NGINX Plus vs Zend PHP Engine comparison

F5 and Zend are both solutions in the Application Infrastructure category. F5 is ranked #4 with an average rating of 7.8, while Zend is ranked #14 with an average rating of 7.5. F5 holds a 9.0% mindshare in AIS, compared to Zend’s 1.7% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of F5 users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Zend users who would recommend it.

NGINX Plus

Read 32 NGINX Plus reviews

3,930 Views
1,533 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Zend PHP Engine

Read 11 Zend PHP Engine reviews

547 Views
547 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NGINX Plus

Zend PHP Engine

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

Zend PHP Engine and NGINX Plus compete in web development and server management. NGINX Plus emerges superior with its performance optimization and scalability.

Features: Zend PHP Engine offers robust debugging tools, seamless PHP execution, and code protection. NGINX Plus provides load balancing, advanced security, and high-performance content delivery.

Room for Improvement: Zend PHP Engine could enhance its scalability, expand support for diverse programming environments, and improve integration with modern frameworks. NGINX Plus might simplify initial setup processes, offer more affordable pricing options, and enhance its documentation for better usability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Zend PHP Engine is known for its easy deployment and PHP-focused support. NGINX Plus may require more initial configuration but offers comprehensive setup guides and responsive support for complex environments.

Pricing and ROI: Zend PHP Engine features competitive pricing, enhancing PHP developer productivity. NGINX Plus, despite higher setup costs, offers substantial ROI through performance optimization and server management cost savings.

To learn more, read our detailed NGINX Plus vs. Zend PHP Engine Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

NGINX Plus vs. Zend PHP Engine

February 2026

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

NGINX Plus

Ranking in Application Infrastructure

4th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (8th)

Zend PHP Engine

Ranking in Application Infrastructure

14th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Application Infrastructure category, the mindshare of NGINX Plus is 9.0%, down from 11.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zend PHP Engine is 1.7%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Infrastructure Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
NGINX Plus	9.0%
Zend PHP Engine	1.7%
Other	89.3%

Application Infrastructure

Featured Reviews

Nadeem-Inamdar

Senior Information Security Engineer at a tech company with 10,001+ employees

Advanced policies and web firewall have strengthened application protection and reduced attack traffic

There were some vulnerabilities in F5. They tried to fix it, but the fixes were not available at the time because they were zero days, so they attempted to fix it, but their support was not proper. Their support should be improved because sometimes features which we need for customization take time, and they are sometimes feasible and sometimes not feasible by the team, so their support and the engineering team should improve their product. I would like to see more features regarding customization which should be built into the application, and the tool optimization should be good, and the dashboard should be more crisp and clear.

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Marco Wwrthon

CEO at VonatelNetworks

Effective network data analysis with customization capabilities and an open-source model

We use Zend PHP Engine in a government project to develop a tool for network monitoring analysis. We utilize the tool to collect all the network data for a platform PHP allows us to personalize a solution if the customer desires. This flexibility is beneficial. Zend PHP Engine is a good tool for…

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"NGINX Plus' most valuable feature is the ingress controller."

"NGINX provides a cost advantage, value addition, and effective support."

"When I worked in a security research center, we tested NGINX to support DoS and DDoS attacks, and its results were great."

"Using NGINX Plus for web traffic distribution is fantastic. It offers performance similar to physical load balancers but with added flexibility."

"The best solution, by far, for web traffic control for things in production and just around the house."

"The web application firewall feature has helped enhance security for our applications because most of the attacks which are performed on our website are being blocked by it, so the web application firewall is good."

"I need to highlight that the number one thing about NGINX is that it is free."

"The most valuable features are the gateway and the ability to publish to sites."

More NGINX Plus pros

"Offers a complete environment to develop PHP applications. It is valuable because it allows you to have a complete stack (PHP, MySQL, Zend Server) enabling the building of a development environment, and to deploy to the production system."

"Zend PHP Engine is a good tool for developing and collecting data, offering strong performance."

"Zend Engine is the core of PHP. It makes PHP fast, efficient, and basically, the language of choice for web applications."

"Scaling up is an important factor for large projects, and with PHP 7 and its performance improvements, this becomes even easier."

"This solution is really easy for me to use."

"The Zend Framework provides an easy, open source way to produce coding based on the needs of our customers."

"Zend PHP Engine is more secure than any other framework, and I usually prefer Zend PHP Engine for big applications."

"We have not encountered issues with scalability as long as we effectively use caching to optimize performance of our web applications as well as a proper use of database connectivity."

More Zend PHP Engine pros

Cons

"The solution needs to be easier to setup and deploy."

"One area of improvement could be that NGINX could provide a means to generate self-signed SSL certificates."

