Likelihood to Recommend I would say you can use Zend with any project of any size but in a personal experience I would recommend it more for small or medium sized projects. Since the code you will be writing with Zend has more verbosity than the one you can write with other frameworks, that might be a problem to maintain larger projects.
Read full review It's well suited for large eCommerce stores as it requires much effort to set up and the development cost for setting it up is high. It's less appropriate to use Magento where you are looking for quick development and launch of the store. Also, it is required to have a developer or sometimes the entire tech team to manage an e-commerce store, so you may need to hire a few PHP developers.
Read full review Pros Excellent interface for databases. I trust that no bad data will accidentally be injected causing the databases to become corrupt or drop. The routing is really great. We have a lot of custom routing and it makes it very easy to add or adjust routes and ensure they're getting where they need to go. Zend provides so much flexibility in the controllers for dealing with the view. It's so easy to customize the view to render just how you want it. Especially when dealing with a request that may or may not be ajax. Read full review Magento is perfect if our web design client likes a specific pre-made template and wants a fast solution. Magento allows us to customize its open-source code to create additional features and functionality. Magento saves small businesses time and money if they only need a simple solution. Read full review Cons Zend Framework 2 is overly complex for small projects. Zend Framework 2 documentation sometimes overlooks small details, which means you will need to delve into the code directly. Zend Framework 2 bug fixes on GitHub usually take quite a long time to get patched. Read full review Not the simplest of solutions to use or maintain from an end-user perspective Other platforms are better with regards to SEO in our experience Fairly sluggish and slow compared to other platforms without the correct server specification and performance optimization work. Read full review Likelihood to Renew I absolutely love Zend Framework. However we are using Zend Framework 1 and when we get to the point that we need to go Zend Framework 2 (for PHP namespacing) I may explore other frameworks. When we chose Zend it was the best option for us. I'd like to see if maybe there's a better fit that doesn't have the same complicated overhead of Zend Framework
Read full review It's the dominant force in the SMB open source market. With the continued support of eBay/PayPal, Magento will continue to evolve and should be a market leader for some time.
Read full review Usability Zend is very usable once you learn how to use it. I've had moments where I thought what I want to do isn't possible but I've learned I haven't looked in the correct place yet. Zend is a Catch-22. It's very usable once you know how to use it. But I strongly feel it's worth learning
Read full review Support Rating Zend Framework has the best (paid) support and ecosystem I've ever seen in a PHP framework. The company has developed many products, including Zend Server, Zend Debugger, and an Eclipse-based IDE that extends the framework to create an entire development platform that can improve developer productivity and software quality while maintaining the clean architecture that characterizes the framework.
Read full review Alternatives Considered While Zend Framework is similar to Laravel and
Symfony , and seemingly more popular among businesses, I feel like it is harder to use compared to these two. Laravel and
Symfony seem more friendly to the developer in terms of documentation and ease of use, though Zend Framework isn't too far behind and can be more powerful.
Read full review In looking at a different platform to migrate to from Magento 1, we looked primarily at Big Commerce, Shopify and Shopify Plus. Our host was very negative about Magento 2, but we determined after a couple years it was due to the fact it had even more complexity (and very different) than Magento 1. Shopify Plus was attractive, but the cost factor for two sites led us back to Magento 2.
Read full review Return on Investment Overall, Zend PHP Engine has had a positive return on our business objective of creating a medium sized web-application, debugging the application to assess problems before they occur, and to create dynamic API calls via our backend custom software. Read full review Delays in development leads to missed timelines and opportunity loss. High cost of development and maintenance may currently outweigh the growth. Better handling of customer and order information makes for better customer service. Excellent API has been a boon for integration with our ERP Read full review ScreenShots