Symfony Reviews & Insights

Score10 out of 10

28 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

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

Pros

Versatile and Suitable: Many users have found Sonata Admin for Symfony to be a versatile framework that is suitable for various purposes, including the admin part of their website and ERP systems. Some reviewers have mentioned its usage in high-load projects, such as a custom affiliate marketing system that processes over 180 million requests per day.

Easy to Learn and Well-supported: Several users have stated that Sonata Admin is easy to learn for PHP developers and benefits from a large community that offers thorough support. They also appreciate the well-written documentation, which emphasizes the importance of viewing the correct version.

Modularity and Integration: Users highly value the modularity of Symfony, allowing them to choose and use only the specific parts they need. They have experienced seamless integration with other PHP libraries and frameworks without encountering any issues.

Symfony Reviews

6 Reviews

Using Symfony for a wide variety of projects

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

May 14, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I have used Symfony a couple of times in the past both working on personal projects, as a freelance developer and at least a couple of times with different employers. Symfony is one of those PHP frameworks that at first had way too many things but with time, it started to become a simpler and more efficient framework to build simple to robust applications. In my personal experience, I used Symfony for projects which varied from small API's, console applications to robust web scalable systems. I had the chance to participate in projects where Symfony was used for lead generation projects, custom API's for mobile applications and small personal projects. The main reason why Symfony was used most of the times was the available documentation and the large community of developers supporting it.

Pros

Your coding speed will be increased thanks for Symfony Flex, a feature based on Symfony Recipes, a set of automated instructions to integrate third-party packages into your application.
The learning curve is just great for any kind of developer, from a junior to a senior, thanks to all the great documentation you will be able to get up to speed in a could of hours with any kind of application.
The code quality of Symfony makes it, as of today, one of the best architected and cleanest PHP frameworks available.

Cons

Performance can be an issue sometimes, especially with older versions of Symfony.
For some developers it might be challenging to start working with Symfony. While the learning curve isn't necessarily too bad, any developer willing to work with this framework, junior or senior, must have some strong architectural knowledge. If your software architecture knowledge is weak you might find yourself struggling trying to understand some of the design patterns used when working with Symfony.
Symfony comes with a significant number of external dependencies. Your custom modules will rely on a strict architecture and you will be forced at some point to spend a significant amount of time doing a lot of testing. This can slow down the development process.

Likelihood to Recommend

Any small project which you want to have ready in a couple of hours would be probably a bad candidate for using Symfony. Even the most seasoned senior developer can easily spend hours or days creating a small MVP with Symfony. While Symfony's learning curve isn't necessarily bad and will depend a lot on the architectural knowledge of the developer itself, because of the modularity required by Symfony you will need to spend a significant amount of time coding. If you are looking for a quick project, perhaps this framework isn't the best solution.

Robust applications can benefit from Symfony's architecture. I have participated in projects on different industries including lead generation, marketing and even some micro-services for other industries which use Symfony. Because of how thorough the framework has been architected, you will have a reliable solution.

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

Symfony is a flexible and well supported php framework but I consider Laravel better at everything.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

March 19, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Symfony was the chosen framework to build the website. It was chosen primarily for the community support and opinionated structure that is suited for large projects from the beginning.

Pros

Symfony bundles are libraries that are very easy to download and start using in minutes.
The default directory structure is very abstracted and decoupled and ready for large projects that require a lot of flexibility.
The support from the community is very thorough and the documentation is well written if you remember to view the correct version.

Cons

There are so many ways to do things that FAQs around the internet may not work for the way you did it.
The default database ORM doctrine is not well documented and has a large learning curve when optimizing for high traffic.
Matching the Symfony version with your selection of bundles makes it difficult to upgrade bundles because many things change between updates.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you need to use a Linux stack and you have something against Laravel, which I consider a simplified, optimized, and better documented version of Symfony, you should go with Symfony. But if you are inheriting a Symfony project, I would just try to upgrade it to the latest Symfony rather than switch to Laravel. Symfony can be very confusing to junior developers and its flexibility results in them writing bad code if they don't invest time into reading the whole documentation and studying the best practice examples.

James Hilton

Director Of Development in Engineering at LabRoots (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

View profile

Symfony

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

March 12, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Symfony in our department for the backend of our applications. In the past, we used it for some microservices as well, but switched to a more performant language, as PHP was holding us back.

Pros

Good documentation
Well built component system
Choose what you want to use, not all-inclusive. Helps keep things small and more easily understood.

Cons

Config.yml definitions are fairly complex to write and understand.

Likelihood to Recommend

Symfony is well suited for developing anywhere from simple to complex backends for web applications. I would even say it is suitable for developing APIs and services if you need to stay in the PHP realm. I see no major drawbacks to Symfony aside from the limitations of its core PHP language, not the framework itself.

Daniel Petrie

Software Developer in Information Technology at Illuminate Education, Inc. (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

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The new standard in PHP libraries

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

January 11, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

The Symfony framework underpins several of the applications that we use. Most notably, is it used by Drupal 8 core, and so it makes its way into many of our client projects. We have also used components of Symfony directly in other PHP web applications, as we find that it puts a lot of industry-standard practices in place saving us time and headaches. It's easy to use and always getting better.

