23 Best PHP IDEs Compared

14 February, 2011

By Simone D'Amico

The acronym IDE stands for Integrated Development Environment. An IDE is a software used to develop code quickly by allowing us to save time as much as possible.

In this article we will see 23 IDE used to develop PHP code. Some are very famous and used even within the largest companies. Others are less known but certainly very valid.

Let’s see what IDEs are included in the article.

Comparison Table

The table below quickly summarizes the review and contains comparison of features, prices and frameworks / CMSs supported by the IDEs.

Eclipse with PDT

The PDT project provides a PHP Development Tools framework for the Eclipse platform. This project encompasses all development components necessary to develop PHP and facilitate extensibility. It leverages the existing Web Tools Platform (WTP) and Dynamic Languages Toolkit (DLTK) in providing developers with PHP capabilities.

Link: http://www.eclipse.org/pdt/

Komodo IDE

Whether you develop for Windows, Mac or Linux—or all three—Komodo is a fast, full-featured IDE that you can rely on. Komodo IDE has a wealth of features to help you get your development work done faster, while staying out of your way so you can focus on your code. Komodo IDE 6 adds a Database Explorer, Publishing, a re-designed Places/Project Manager and is much faster.

Link: http://www.activestate.com/komodo-ide

phpDesigner 7

phpDesigner 7 is more than just a powerful and lightning fast PHP IDE and PHP EDITOR - it’s also a full-featured HTML-, CSS- and JavaScript editor boosted with features so you can get your work done — for both beginners and professional developers! It assists you with everything from editing, analyzing, debugging to publishing websites powered by PHP, HTML, CSS to JavaScript plus other languages! phpDesigner 7 supports not only working with your favorite PHP frameworks but also popular JavaScript frameworks jQuery, Ext JS, YUI, Dojo, MooTools and Prototype!

Link: http://www.mpsoftware.dk/phpdesigner.php

NuSphere PhpED

PhpED is the Integrated Development Environment for PHP (PHP IDE), HTML, CSS, XML, SMARTY, XHTML and other.
Balanced combination of advanced code editor, reliable dbg debugger, productive database connectivity client and fast and secure deployment abilities make PhpED a complete solution for most sophisticated developer needs.

Link: http://www.nusphere.com/products/phped.htm

PHPEdit

PHPEdit is an integrated development environment specialized for PHP, the most popular web scripting language in the world. PHPEdit integrates all the tools you will need to carry out your web application projects. Whether you are a student learning the technology, or a veteran professional with a skilled team, PHPEdit will bring the best out of you by increasing your efficiency and by making your life easier.

Link: http://www.phpedit.com

Zend Studio

Zend Studio is a professional-grade PHP IDE (Integrated Development Environment). It has been designed to maximize developer productivity by enabling you to develop and maintain code faster, solve application problems quickly and improve team collaboration.

Link: http://www.zend.com/products/studio/

NetBeans

The NetBeans project offers a version of the IDE tailor-made for developing PHP web sites that comprise a variety of scripting and mark-up languages. The PHP editor is dynamically integrated with HTML, JavaScript and CSS editing features. Focus on the code and speed up code scanning by excluding individual directories in the Project properties. The NetBeans IDE fully supports iterative development, so testing PHP projects follows the classic patterns familiar to web developers.

Link: http://netbeans.org/features/php/

Aptana Studio

Aptana Studio is the world’s leading IDE for building open web applications. It offers unprecedented support for web app development combined with today’s popular Web platforms. Some of its features are:

HTML, CSS, and JavaScript Code Assist
Integrated Debugger
Git Integration
Built-in Terminal
IDE Customization
File Transfer & Synchronization
DOM Outline View

Link: http://aptana.com

Dreamweaver

Adobe® Dreamweaver® CS5 software empowers designers and developers to build standards-based websites with confidence. Design visually or directly in code, develop pages with content management systems, and accurately test browser compatibility thanks to integration with Adobe BrowserLab, a new Adobe CS Live online service.* CS Live services are complimentary for a limited time.

Link: http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/

PsPad

The universal freeware editor, useful for people who:

work with plain text – the editor has a wealth of formatting functions, including a spell checker
create web pages – as a web authoring editor, PSPad contains many unique tools that save your time
want to use a good IDE for their compiler – PSPad catches and parses compiler output, integrates external help files, compares versions and much more.

Link: http://www.pspad.com/

Dev-PHP IDE

Dev-PHP is a well-featured integrated development environment (IDE). You’ll be able to create scripts and applications using the PHP scripting language and the PHP-GTK library (both included in the “PHP Package”). It is free software under the GNU General Public License, which means you can freely modify or use the source code under the terms of the license.

