PhpStorm Reviews & Insights

Score9.1 out of 10

96 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for PhpStorm are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Intuitive User Interface: Several reviewers have praised the intuitive and user-friendly interface of PhpStorm, stating that it allows for efficient completion of tasks. Users found it easy to navigate and appreciated features such as running SQL commands directly from the software, eliminating the need for additional clients.

Shortcut Keys Enhance Productivity: Many users have highlighted the availability of shortcut keys in PhpStorm, mentioning how they greatly assisted in the coding process and enhanced productivity. This feature allows developers to quickly execute commands and perform actions without relying solely on the mouse.

Assistive Features Improve Coding Experience: Numerous reviewers have expressed their appreciation for the auto-generation of assistive features in PhpStorm, such as autocomplete and tooltips from PHPDoc comments. These features not only make coding faster but also reduce errors by providing helpful suggestions and reminders.

Reviews

20 Reviews

PhpStorm is the ideal IDE for any serious PHP or WordPress developer

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

April 30, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

PhpStorm is the preferred IDE for my development team. We use it to build our websites, leveraging it's fantastic feature set and AI features to speed and ease the development of our small and large scale projects. It makes managing projects in git significantly easier along with things like code completion, error handling, validation, etc.

Pros

git version control in software is superior to any other product
resolving merge conflicts is a breeze in comparison to other tools and is built in
switching between different projects in a simple interface makes managing multiple sites significantly easier
latest AI integrations make working with modern AI significantly easier

Cons

Some of the newest github copilot features lag behind what's being done in vs code and would be nice if more of the newer features were brought over though this has greatly improved recently
Interface can be a little overwhelming for newcomers
Some features like rainbow brackets should be native rather than addon

Likelihood to Recommend

Any developer that wants to level up their game and move beyond the free tools available should consider using PhptStorm or other Jetbrains IDE. They are ideal for developers where version control is important and provide most of the vital features developers need out of the box compared to free alternatives.

Mark Davoli

Director, Web Development at Amsive (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

8 years of experience

Verified on LinkedIn

PhpStorm is the best

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

April 29, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use it for the entire technological aspect of our systems developed with Laravel. We find its performance, indexing, and versatility to be able to install plugins that help further enhance the IDE quite useful.The integrated AI tool is also quite useful for generating generic or basic code that is tedious to constantly generate.

Pros

IA
Indexing
Searching

Cons

Diagrams
Selecting Code
DB

Likelihood to Recommend

In general, PhpStorm is a very complete IDE, although it is good for small projects, its strength is the management of large projects, its indexing helps you know where things are, its search engine is wonderful, and as I mentioned before, it becomes even more powerful with its plugins to enhance weak points, its integrated AI tool is very good, both for generating code, resolving doubts or refactoring complete flows.

Verified User

Employee in Information Technology (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

Unparalleled PHP Editor

Rating: 10 out of 10

April 25, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use PhpStorm to write code for Drupal website. It does a great job indexing the codebase and providing us with code completion and navigation. We also use its version control features as well as its ability to synchronize code with remote servers. We switch between multiple environments and branches.

Pros

Code Completion
Symbol Navigation
Merge Resolution

Cons

Too many features enabled by default

Likelihood to Recommend

PhpStorm is great for writing PHP code bases of any size. It's a nice general purpose text editor, but the high memory usage makes it inappropriate for small editing situations. However, if you have a serious application, especially built on one of the major frameworks like Symphony or Laravel, the ability to navigate within the codebase is unparalleled.

Tyler Brown Cifu Shuster

Chief Engineer in Research & Development at FivePaths, LLC (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

View profile

Great software with plenty of integrations and purpose built for a specific language making it way easier to use

Rating: 10 out of 10

April 1, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use PhpStorm daily to make the development of web applications easier and better. AI is built right in, along with a ton of debug tools and git integration. Couldn't do my job as efficiently without this software. The marketplace of plugins for it is very large and supports almost any thing you can think of. It makes debugging much easier with Xdebug built in, allowing you to pinpoint issues and see the data behind the scenes with ease. The git integration makes managing the repo and resolving conflicts simple with easy GUI screens to do actions on the git repo. The AI tools available for it integrate very well, allowing one click modifications from the AI responses. The unified platform between JetBrains software makes it very easy to get started as they all follow the same design principles, making the learning curve between their software easy.

Pros

Git
AI
Search
Autosave
DB integrations
Code indexing

Cons

Can be slow at times
The JetBrains AI needs to have modifications built in rather than having to copy and paste the changes
Setting up Xdebug can be difficult

Likelihood to Recommend

It is great in a team setting where collaboration is needed. The AI integration works very well and makes it easier to get code completed. The search is incredibly good when you need to find lines of code somewhere. They also have the ability to collaborate with teammates directly in the software, allowing teammates to view your code in realtime with you and review code and make changes like a Google Doc.

Verified User

Director in Information Technology (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

9 years of experience

PhpStorm Review

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

May 1, 2024

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use PhpStorm to design our projects using Laravel and VueJS frameworks. PhpStorm allows us to run commands and tie into databases all from 1 interface.