Pros

Symfony covers all of the bases that one might expect from a PHP framework, it can essentially be a one-stop-shop for the lower-level components you might need when developing a PHP application.
Symfony is a fully modular library, allowing you to easily use only the parts you want, easily plug it into other systems, and easily augment or replace parts of it with other libraries.
Symfony plays nicely with other code. We've never had an issue using it with any other PHP library or framework we've come across.

Cons

It's hard to fault Symfony for much of anything today. There are occasional security issues, but they are typically handled professionally and patched quickly.
Symfony can be a heavyweight solution if you don't really need a framework. This isn't really a fault with Symfony, since it does allow you to only use the components you need.

Likelihood to Recommend

If someone is writing a PHP application and looking to determine which framework would be best suited, I think Symfony is almost always a great choice. I sometimes prefer to use other frameworks or tools that were built with Symfony, such as Laravel or Drupal 8, but unless you need more than what Symfony offers, then using Symfony directly is simple and powerful.

Ben McClure

Head of Development Technologies in Research & Development at Top Floor Technologies (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

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Symfony: For Complex Enterprise Scalable Products

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

July 31, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Symfony PHP framework for the development of the majority of the projects within the company. Some of the projects use Symfony for the front-end (for example, www.grossum.com) as well as the back-end. Symfony as a back-end is used for most of the mobile apps as well as the web. From all the research our developers have done and their experience, Symfony is one of the most convenient frameworks for complex projects.

Pros

Sonata Admin for Symfony is very versatile and we've used it for both the admin part of our website (even created a landing page constructor using it) and for the ERP system we've developed for inside use.
It is easy to learn if you know PHP and the community is quite large so you can easily find experts to help you with issues.
It's good for high-load projects. We have used it for the back-end of a custom affiliate marketing system that currently processes over 180 million requests per day.

Cons

For less complex projects, Laravel or Silex (or even WordPress) can be used. Symfony is better for enterprise products than just for the fun of it.
There are always debates regarding Sonata Admin for Symfony, but while there are people who dislike it, we use it and heavily rely on it.

Likelihood to Recommend

Symfony is good for ensuring scalability of the project (granted, you also would require a cloud for that, but that's another topic), therefore it is a good framework to use if you are thinking about creating an enterprise product. Symfony's documentation is also done quite well, so that's another advantage because you can easily trace the changes and find out what happened when.

Symfony isn't the ideal choice for a small-scale website simply because there are other frameworks and CMS that would do that quicker and easier. If you, however, need strong backend for a project, Symfony's your mate.

Zee Gimon

Digital Operations Manager in Marketing at The App Solutions (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

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The best php framework

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

November 10, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Symfony is our main development framework, its stack or base components make up 100% of our products. We have built not just products purchased by other companies but also platforms for our internal consumption and company management. Accounting, Reporting, E-Commerce, Blogs and Bots are just a few of the areas where we have been using Symfony. Using Symfony allows us to speed up the development process and know for sure that it is strongly supported by its robust community.

Pros

RAD, with it, and with a huge set of bundles; you can start and leverage a project in just a few weeks.
Support for BC, its strong commitment on semantic versioning and not introducing any BC break in any minor version.
Evolving, its community and its main developers are always pushing forward on new components and enhancements.

Cons

Micro services architecture, even with the new introduction of flex it has a lot of room for support and enhance this pattern.
Form component, this component its always facing challenges on how to be more flexible and more easy to use and will has room for improvement.
Support and enhancement for non blocking /async programming with reactphp.

Likelihood to Recommend

Symfony is a strong framework because of its strong set of components. Its architecture allows Symfony to grow and allows us to use what we need. It is well suited for both small bots, console commands, micro services and big monoliths.

Yasmany Cubela Medina

Scrum Master And Development Team Lead in Information Technology at PrimosHome (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

View profile

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Using Symfony for a wide variety of projects

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

May 14, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Your coding speed will be increased thanks for Symfony Flex, a feature based on Symfony Recipes, a set of automated instructions to integrate third-party packages into your application.
The learning curve is just great for any kind of developer, from a junior to a senior, thanks to all the great documentation you will be able to get up to speed in a could of hours with any kind of application.
The code quality of Symfony makes it, as of today, one of the best architected and cleanest PHP frameworks available.

Cons

Performance can be an issue sometimes, especially with older versions of Symfony.
For some developers it might be challenging to start working with Symfony. While the learning curve isn't necessarily too bad, any developer willing to work with this framework, junior or senior, must have some strong architectural knowledge. If your software architecture knowledge is weak you might find yourself struggling trying to understand some of the design patterns used when working with Symfony.
Symfony comes with a significant number of external dependencies. Your custom modules will rely on a strict architecture and you will be forced at some point to spend a significant amount of time doing a lot of testing. This can slow down the development process.

Likelihood to Recommend

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review