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How to Outsource PHP Development

Stuti Dhruv
PHP Development Outsourcing

Businesses, both startups and established have growth potential. As such businesses grow and expand, the need for technical services such as websites and app development emerges. Of course, it can be time-consuming and expensive to develop and maintain the apps as away of scaling the business. As a result, many businesses, both startups and enterprise solutions, face some challenges along the way. But then, outsourcing PHP development is the ultimate solution to counter all these challenges and issues. You will access top professionals in the game, enjoy efficiency, and get the best services at reduced costs. These are among the many benefits of PHP development outsourcing.

So, what does it take to outsource PHP development? This guide will give you all you need to know, including the processes, benefits, and other valuable insights about PHP development outsourcing. Keep reading.

What is PHP development outsourcing?

PHP is a scripting language with several versions. The current version is PHP 8.3, which was released in November 2023. Being a general scripting language, PHP enables developers to write programs better known as scripts and automate some tasks, eliminating the need to execute the processes manually. This accelerates the processes and minimizes resource usage.

Again, PHP is an open-source language; you can use it and modify it to create reliable solutions during development processes.

The best aspect of PHP is that it is a versatile programming language. With it, developers can create reliable and stable web & app solutions for businesses of all kinds, be it small or large businesses.

Ideally, PHP plays a big role when developing apps with dynamic content, social networking platforms, eCommerce websites, CMS – content management systems, and software development. Besides, it is easy to integrate PHP with other database management systems, web servers, and operating systems. This makes PHP an outstanding solution for varied business requirements, thanks to the extra modules and reliable in-built tools that help in developing different applications for different purposes.

Examples of platforms powered by PHP include the following:

PHP Development Market Size, Growth & Demand

Global PHP Usage Trends and Market Share

PHP remains the dominant server-side language powering the internet—used by approximately 74% of all websites whose backend languages are known. Surveys also reflect continued strength: for instance, a mid-2025 report found PHP runs on 74.2% of websites, with PHP 8.x adoption now surpassing older, insecure versions.

While newer languages gain attention, PHP’s ecosystem holds strong largely due to mature CMS platforms like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal, which account for more than 40% of web infrastructure.

2. Global PHP Developer Population & Growth

3. PHP Adoption Across Industries

PHP powers a wide spectrum of application domains:

These figures demonstrate PHP’s deep-rooted presence—not only in legacy sites, but also in modern, scalable web solutions.

4. PHP Framework Adoption and Enterprise Use

Leading PHP frameworks include:

  1. Laravel: Widely regarded as the most popular PHP framework, with expanding adoption due to its simplicity, security, and ecosystem.
  2. Symfony: Favored in enterprise-level systems for modular architecture and performance.
  3. CodeIgniter, Yii, CakePHP, and Phalcon: Maintain stable niches, particularly in performance-sensitive or lightweight app contexts.

According to GitHub and ecosystem reports, Laravel continues to gain share year-over-year, with Symfony close behind in enterprise adoption.

5. Version Trends: PHP 7 vs PHP 8

Version upgrade trends highlight proactive modernization:

The shift towards PHP 8 is significant—it brings performance enhancements, security improvements, and long-term support paths, crucial for professional outsourcing engagements.

6. Regional Developer Pools and Supply Dynamics

Global supply of PHP talent is concentrated in key regions:

Companies benefit from tiered talent depth—enterprise-grade expertise from European/US vendors, and cost-effective development via Indian/Latin American teams.

7. Growth Drivers Projecting Future Demand

Key factors sustaining and growing demand for PHP:

These combine to reinforce PHP’s relevance in new builds and migrations well into the late 2020s.

Why businesses outsource PHP development

Outsourcing PHP development is the trending practice of businesses, both small and big ones. There are several reasons why businesses will opt to outsource PHP development. Here are the reasons:

Sometimes, a business can have a limited budget and resources for salaries, infrastructure, or training processes. Instead of letting the business go down, a business owner can opt to outsource PHP development at a lower budget and save extra resources to aid in growing the business.

When you outsource PHP development services, the company offers all the software and hardware requirements, thus reducing these expenses. What’s more, a business owner doesn’t have to pay salaries and other benefits when outsourcing PHP development. In the end, the costs are lower, yet the quality is top-notch. Aalpha Information Systems India is your number one outsourcing company. Reach out to us, share your project details and we will deliver services that will scale your business to the next level.