Pros

Indexing Code
Plugin Support
Efficiency

Cons

Different Licensing structure.

Likelihood to Recommend

It is less appropriate if it's a casual user that doesn't want to pay a yearly license fee.

Verified User

C-Level Executive in Information Technology (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

PHPStorm - swiss knife for development websites on PHP

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

May 1, 2024

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

PHPStorm is used for all development on all web languages we use inside company: PHP, Javascript, Typescript, nodejs, vue, HTML, - everything.

PHPStorm is used daily for writing websoftware that is used by our clients.

Pros

Inspection of PHP code, hints
Refactoring of existing code, searching for how some class/function is used
Integration to various tools: git, xdebug, phpstan
editing code
Writing websites

Cons

AI tools - there are already integration, but it does not yet work correctly (of course, this is probably with AI itself)
Writing simple extensions for PHPStorm itself

Likelihood to Recommend

PHPStorm is suited for all developers who write code for websites on PHP, HTML, Javascript, HTML, etc. PHPStorm is especially very powerfull in understanding your code and working with the code. You can consider PHPStorm as swiss knife that have quite a lot of tools in it.
However, I can't imagine my work without PHPStorm at this point - it really saves me hundred of hours/ year, especially at refactoring tasks.

PHPStorm requires quite amount of RAM to work correctly, so it might not be best solution for low-end machines or just fast and simple file edits.

Oleg Liski

Web Artisan in Information Technology at Artisansoft Oy (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

15 years of experience

View profile

PHPStorm is a tool to improve productivity and reduce PHP development costs

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

May 1, 2024

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

It helps our developers to code faster, bringing a lot of tools that they use on a day to day basis. Being a complete IDE it also helps with git repository management, and even denies the need of separated small tools like ssh terminals, again saving a lot of time and greatly reducing the risk of mistakes.

Pros

Code check and autocomplete
Git management
Remote Development

Cons

Overall performance
SSH terminal
IA tools integration

Likelihood to Recommend

I think PHPStorm is one of the best (if not the best) IDE on the market for PHP development in general, and that it is capable of improving development performance for most teams. It may be not so very well suited for companies that uses less popular technologies, where PHPStorm would not be able to integrate.

Verified User

Team Lead in Information Technology (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

PhpStorm The biggest Technical Debt in the Industry

Rating: 7 out of 10

December 14, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Finally they get the ide right, after many years of broken stuff, at last its not a total pos, now if it will just learn to not keep overwriting my settings and forcing updates.

Pros

git tool is great

Cons

no more community plugins
plugins created by the comunity are stipid
no one makes plugins that dont break
vet your community devs, they make you look bad

Likelihood to Recommend

PhpStorm will eat your HDD, this is # 3 I've replaced since 2016. you will need a ssd and at least 16gb of ram.

Verified User

Engineer in Corporate (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

PhpStorm, Versioning and Database all in one

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

November 25, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

The University's development team used PhpStorm.

Pros

Version Control: Git, Subversion, and Others.
Alerts about code being developed, alerts like errors, discontinuation of some function, suggestions for improvements.
Application database access can run SQL commands directly from PhpStorm without having to have any other clients open.
Shortcut keys that assist in the coding process.

Cons

After some version updates, the application started to slow down to initialize or perform some operations.
The process for initializing the source code debugging is a bit obscure, so I had to resort to videos teaching how to execute.

Likelihood to Recommend

It is ideal for backend or even frontend developers. With versioning facilities and access to different databases, all in one application.
Not interesting when you need to make minor adjustments/maintenance to third party codes, punctual things since it takes a long time to initialize.

Diego Pacheco

Diego Pacheco in Information Technology at Universidade Estadual de Ciencias da Saude de Alagoas - UNCISAL (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

PHPStorm is a flexible and feature-rich IDE for large codebases

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

October 15, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We're a mid-sized web agency that plans and builds large-scale CMS implementations for our clients. Often, we use Drupal - and that means working with a righteous heap of PHP. Developers and architects have the flexibility to choose their own tools, but quite a few of us have settled on PHPStorm due to its solid integration with tools like Vagrant, XDebug, and assorted source control systems. Its ability to scan a codebase and build an autocomplete/tooltip database out of the code's PHPDoc comments is invaluable, and it brings work on a large PHP codebase a bit closer to the luxurious Visual Studio experience.

Pros

Auto-generation of assistive features like autocomplete and tooltips from a project's own PHPDoc comments.
Simple configuration of popular PHP debugging tools that work even when they're running inside a virtual machine.
Simple plugin and template formats that make customizing the environment easy for centrally managed teams.

Cons

PHPStorm can be sluggish loading large codebases, especially if it hasn't had time to parse and cache all of the metadata yet.

Likelihood to Recommend

For small codebases, PHPStorm might be overkill — simpler editors are probably good enough. But if you're wrangling large projects with a complex tree of composer dependencies, complex coding standards, deep class hierarchies, and wacky custom plugin architectures, PHPStorm will save your bacon.

Jeff Eaton

Senior Digital Strategist in Professional Services at Lullabot (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

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