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 8.2, while Zend is ranked #16 with an average rating of 8.0. F5 holds a 11.8% mindshare in AIS, compared to Zend’s 1.4% 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

2,427 Views
1,999 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Zend PHP Engine

Read 11 Zend PHP Engine reviews

510 Views
232 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NGINX Plus

Zend PHP Engine

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between NGINX Plus and Zend PHP Engine based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Application Infrastructure solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed NGINX Plus vs. Zend PHP Engine Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

NGINX Plus vs. Zend PHP Engine

January 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) (5th)

Zend PHP Engine

Ranking in Application Infrastructure

16th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Application Infrastructure category, the mindshare of NGINX Plus is 11.8%, up from 11.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zend PHP Engine is 1.4%, 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 best solution, by far, for web traffic control for things in production and just around the house."

"I find the solution’s community support and documentation most valuable. Compared to HAProxy, have found a lot of documentation and community support on Quora. If you would be asking me as a developer whether to choose this product, I would recommend this since it has good community support, documentation, and signature updates. The configuration of HAProxy is also very tedious. However, NGINX’s configuration is very simple."

"Supports IMAP, POP and SMTP protocols for the reverse proxy."

"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 primary valuable feature of NGINX for me is its ability to provide a reverse proxy."

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

"It's lightweight software that can handle heavy loads efficiently."

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

More NGINX Plus pros

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

"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."

"The cache modules that Zend provides have been able to optimize and accelerate the loading of the pages when there was exponential growth in data volume and quantity of requests. At the same time, the monitoring console allowed us to have a real-time understanding of the resources and to make decisions when they were at the limit."

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

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

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

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

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."

"The KPI should be more focused on load balancing and the latency in application calling from the end system."

"The user interface could be improved."

"The solution must improve its performance."

"Initially, I experienced hiccups whenever I installed the application. As with any application, there were initial issues, however, after receiving support, everything was rectified."

"I would suggest adding GUI-based configuration panels to NGINX Plus to simplify setup and management tasks."

"Make modules easier to enable or disable. The beauty and ugly side of the NGINX modules is you have to know how to compile the module. For beginners or non-very technical aspirant(s) going for NGINX, they have to learn how to compile the modules."

"The center management system could be improved."

More NGINX Plus cons

"The process of installing and configuring the product is a bit complex and could be improved."

"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."

"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."

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

"Its object oriented programming language needs improvement."

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

"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

"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."

"Compared to other similar solutions on the market, I think it's over-priced."

"NGINX is a free tool in Brazil. There are some companies which do support it."

"You pay for each feature that you want."

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

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

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

"Nginx is free. I don't have experience with the Plus version."

More NGINX Plus pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

"Its pricing depends on the number of users."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Government

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

University

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,...

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.

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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 19% of the time

HAProxy vs NGINX Plus

Compared 18% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs NGINX Plus

Compared 12% of the time

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

Compared 10% of the time

NetScaler vs NGINX Plus

Compared 9% 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

January 2025

Download NGINX Plus product report

Buyer's Guide

Application Infrastructure

January 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

January 2025

Free Report: NGINX Plus vs. Zend PHP Engine

Find out what your peers are saying about NGINX Plus vs. Zend PHP Engine and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

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