NGINX Plus vs Zend PHP Engine comparison

F5 and Zend are both solutions in the Application Infrastructure category. F5 is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.3, while Zend is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.0. F5 holds a 11.4% mindshare in AIS, compared to Zend’s 1.6% 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 31 NGINX Plus reviews

2,093 Views
1,787 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Zend PHP Engine

Read 11 Zend PHP Engine reviews

503 Views
210 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: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

NGINX Plus vs. Zend PHP Engine

April 2025

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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

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (6th)

Zend PHP Engine

Ranking in Application Infrastructure

15th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Infrastructure category, the mindshare of NGINX Plus is 11.4%, down from 11.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zend PHP Engine is 1.6%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Infrastructure

Featured Reviews

Ritesh-Bakhru

Major Account Manager at Check Point Software

Quick installation and very easy to manage while doing orchestration or automation

NGINX cannot be a replacement for your traditional load balancer with what we use in the network today. However, with applications going toward microservices, NGINX is definitely a way forward. F5 has many traditional load balancing features, so they still need to bring some of those features to NGINX. NGINX is a very basic load balancer and cannot do as many customizations as F5. I think F5 is trying to implement those features in NGINX so they can improve the balancing on NGINX, but I think that will take some time. With the traditional F5 set up, the same OS can do load balancing, firewalls, and even policy enforcement. If we are able to bring some of those capabilities to NGINX, I think it would become a versatile solution and usage would definitely increase.

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SatyendraGupta

External Consultant (Digital Tool Developer and Intervention Specialist) at IQVIA

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

The fact that it is available open-source is the best feature. A general scripting language should be further developed and should be embedded into it. I have been Zend PHP Engine for nine years. Multiple people are using the solution. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.…

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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

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

"Its most valuable features are load balancing and application delivery. This is the most efficient application for these features because of stability and its efficiency."

"The flexibility of its modules allow it to be scalable."

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

"Nginx is simple to configure, very stable in a highly utilized environment and very modular, allowing DevOps to create it's own modules for interactive use with Nginx."

"NGINX works much better than HAProxy in our current hardware and architecture for HTTP/HTTPS load balancing. "

"Nginx is extremely efficient in terms of the connection rate to the CPU cycles ratio, and in terms of the bandwidth to CPU cycles."

"NGINX Plus also has NGINX App Protect. It's a separate module, which is inspired by the F5 apps."

More NGINX Plus pros

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

"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."

"The solution's initial setup process is easy."

"It offers good support for various types of classes, along with many open source libraries that we can readily utilize in our application development process. This gives us a lot of options when it comes to custom development solutions, without having to worry about licensing or other programming-related issues."

"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."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the speed at which it compiles and sends the dynamic cache."

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

More Zend PHP Engine pros

Cons

"Our most challenging part was to run an older PHP website reverse-proxied through NGINX. That was not fun."

"It would be good if NGINX provided a graphical user interface."

"The solution must improve its performance."

"The scalability could be improved."

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

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

"The user interface could be improved."

"There is room for improvement in the pricing model."

More NGINX Plus cons

"The solution can be quicker."

"Although it offers a complete environment to develop and deploy PHP applications, it has some limitations. For example, when the volume of data increased exponentially, I had problems scaling the system."

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

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

More Zend PHP Engine cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The list price of NGINX Plus is close to $5,500."

"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."

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

"You pay for each feature that you want."

"The cost is reasonable."

"NGINX Plus is an open-source solution with limited additional features. When you try to get additional features in the solution, then you need to pay an extra amount to NGINX Plus."

"There's an open-source version of NGINX that is free."

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

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

"Its pricing depends on the number of users."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

University

10%

Government

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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,...

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What do you like most about NGINX Plus?

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

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

My use case involves using the free and open-source version of NGINX, making it cost-effective as I haven't incurred any costs.

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 17% of the time

HAProxy vs NGINX Plus

Compared 16% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs NGINX Plus

Compared 11% of the time

NetScaler vs NGINX Plus

Compared 10% of the time

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

Compared 10% of the time

More NGINX Plus Competitors

Apache Web Server vs Zend PHP Engine

Compared 100% of the time

More Zend PHP Engine Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

NGINX Plus

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Application Infrastructure

March 2025

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

April 2025

Free Report: NGINX Plus vs. Zend PHP Engine

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