"NGINX Plus is moderately priced, but it could give better value for money."

"The center management system could be improved."

"I would like the configuration process to be more simplified."

"Only improvement needed that I would point to is scalability. With it, I mean clusterized organisation on a low level. At the moment, the best alternative is RHEL HA."

"The drawback is that you must obtain a license for everything."

"Lack of a feature to print data on the terminal for verification of network traffic during debugging and testing."

More NGINX Plus cons

"SQL queries have always been an issue with PHP, especially if you use large tables, which require caution from the side of the developer."

"Integration of MVC with ORM tools for PHP is okay, but lacking a short list of decent ORM tools for PHP to choose from; there is ample room for improvement in both areas."

"The main area that Zend needs to improve is to support asynchronous programming tasks, which is facilitated in PHP 7, but not at the same degree as HHVM."

"Its object oriented programming language needs improvement."

"The biggest problem with PHP is you have to write lot of conditions or have to use a framework."

"A general scripting language should be further developed and should be embedded into it."

"Zend PHP Engine needs to improve the loading time of its libraries and make it faster."

"In terms of improvement, it doesn't support concurrent processing. When we want to process anything on a concurrent basis, we have to divide it into a number of things, like a queue, or we have to run it using Cron jobs. We would like to have the capability to run any thread or process in parallel."

More Zend PHP Engine cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You pay for each feature that you want."

"The solution is free, but you can spend a lot of money with a complex solution."

"It's an open source solution, so it's free."

"The cost is reasonable."

"I use the solution's community edition which is free of cost."

"NGINX Plus is worth it, if you need it. If you do not need the features or support, the free and open source package is more than capable. "

"The price is the cost to contract support with a specialized company, usually during consulting hours."

"I am not so happy with their pricing policy, but this is not the worse thing in my life. I can tolerate it."

More NGINX Plus pricing and cost advice

"No problem with pricing and licensing, as tools are open source. You have to consider training cost, mindset setup cost, as part of the TCO."

"Zend PHP Engine is not an expensive solution."

"The solution is open source and you just pay for the server cost."

"Its pricing depends on the number of users."

"The Zend PHP engine is open source technology, so there's no need for us to worry about licensing or other costs."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

Comms Service Provider

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	11

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Large Enterprise	2

Questions from the Community

Which is better - IIS or NGINX Plus?

IIS is a flexible, secure, and manageable web server to host anything on the web. IIS’s scalable and open architecture can handle the most demanding tasks. From media streaming to web applications,...

See all answers

What do you like most about NGINX Plus?

It performs very well. That's one of the primary reasons we use NGINX.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX Plus?

Pricing is reasonable and that is fine.

See all answers

What do you like most about Zend PHP Engine?

The fact that it is available open-source is the best feature.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zend PHP Engine?

PHP is an open-source solution.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Zend PHP Engine?

Integrating AI tools would make PHP more competitive, as other tools already have AI features.

See all answers

Comparisons

IIS vs NGINX Plus

Compared 16% of the time

Apache Web Server vs NGINX Plus

Compared 13% of the time

HAProxy vs NGINX Plus

Compared 9% of the time

NetScaler vs NGINX Plus

Compared 9% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs NGINX Plus

Compared 8% of the time

More NGINX Plus Competitors

Apache Web Server vs Zend PHP Engine

Compared 31% of the time

Atos DirX Directory vs Zend PHP Engine

Compared 26% of the time

More Zend PHP Engine Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

NGINX Plus

January 2026

Download NGINX Plus product report

Buyer's Guide

Application Infrastructure

January 2026

Download Zend PHP Engine product report

Also Known As

NGINX

PHP Engine

Overview

NGINX Plus is a versatile solution that offers load balancing, caching, proxying, and API deployment capabilities. It can be deployed on private or public clouds and is ideal for building CDN solutions. The solution can also be used to secure web applications and replace web services like Apache.

NGINX has helped organizations improve functioning, reduce downtimes, and offer a DevOps-friendly solution. Its community support and documentation are highly regarded, and its configuration is more straightforward, making it a recommended choice over HAProxy.

The Zend PHP Engine is designed to optimize PHP code and improve performance, making it a popular choice for web developers. It is easy to use, stable, does not require a lot of code, is open source, and only requires payment for server costs. The initial setup is straightforward, and there is no real need to set up the solution because it's built into the deployment.

Zend

Sample Customers

Locaweb, AppNexus, Wix, Reliam, Montana Interactive, MuleSoft, Warpwire, Discovery Education, InkaBinka, WordPress.com, Gogo, GOV.UK, NASA

Cisco

Buyer's Guide

NGINX Plus vs. Zend PHP Engine

February 2026

Free Report: NGINX Plus vs. Zend PHP Engine

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