PHP vs ASP.NET vs Java EE: the 2010 view, and today’s
How the three big web platforms compared in 2010 on cost, support and hosting, and how much of that still holds.
From the archive: in 2010 I shared a comparison table by another author on my old blog. This is a short summary in my own words, with what changed since.
In 2010, a popular comparison put the three big web stacks side by side:
- PHP (LAMP): no licence costs, cheap hosting everywhere, huge community. The usual worry was code quality across many hands.
- ASP.NET: excellent tools, but tied to Windows Server and often SQL Server, so licences added up.
- Java EE (J2EE): free in principle and strong in big enterprises, but heavier to run and slower to develop with.
What changed
Most of the cost argument is gone. .NET is now open source and runs on Linux, Java EE became Jakarta EE, and modern PHP (8.x) is fast and far stricter than in 2010. Today the better question isn’t which platform is best, but which one your team knows well, which one fits your hosting, and which one you can keep secure and updated for years.