CodeIgniter vs. Symfony

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
CodeIgniter
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
CodeIgniter is a free and open source PHP framework, developed originally by EllisLab.N/A
Symfony
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
Symfony is a PHP framework from French company SensioLabs.N/A
Pricing
CodeIgniterSymfony
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
CodeIgniterSymfony
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
CodeIgniterSymfony
Considered Both Products
CodeIgniter
Chose CodeIgniter
CodeIgniter is a great choice for small or medium projects that can be deployed in every kind of hosting, especially those oriented to low-cost hostings like GoDaddy. Symfony and Laravel are frameworks for highly scalable projects with hundreds of plugins available. Also, these …
Chose CodeIgniter
CodeIgniter has a very small footprint. The source code is very small sized. Setting up a project is very easy. Follows MVC pattern. Consumes low memory and CPU. Well documented. Has a built-in forum for users to discuss and get the solution for issues. Periodically updates …
Symfony
Chose Symfony
Symfony has become such a standard that many frameworks which previously may have been seen as competition, are actually adopting Symfony components to allow them to focus more on what makes their solution unique. Drupal 8 has replaced much of its low-level internal code with …
Chose Symfony
I would say Laravel is by far Symfony's greatest rival. Laravel was actually a PHP framework that appears from Symfony, using only the packages that it really required. After some years, both projects have grown apart significantly, but you can still see Laravel using some of …
Chose Symfony
Symfony was chosen by previous developers, presumably for its flexibility and community support at a time when it was one of the best.
Chose Symfony
Symfony is strengthened by its amazing set of components. It is more flexible and strong, now with the introduction of flex on Symfony 4.x it's even more flexible and adapting for the future. Its architecture is robust and allows developers to focus on products. Symfony has …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
CodeIgniterSymfony
Small Businesses
Laravel PHP Framework
Laravel PHP Framework
Score 8.6 out of 10
Laravel PHP Framework
Laravel PHP Framework
Score 8.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Laravel PHP Framework
Laravel PHP Framework
Score 8.6 out of 10
Laravel PHP Framework
Laravel PHP Framework
Score 8.6 out of 10
Enterprises

No answers on this topic

No answers on this topic

All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
CodeIgniterSymfony
Likelihood to Recommend
8.4
(14 ratings)
8.0
(6 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
CodeIgniterSymfony
Likelihood to Recommend
Open Source
The input class makes it easy to provide server-side validation and scrubbing of user input. Setting Error messages. It doesn't require constant command-line access, It's great because it has a strong community and excellent documentation, but the problem is that it tries to retain backward compatibility with PHP 4 and therefore lacks a lot of "standard" features modern frameworks have such as auto-loading.
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SensioLabs
Any small project which you want to have ready in a couple of hours would be probably a bad candidate for using Symfony. Even the most seasoned senior developer can easily spend hours or days creating a small MVP with Symfony. While Symfony's learning curve isn't necessarily bad and will depend a lot on the architectural knowledge of the developer itself, because of the modularity required by Symfony you will need to spend a significant amount of time coding. If you are looking for a quick project, perhaps this framework isn't the best solution. Robust applications can benefit from Symfony's architecture. I have participated in projects on different industries including lead generation, marketing and even some micro-services for other industries which use Symfony. Because of how thorough the framework has been architected, you will have a reliable solution.
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Pros
Open Source
  • CodeIgniter is an excellent tool when a simple database API is needed. Postgres, MySQL, and SQLite are all abstracted into a simple-to-use
  • CodeIgniter's simplicity is truly its best feature, because you are able to create controllers and methods based on the http://www.example//, and immediately being developing the application.
  • Flexibility is also another developer-friendly feature, because developers are able to design their application in any way - controllers, models, libraries, and helpers can be located anywhere or not used at all.
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SensioLabs
  • Sonata Admin for Symfony is very versatile and we've used it for both the admin part of our website (even created a landing page constructor using it) and for the ERP system we've developed for inside use.
  • It is easy to learn if you know PHP and the community is quite large so you can easily find experts to help you with issues.
  • It's good for high-load projects. We have used it for the back-end of a custom affiliate marketing system that currently processes over 180 million requests per day.
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Cons
Open Source
  • Faced some issue of session management, so that's why we used the Core Session library for that. It would be great if we could improve it a little bit.
  • Frameworks provide the option to setup all getters/setters, so having this option in it is a great idea.
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SensioLabs
  • There are so many ways to do things that FAQs around the internet may not work for the way you did it.
  • The default database ORM doctrine is not well documented and has a large learning curve when optimizing for high traffic.
  • Matching the Symfony version with your selection of bundles makes it difficult to upgrade bundles because many things change between updates.
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Support Rating
Open Source
No answers on this topic
SensioLabs
Symfony has a great following and finding relevant articles or looking into social channels for support is quite easy. I have no comments on any type of official support because I didn't ever need to look into it.
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Alternatives Considered
Open Source
CodeIgniter has a very small footprint. The source code is very small sized. Setting up a project is very easy. Follows MVC pattern. Consumes low memory and CPU. Well documented. Has a built-in forum for users to discuss and get the solution for issues. Periodically updates versions and patch fixes etc.
Read full review
SensioLabs
Symfony has become such a standard that many frameworks which previously may have been seen as competition, are actually adopting Symfony components to allow them to focus more on what makes their solution unique. Drupal 8 has replaced much of its low-level internal code with Symfony components. Laravel utilizes much from Symfony and builds on it. CakePHP was my preferred framework over Zend and CodeIgniter, but now I typically prefer Symfony or Laravel depending on the type of application and complexity of what I'm doing.
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Return on Investment
Open Source
  • Because of quick turnaround on portals/intranets, it was easy to offer this as an option to clients.
  • As there is no cost associated with this framework, it was great not having to worry about purchasing or licensing. (MIT License).
  • Community support helps in that there are no ongoing support contracts or costs.
  • No direct representative for one-on-one support, if needed. This can cut into time used on projects.
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SensioLabs
  • One negative thing to point out of Symfony is how painful it is to migrate legacy or relatively old projects from previous versions of Symfony into newer versions.
  • Symfony projects are usually reliable and provide the results you need.
  • Performance can be an issue sometime depending on the kind of project you are working on. Symfony can have some issues with cache.
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