Sometimes, the in-house team may lack the specific skills or expertise required to accomplish a specific task or project. Instead of hiring full-time experts for such a short-term project, a company can opt to outsource PHP development. As a result, no training expenses are incurred, which cuts down on the hiring process costs, thus saving time and money at the same time.

Again, when a company has a project that needs to be completed within a short timeline, outsourcing PHP development is the ideal solution. Here, the company can easily access top professionals in the specific project and enjoy a timely delivery of top-quality services. Of course, this requires contracting a reliable outsourcing company with professionals in the same field.

A company can outsource PHP development when all they want is to make maximum use of resources, cutting down any wastage.

Outsourcing PHP development helps businesses to either scale down or scale up without having to worry about extra expenses. Here, the business only exploits specific resources when the need arises without worrying about overhead costs.

Finally, outsourcing PHP development is ideal when all you want is to shift the focus to other main business activities.

Instead of monitoring and controlling PHP development processes, you simply outsource from a reliable outsourcing company and let them handle the tasks as you focus on activities like marketing, sales, and customer service, among other services that will see the business grow steadily.

Top benefits of outsourcing PHP developers

Outsourcing PHP developers will generally accelerate your business growth. Other benefits of PHP development outsourcing include the following:

When a business can effortlessly release products and services faster effortlessly, it becomes easy to beat the competitive market and stay on top. This can only be possible with a PHP outsourcing strategy because the full-stack teams are highly experienced with expert knowledge and skills in a specific industry. Besides, the ready-made solutions speed up the process, making everything seamless.

PHP is a popular scrip language with a large user base. Outsourcing PHP development, therefore, means you have a chance to access millions of expert developers who are ready to transition your business from one level to the next.

No outsourcing company wants to ruin its brand reputation. Therefore, all the processes are always streamlined and properly planned, eliminating the risks of late delivery and poor-quality work.

Outsourcing PHP development means onboarding a full stack team that can manage all the tasks, including backend & frontend development, managing databases, infrastructure design, and app deployment, among the common tasks under PHP development. This flexibility enables a company to save time and resources – they don’t need to hire more specialists, but a PHP outsourcing company like Aalpha.

It is easy to hire a PHP developer with underlying knowledge of Magento and WordPress systems. This helps speed up the development of top-notch solutions.

Popular Use-Cases for Outsourced PHP Projects

PHP remains one of the most outsourced web development languages globally. Its open-source nature, long-standing stability, and compatibility with scalable frameworks like Laravel, Symfony, and Magento make it a go-to choice for businesses looking to build cost-effective yet powerful digital applications. Below are the most prominent types of projects where companies rely on external PHP developers.

Outsourced PHP developers are often hired to build and customize CMS platforms—especially WordPress, which powers over 43% of all websites on the internet. Companies outsource:

People frequently ask, “Can I hire a PHP developer to build a custom WordPress plugin?” Yes, this is one of the most common tasks delegated to freelance developers or offshore teams, particularly in countries like India, the Philippines, and Ukraine.

Another common question is, “Is Drupal development still relevant today?”—and the answer is yes, especially for government, education, and publishing sectors that require granular access controls and large-scale content hierarchies.

Businesses outsourcing PHP for eCommerce development do so to gain deep technical capabilities and fast delivery. Platforms like Magento (Adobe Commerce) and WooCommerce offer feature-rich, PHP-based environments to:

When someone asks, “What’s the best PHP platform for building an online store?”—Magento is often recommended for enterprise needs, while WooCommerce is ideal for small to mid-sized operations.

Another popular query: “Can I outsource Magento 2 development to an offshore team?” Yes, many eCommerce firms work with certified Magento agencies in Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia to reduce cost while maintaining quality.

Custom business applications—like booking engines, internal dashboards, and customer portals—are frequently developed by outsourced Laravel or Symfony teams. These projects require:

A commonly asked question is, “Is Laravel a good choice for building a booking platform?” Absolutely. Laravel provides tools like Blade templating, Eloquent ORM, and Laravel Echo for real-time events, which are well-suited for these use cases.