Link: http://devphp.sourceforge.net/

Rapid PHP 2010

Rapid PHP editor is a powerful, quick and sophisticated PHP editor with features of a fully-loaded PHP IDE and speed of the Notepad. Convenient features enable you to instantly create and edit not only PHP, but also HTML, XHTML, CSS and JavaScript code, while integrated tools allow you to easily debug, validate, reuse, navigate and format your code. Whether you are a professional developer or pure enthusiast, with Rapid PHP editor you can get your job done faster, save time and increase productivity.

Link: http://www.blumentals.net/rapidphp/

CodeLobster

Codelobster PHP Edition streamlines and simplifies php development process. You don’t need to keep in mind names of functions, arguments, tags and their attributes; methods etc – we’ve implemented it for you in the autocomplete feature for PHP, HTML, JavaScript and even CSS. Also, you can always get necessary help information by F1 or using special Help control. Internal free PHP Debugger allows validating code locally. It automatically detects your current server settings and configures corresponding files in order you can use the Debugger.

Link: http://www.codelobster.com/

gPHPedit

gPHPEdit comes with a wide array of features catering specifically to your HTML/PHP/CSS editing requirements. On top of being lightweight and fast it comes with the following features that makes web development using gPHPEdit a pleasurable experiences.

Link: http://www.gphpedit.org

Quanta Plus

Quanta Plus is a highly stable and feature rich web development environment. The vision with Quanta has always been to start with the best architectural foundations, design for efficient and natural use and enable maximal user extensibility. Pretty much everything in Quanta is designed so you can extend it. Even the way it handles XML DTDs is based on XML files you can edit. You can even import DTDs, write scripts to manage editor contents, visually create dialogs for your scripts and assign script actions to nearly any file operation in a project. You can even look at and communicate with a wide range of what happens inside Quanta using DCOP.

Link: http://quanta.kdewebdev.org/

PHP Storm

PhpStorm is a lightweight and smart PHP IDE focused on developer productivity that deeply understands your code, provides smart code completion, quick navigation and on-the-fly error checking. It is always ready to help you shape your code, run unit-tests or provide visual debugging.

Link: http://www.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/

ShishKabab PHP IDE

ShishKabab PHP IDE is an Open Source PHP IDE based on QT4/KDE4 technology. It was created with the intent to be a free IDE which is stable, fast.

Link: http://www.shishkabab.net/skphpide.html

EngInSite

EngInSite PHP Editor allows you to create, edit, run, and debug PHP 4 and PHP 5 scripts from an integrated development environment (IDE). Your productivity with EngInSite PHP Editor will double. EngInSite PHP Editor is designed in a way that makes the learning curve as easy and short as possible.

Great help system
Intelligent Intellisense and Autocomplete. At last the PHP Editor will see the difference between public and private functions of the class.
Hint system that knows all 3079 main PHP functions
Unique architecture emulates HTTP server behavior right in your Editor’s output window.
You don’t have to spend valuable time on configuring your environment – EngInSite PHP Editor does it all for you.
Use Unicode and UTF8 in your script

Link: http://www.enginsite.com

TSW WebCoder

WebCoder is a complete package for the demanding web developer, with excellent support for HTML, CSS, PHP and JavaScript. WebCoder is very easy to use, but extremely powerful, and it will help you make beautiful, valid and dynamic websites in a jiff, saving you both time and money. Starting at a low $49.99 for the Light edition, WebCoder is a great investment for both hobby webmasters and professionel website creators.

Link: http://www.tswwebcoder.com/

PHP Studio 2010

PHP Studio 2010 is an easy-to-use and comprehensive development solution for PHP based websites and applications. This advanced PHP editor has many features that will streamline complete development process of editing, debugging and deploying of PHP applications for both beginner and professional web engineers.

Link: http://www.cayoren.com/PHP-Studio/

Bluefish

Bluefish is a powerful editor targeted towards programmers and webdesigners, with many options to write websites, scripts and programming code. Bluefish supports many programming and markup languages, and it focuses on editing dynamic and interactive websites.

Link: http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/

Maguma

Maguma Studio is the source-level IDE, equipped with all the features known from other languages’ development environments. Through tight integration of the PHP interpreter and the PHP documentation, Maguma Studio gives developers a time-saving development tool. Features full integration of the PHP interpreter and the PHP documentation (through “function insight” and F1-key popup manual pages), integrated preview window, full syntax highlighting for HTML and PHP, Auto Complete for frequently used text constructs, tag buttons and all the standard editing functions like almost unlimited undo, copy and paste, searching, etc. Studio is smaller and faster loading than other PHP IDEs.