing a Team in PHP
The best tech is worthless without people to build and maintain it.
PHP’s real power in the Indian context is talent:
- The largest pool of affordable, skilled web developers is in PHP.
- Freshers can become productive in weeks, not months.
- Even your support and operations staff can learn to read and debug basic PHP.
Compare this to “cool” stacks:
- Node.js/TypeScript devs are in short supply (and expensive).
- Go, Rust, Elixir are even rarer, especially outside metros.
When you need to build a team, scale fast, and support clients 24×7, PHP gives you leverage.
And because PHP codebases are less “magical” (no hidden build steps, no Webpack puzzles), onboarding is easier.
Your team spends more time shipping, less time learning.
9. Speed > Perfection: PHP for Rapid Market Fit
Here’s an unpopular opinion:
Your code doesn’t need to be perfect. Your product needs to be in the market.
PHP lets you:
- Move from idea to working prototype in days, not weeks.
- Fix bugs in production, instantly.
- Iterate as clients use your product (and tell you what works and what doesn’t).
This speed is why we survived the early years:
- We could onboard new clients the day they called.
- We could support unique needs (GST reports, WhatsApp alerts) within hours.
- We could survive cash crunches by shipping faster than bigger, slower-funded teams.
Perfection is the enemy of progress.
PHP is the language of progress.
10. The DevOps Angle: PHP and Modern Infrastructure
You’ll hear a lot about containers, Kubernetes, cloud-native, and serverless.
All amazing innovations—once you’re at scale, with a big team, and complex architecture.
But for 90% of SaaS businesses in India?
- Simple hosting wins.
- Most PHP projects can be deployed with FTP, Git hooks, or CI/CD in minutes.
- No build step, no custom runtime, no ten-page Dockerfile.
When you do need scale:
- PHP runs beautifully behind Nginx or Apache, with load balancers and caching.
- Modern PaaS (Heroku, Render, DigitalOcean) all support PHP natively.
This means you spend less time wrestling with servers, more time solving customer problems.
11. What Breaks at Scale (and What Saves You)
No tech is perfect, and PHP has limits.
- Long-Running Tasks: PHP wasn’t built for long-running jobs. Use queues (like Redis, RabbitMQ), or move those tasks to Python/Node microservices.
- Concurrency: For high-concurrency APIs, Go or Node may give better raw performance.
- Modern Frontends: If you need an ultra-rich SPA (like Gmail), you’ll need to integrate with React/Vue on the frontend.
But for most SaaS admin panels, dashboards, and B2B flows?
PHP does the job.
What saves you at scale:
- Monitoring: Use tools like New Relic, Sentry, or even simple logging.
- Testing: PHPUnit for unit/integration tests, or browser automation with Selenium.
- Gradual migration: Start with PHP, then split out bottlenecks as you hit scale.
12. Security Mindset: PHP and SaaS
Security is real.
Yes, PHP had a reputation for “easy to hack” panels—mostly because it was so popular and so easy to build bad code.
But modern PHP, when used with best practices:
- Enforces prepared statements (to avoid SQL injection).
- Supports strong password hashing (bcrypt, Argon2).
- Easy to integrate with security tools, WAFs, and cloud firewalls.
What matters is not the language—it’s the discipline:
- Sanitize user inputs.
- Limit permissions.
- Monitor logs.
- Patch dependencies.
PHP is only as secure as you make it—just like Node, Python, Java, or anything else.
13. What I’d Never Build in PHP—And What I’d Always Build
As a CTO, you have to play to a language’s strengths.
What I’d never build in PHP:
- Ultra-low-latency trading engines.
- Video streaming at scale.
- Real-time gaming backends.
What I’d always build in PHP:
- Admin panels, business dashboards.
- Internal tools.
- B2B SaaS MVPs.
- Reporting, notification, and workflow automation tools.
PHP is for getting the “core” business logic shipped, so you can build your moat.
14. Frameworks That Changed the Game: Laravel and Beyond
If you still think PHP means “spaghetti code,” you haven’t seen modern PHP.
Laravel made PHP cool again:
- Clean syntax, MVC structure.
- Powerful CLI tools, migrations, testing, queues.
- Huge ecosystem (cashier, passport, sanctum, Nova, and more).
Other frameworks:
- Symfony: Enterprise power, used by Magento 2, Drupal.
- CodeIgniter: Lightweight, good for microservices.
- Slim: Perfect for simple APIs.
Thanks to these frameworks, you can build robust, scalable, beautiful apps in PHP—no shame.
15. Integrations, Ecosystem, and Third-Party Realities
If you build in India, you need integrations—fast.
- Payments: Razorpay, Paytm, Cashfree, Stripe.
- SMS/WhatsApp: Twilio, Gupshup, Kaleyra, Meta.
- Couriers: Delhivery, XpressBees, Ecom, Shadowfax.
- Accounting: Tally, Zoho, QuickBooks.
- Govt. Compliance: GST, e-way bill, e-invoicing.
PHP has libraries, SDKs, and example code for every single one.
You win by plugging in, not reinventing the wheel.
16. Legacy: Handling Old Code with Grace
Every product accumulates legacy code.
PHP is no different.
- Your early scripts will look “ugly” in a year.
- Clients may still depend on that CSV upload or old report page.
- You’ll want to rewrite—but you can’t break what people use daily.
The beauty of PHP:
- You can refactor one file at a time.
- You can layer new frameworks (like Laravel) on top, without breaking old routes.
- No all-or-nothing migrations.
Embrace legacy. Refactor with care.
Don’t break what’s working for real users.
17. Community Power: Open Source and PHP
PHP is the most “open” of open source:
- Anyone can build and share packages.
- WordPress, Laravel, Magento, WooCommerce—giant ecosystems.
- Forums, Stack Overflow, Telegram, WhatsApp groups—help is everywhere.
This means:
- Faster problem-solving.
- Less lock-in.
- Lower cost to build, fix, grow.
When you’re in a crisis, community beats any fancy paid support.
18. The Future: PHP, AI, and API Economy
You might think: “Okay, but what about the future? AI, ML, and new APIs?”
Here’s the surprise:
- You can easily call Python, Node, or external APIs from PHP.
- PHP can be the “glue” connecting your AI modules, analytics, and frontend apps.
- With PHP 8+, performance is not a bottleneck for business logic.
As the world shifts to API-first, microservice, and AI-driven apps, PHP will keep powering the glue that holds businesses together.
19. Advice for the Next CTO/Founder
Don’t chase hype.
- Ship what solves real problems.
- Use the stack that lets you move fastest, hire easiest, and support your customers.
- Don’t be ashamed to use PHP. Be proud that you deliver.
In five years, no one will ask what tech you used—they’ll ask what problem you solved.
20. Final Thoughts: What Matters Most
If you’ve made it this far, you know:
- PHP is not dead.
- “Boring” tech wins in the real world.
- Indian SaaS, logistics, and eCommerce runs on stacks that work, not stacks that trend.
Be practical. Be fast. Be disciplined.
And above all—be a builder, not just a coder.