Organizations in healthcare, travel, and education regularly outsource this kind of platform, especially when looking to build MVPs or internal-use tools without hiring an in-house dev team.

Many businesses use PHP to build the backend for mobile and JavaScript-heavy web applications. Laravel (and its micro-framework, Lumen) is often used to create secure and scalable REST APIs.

Common features handled by outsourced teams include:

Users often ask, “Can PHP handle mobile app backends?” Yes, PHP is widely used to support apps built in React Native, Flutter, or Swift, acting as the backend layer that manages business logic and persistent data.

Another typical question is, “What’s the best PHP framework for APIs?”—Laravel and Lumen are top choices due to their routing, middleware support, and built-in tools for validation and testing.

Startups frequently outsource the development of SaaS MVPs using Laravel or Symfony. This is done to keep costs low while gaining access to developers with experience in scalable architectures and modern DevOps workflows.

These outsourced MVPs typically include:

One common question is, “Is Laravel good for building a SaaS product?” The answer is yes. Laravel provides rapid prototyping tools and supports key SaaS patterns like job queues, subscription billing, and permission gating.

Startups also ask, “How fast can I launch a SaaS MVP with an outsourced PHP team?”—and depending on scope, it’s often possible within 4–8 weeks using agile development and pre-built components.

Businesses also outsource PHP development for hybrid or specialized tasks:

A practical question here is, “Can outsourced PHP developers modernize a legacy codebase?” Yes—and often more efficiently than internal teams, especially when using external consultants skilled in both legacy support and modern PHP practices.

From content-heavy websites to modern SaaS platforms, outsourced PHP developers work across a diverse range of use cases. They are hired not just for execution speed and cost benefits, but also for specialization—whether in eCommerce, CMS customization, or backend API development. With robust frameworks, clear architectural patterns, and broad support, PHP continues to be a practical and scalable choice for outsourced development across industries.

Key Regions for PHP Outsourcing: Comparative Analysis

Global demand for outsourced PHP expertise is guided by factors such as cost, developer proficiency, communication, and time‑zone compatibility. Below is a detailed analysis of the top four outsourcing countries—India, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia—each offering distinct advantages and trade‑offs.

India

Strengths: India delivers large-volume talent, mature outsourcing infrastructure, and strong English communication.
 Challenges: Time zone differences can impact real-time collaboration.

Eastern Europe (Ukraine, Poland, Romania)

Strengths: Strong CS education, Western-oriented work culture, EU-aligned regulations for Poland and Romania.
 Challenges: Slightly higher cost; Ukraine’s long‑term risk factors require mitigation plans.

Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia)

Strengths: Time-zone overlap with North America, creative problem-solving, growing technical ecosystems.
 Challenges: Language gaps may require selective staffing, economic volatility in some countries.

Southeast Asia (Philippines, Vietnam)

Strengths: Cost-effective, high English communication (especially in the Philippines), youthful talent generation.
 Challenges: Time-zone mismatches with Europe/US, and emerging infrastructure in Vietnam.

Regional Strengths & Use-Cases

With over 5 million software engineers and cities like Bengaluru and Chennai ranking among India’s top outsourcing hubs, India offers unmatched developer pool size. Strong English and mature B2B services appeal to organizations seeking wide-scale capacity.

Ukraine stands out historically—once ranking fourth globally in certified IT professionals, and in 2021 recognized by the Global Sourcing Association as a top outsourcing destination. Poland and Romania follow with EU compliance, strong tech education, and robust governance.

Countries such as Argentina and Colombia have rapidly ascended as ideal near-shore partners for the U.S., given their shared time zone and growing developer expertise . Though English proficiency is average, familiarity with North American business culture improves engagement.

The Philippines is a global BPO leader with over 1.3 million outsourcing employees and high-language fluency. Vietnam, with 400,000+ IT engineers and 50,000 new grads annually, offers rising potential .

Ultimately, the best country for outsourcing PHP depends on your priorities—scale and cost, communication and quality, or collaboration cadence—and aligns with the embedded advice provided above.

How to outsource PHP Development: the processes

Before you outsource PHP development services, you must create a plan and steps to follow to ensure you get an outsourcing partner who will deliver services in alignment with your business goals and objectives. We’ve summarized the steps you should follow below:

Start with the scope and requirements of your project. Think of everything you need to ensure the success of the project. So, before you begin the process of getting a reliable outsourcing partner, start by knowing what you need to achieve first. This will enable you to share and communicate with your outsourcing partner seamlessly.

Among the components to think of are features, targets, technologies, and tools, among other requirements. With the right details of your project, you will follow an easy path, enabling you to contract a reliable PHP outsourcing partner.

With your project requirements and scope details., you can now begin searching for a reliable outsourcing PHP partner.

You can use different strategies here; if you have reliable people, ask for referrals. Still, you can do a quick research online and find the best PHP outsourcing partner for your services. Another option is using freelancer platforms. The decision here will highly depend on the nature of your project and your schedule.

As you do research, your key focus should be on an experienced PHP outsourcing company because you can’t compromise your business needs and the quality of services you will get.

At this stage, you can highlight several PHP outsourcing companies before you select the ideal option.

With a list of potential PHP outsourcing partners, you can now narrow down to the best option. Evaluate each service provider in terms of their reviews, expertise, communication skills, portfolio, and dedication to accelerate the success of your project.

Suppose you can set up a platform to conduct interviews, the better. However, you can still make a phone call and evaluate the potentiality of each PHP outsourcing company.

While technical skills are important, don’t forget to evaluate other soft skills, such are communication and seamless collaboration, especially with your in-house team. Once you narrow down and select your ideal development partner, move to the next step.

At this point, you’ve already selected your best PHP development partner. Now, start discussing the timeline for the project and the budget. Make sure both you and the PHP development team are in the same line and plans. Discuss the best communication channel and strategy, mode of work- is it per milestones? How many milestones? Don’t forget to discuss about terms of payments and any other important information about the whole process.

Here, transparency is key, and both teams should be satisfied with the terms and conditions to avoid any future conflicts when the project is on.

Once you agree on terms and conditions for working, it is now time to stress what you need to achieve and what products or services the PHP development partner should accomplish.

Here, you can design wireframes, highlight the tech stacks you need, and detail design guidelines to ensure your PHP development partner doesn’t miss the point.

Being clear at this point will save both parties time and resources, ensuring the right product is delivered in the end.

Of course, once the project is on, don’t underestimate the need to communicate effectively and regularly.

Create a plan to keep track of the project, collaborate where necessary, and offer guidelines where necessary. Good communication will help your PHP development partner stay on track and produce products that align with your business needs without wasting time and money moving backward to correct some steps.

When the PHP development partner finally delivers the final product, testing and verifying if everything is okay is a key step. As you review, try to identify any areas that need some more work, if any and communicate to your PHP development partner in a timely manner. The goal is to ensure you get the product you have envisioned early and pay for the services delivered. At the end of the contract, both parties should be satisfied with the overall services.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in PHP Outsourcing

Outsourcing PHP development can accelerate your project and reduce costs, but it also comes with pitfalls that can derail timelines, compromise quality, or increase long-term technical debt. Avoiding common mistakes is essential to ensuring a productive relationship with your external team. Whether you’re working with a freelance developer or a full-service offshore agency, these five issues account for the majority of failed or delayed PHP projects.

1. Under-Specifying the Project Requirements

The most frequent cause of cost overruns and scope creep is vague or incomplete project specifications. Businesses often assume the outsourcing partner “will figure it out,” but PHP developers—especially external teams—rely heavily on detailed functional specs, mockups, and user stories to build accurately.

Founders often ask, “Can’t I just explain what I need on a call?” The short answer: no, not if you want consistent, testable outcomes. Verbal direction rarely survives handoffs or scaling.

What to do instead:

2. Hiring Based on Price Alone

Opting for the lowest bid is one of the most damaging mistakes companies make when outsourcing PHP. Inexperienced developers or unverified agencies often underquote to win contracts but cut corners on architecture, testing, and security.

When someone searches, “What mistakes should I avoid when outsourcing developers?”, this one always ranks high—because it’s tempting and avoidable.

Instead, look for:

Paying 30–40% more for senior engineers can save you 2–3x in bug fixing, security hardening, and missed deadlines later.

3. Skipping Code Reviews and Milestone Validations

When outsourcing, it’s a mistake to assume progress is being made simply because hours are logged or weekly updates are sent. Without regular milestone checks and technical reviews, you risk accumulating low-quality, unscalable code.

A commonly overlooked area is the absence of Git-based collaboration. If your developer isn’t pushing code to a shared repo or pull requests aren’t reviewed, you have no visibility into what’s actually being built.

What you should do:

4. Poor Communication and Feedback Loops

Many outsourced PHP projects fail not due to poor technical work, but due to communication breakdowns. If your developer doesn’t understand your priorities, changes get implemented late, bugs are missed, and team trust erodes.

A common question is, “Why do outsourcing projects go off track?”—and poor communication is usually the top reason. It happens when:

Avoid this by:

5. No Agreement for Post-Launch Support

Many companies treat outsourced PHP developers as short-term resources—once the code is delivered, the relationship ends. This creates serious problems during deployment, user onboarding, bug discovery, and future updates.

If you’re thinking, “Do I need post-launch support from my outsourced team?”, the answer is yes—at least for the first 30–90 days.

Mistakes to avoid:

Instead, build in a post-launch phase with:

Avoiding these five mistakes is not just about better code—it’s about risk management, transparency, and long-term ROI. Whether you’re outsourcing a full Laravel SaaS backend, a Magento store customization, or an API build, success lies in proactive planning and oversight.

Let me know if you’d like to follow this with a checklist, downloadable SOW template, or a short add-on section comparing fixed-price vs. time-based outsourcing models.

Outsourcing PHP development: skills to look out for

The following skills are essential when hiring PHP developers for your project:

What is the cost of outsourcing a PHP development project?

Outsourcing a PHP project could cost anywhere between $ 5,000 and $2,000,000 or even more. The price variation is a result of the type of PHP development project. Below is a summary of possible estimates depending on the type of PHP development project at hand:

Additionally, cost to PHP developers varies according to the skillset and experience of the developers to build the project.

Other factors contributing to the overall outsourcing of PHP development costs include the following:

Is Outsourcing PHP Still Relevant in 2025 and Beyond?

As software teams evolve toward microservices, cloud-native architectures, and AI-assisted development, many ask whether PHP is still a viable language for modern applications. The short answer: yes—PHP remains a major force in web development in 2025, particularly when combined with outsourcing strategies.

The future of outsourced PHP development is shaped by three converging trends: the enduring dominance of PHP-based platforms, improvements in PHP performance and architecture, and the global shift toward distributed engineering models. Let’s explore each.

Continued Dominance of PHP in CMS and Commerce Ecosystems

Even in 2025, PHP underpins much of the public internet. WordPress, which powers over 43% of all websites, remains PHP-based and shows no sign of losing market share. WooCommerce (also built on PHP) continues to lead the global SMB eCommerce market, while Laravel, a modern PHP framework, is the go-to choice for rapid web application development.

Shopify, while not built entirely in PHP, integrates with thousands of merchant-side apps and plugins written in PHP, due to its historical and CMS-related ecosystem.

When business owners ask, “Is PHP still relevant for new projects in 2025?”, the answer is yes—especially for content-driven platforms, eCommerce stores, or startups building MVPs on a budget. PHP is often the fastest path to deployment when timelines are tight and infrastructure must scale gradually.

Laravel and Symfony Continue to Lead in Web Application Development

Modern frameworks like Laravel and Symfony have positioned PHP as a serious choice for building secure, testable, and scalable applications. Laravel’s continued innovation—through tools like Vapor (for serverless hosting), Nova (for admin UIs), and Scout (for search)—has made it competitive with full-stack JavaScript platforms.

In 2025, a growing number of SaaS founders and agencies still choose Laravel for:

Symfony, on the other hand, remains a strong contender for enterprise applications requiring flexibility, dependency injection, and robust caching mechanisms. Many EU-based startups prefer Symfony due to its alignment with GDPR and its modular service design.

PHP 8+ and JIT Compiler: Performance Boosts and Legacy Modernization

The release of PHP 8.0, 8.1, and 8.2, followed by the adoption of PHP 8.3 and beyond, has transformed the language’s performance profile. With Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation, PHP now approaches execution speeds seen in compiled languages for certain workloads.

For companies maintaining legacy systems, PHP 8+ offers a practical modernization path without rewriting entire codebases in Go or Node.js. This makes PHP a strategic bridge between legacy maintainability and modern performance.

Developers often ask, “Should we rewrite legacy PHP or modernize it with PHP 8?”—and in most cases, upgrading to PHP 8.2+ with a framework like Laravel or Symfony yields strong ROI with lower risk.

Growing Demand for Hybrid Developers: PHP + Vue/React

A notable trend in 2025 is the rise of hybrid frontend-backend developers—engineers proficient in PHP for backend logic and JavaScript frameworks like Vue.js or React for frontend interfaces. Laravel Mix, Inertia.js, and Livewire have blurred the lines between frontend and backend, enabling single-page experiences without fully decoupled apps.

For businesses outsourcing work, this means that PHP outsourcing isn’t limited to backend APIs—it also includes:

When CTOs search, “Do I need separate frontend and backend developers for PHP apps?”, the answer is increasingly no—hybrid developers are becoming the norm, particularly in the Laravel ecosystem.

Outsourcing Trends: From Big Agencies to Micro-Teams

Outsourcing itself is undergoing a transformation. While large outsourcing agencies still exist, many businesses now prefer to work with specialized micro-teams or remote-first freelancers—developers embedded in Slack channels, pushing to GitHub repos, and working alongside internal teams.

This distributed model supports continuous delivery, better communication, and faster iteration cycles. It also means that companies aren’t just outsourcing code—they’re outsourcing ownership of specific modules, features, or backend services.

A commonly asked question today is, “Can I hire a part-time Laravel team that works like an extension of my company?” Yes. With the rise of remote collaboration tools, it’s common for companies to hire PHP micro-teams that act as integrated development units—complete with sprint planning, QA, and DevOps.

Outsourcing PHP remains both strategically relevant and tactically effective in 2025 and beyond. Whether you’re maintaining a WordPress ecosystem, building a Laravel-based SaaS, or modernizing legacy code, PHP offers performance, reliability, and a global talent base. And as remote-first development becomes the norm, PHP outsourcing will continue to evolve—not as a cost-saving tactic, but as a powerful way to build scalable, maintainable software in a distributed world.

Conclusion

Outsourcing, especially for tech-related projects has become the norm of many businesses, both small and big setups. However, the process requires a business person to take several steps to ensure the success of the project.

Once you follow the steps outlined in this guide, you will overcome challenges such as finding top talents in PHP development, communication challenges & cultural differences, data security concerns, quality of the final project, maintenance & support, and project management techniques, among other challenges.

Nonetheless, outsourcing PHP development will give your business scalability, competitive advantage, rapid growth, and reduced expenses, among other benefits.

Outsourcing PHP development FAQs

Is PHP best for web development?

PHP is one of the best programming languages many developers use, especially on the server side. With a wide support community, PHP is an open-source language that is easy to learn, maintain, and use.

Besides PHP being a versatile language, it can be used to develop several websites, including social networking sites, e-commerce websites, and content management systems, among many more.

Again, PHP is the best language because of its effectiveness, scalability, enhanced security, and cross-platform functionality.

What are the best use cases of PHP?

Being a powerful language, PHP can be used under the following:

Server-side scripting, dynamic web apps, cross-platform compatibility, and rapid prototyping.

What is the future of PHP developers?

PHP is one of the widespread scripting languages with steady community support. The language continues to gain popularity with many developers using it due to its unique features. With these insights, the demand for PHP developers will continue to grow higher in the near future.

What mistakes should I avoid when outsourcing a PHP development company?

When looking for a reliable PHP development company for outsourcing, don’t make these mistakes:

Which is the best PHP development company for outsourcing?

There are many tech companies that specialize in outsourcing PHP development services. Depending on your location, the nature of your project, and your personal preferences, you can always perform a quick search and get the best PHP development company for your project. Nonetheless, Aalpha is your number one outsourcing partner in India and beyond.

Finally, want to outsource your PHP project? Contact our – web development company, share your project details, and we will strategize on how to deliver the best services within your schedule.

Also check: Python Development Outsourcing | Outsourcing ReactJS Development |

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