Most of the blogs on topics similar to this one on different forums try to include a bunch of companies wherein they mention about the company’s strengths and weaknesses. Usually such blogs have a hidden agenda to promote their own companies.
It is critical to choose the right outsourcing partner who can offer the appropriate skillsets and suitable engagement models for your projects. If you need to make a decision to outsource PHP related projects, let’s take a look at some important aspects you should be familiar with. We have tried to capture the essence of each of these parameters below.
PHP has managed to stay the most favored technology for web development, despite other options popping up every year. As a result, there has been an astonishing growth in the number of PHP development companies across the world.
However, this has also resulted in fierce competition within the companies. As every company is claiming to offer a range of equally great services and promising to deliver incredible projects for their clients, it is essential to pin down the best PHP development company to outsource your tasks to.
How do you begin your search for the perfect company? You can find numerous blogs providing you with a list of companies, but don’t just get involved with any of them right away. You need to consider a lot of factors that will decide the best company for you. We will help you with that exact process.
Before you navigate the extremely crowded marketplace, let’s first understand how to choose a suitable PHP development company.
1. What development capabilities you should look for in a PHP company?
a. Custom PHP Web Application Development
Look for PHP developers with a proven track record of creating highly resilient, secure, and high-performing PHP web applications. Good PHP development resources can help build custom web applications in PHP frameworks in open source platforms.
b. Upgrades and Migrations for PHP
Hire PHP developers that can integrate or update your current project, no matter the language it’s written in among Python, Node.js, .NET, etc.
c. Ongoing Maintenance & Management
Offshore PHP developers maintain and manage your web applications using best practices.
d. Full-Stack PHP Development
Look for full-stack PHP engineers who work on both the front-end and back-end of the online applications.
e. Testing & Migration of PHP Hosting
Run your web app through the testing and maintenance process to ensure that the end user has a great experience with it. Upgrade and integrate your existing applications using PHP across frameworks like .NET, Python, Node.js, etc.
f. PHP e-Commerce / CMS Development
CMS development services and ecommerce solutions are one more area of expertise a PHP developer should have for global clients.
g. Integration of a PHP Payment Gateway
Integrate the PHP website with popular payment processors like PayPal, CCAvenue, and Stripe.
h. Dedicated PHP Developers
A sign of dedicated PHP developers is that they have experience on various projects for clients working in multiple sectors.
i. Social Media Apps Based On PHP
To improve the usefulness and efficiency of your website or application, look for developers that have a good hold on social media apps based on PHP.
2. What Are the Roles and Responsibilities of a PHP Developer?
PHP developers have an exclusive range of responsibilities and roles in web development projects. They usually include:
● Efficient development and deployment of web apps, meeting all the deadlines
● Handling compatibility issues in various browsers, platforms, or software program versions
● Cooperating with the project stakeholders and working as a team on app development depending on the product requirements
● Adding new or additional features to the existing apps or scaling them
● Provision app support and timely updates
● Improving the skills and keeping up with the latest and advanced programming practices and technologies
Difference between an expert and mid-level PHP Developers
What sort of developers you should outsource to? Depends on what type of project you have in hand. Let us look at experts and mid-level developers to understand who will suit your need best.
a. Mid-Level
Mid-level professionals have some development projects in their portfolios and can build effective web applications. These developers are pretty autonomous and can work on apps without explicit monitoring.
Skillset:
● Knowing more than a single PHP framework, like Laravel, CodeIgniter, or CakePHP
● Analyzing product requirements
● Implementing various databases
● Adding back-end features for better app performance
● Code troubleshooting
● Implementing object-oriented programming (OOP) in PHP
● Following development standards, like DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) for debugging and easy code refactoring.
b. Experts:
PHP experts work in definite areas, using the latest web development practices. They can analyze product requirements and suggest how to make them more secure and effective. Besides that, they can advise on what features to add to your app and how to improve product source code.
Skillset:
● Knowledge of most of the PHP frameworks
● Expertise in advanced technology such as PHP for IoT, Machine learning, Blockchain, and other solutions.
3. What Costs Can You Incur When Hiring a PHP Developer?
There are many factors that impact PHP software developers’ hiring prices. Hence, instead of going for the first solution, businesses must inspect the market proposal and consider all the factors.
These are the key elements to determine pricing in PHP development.
a. Type of Cooperation:
Hiring freelancers might be cheaper than onboarding an in-house team or an outsourcing development company, but not always the smart choice. With freelancers, you may run into additional expenses if a project appears too complex, needs extensive expertise or has deep engagement.
If you’re confused between an outsourcing company and an in-house team, study all of their pros and cons for your project. For instance, in-house teams work great for long-term projects. While outsourcing providers offer wider access to a PHP developer’s talent pool, lower PHP developer hourly rates, and full-cycle development projects, etc.
However, outsourcing to a company can be useful- as it often helps to get an outsider perspective to get things right. Consider going to a different company if you feel that you need to shake things up a bit, or feel like you can do better than your usual.
b. Proficiency Levels of PHP Developers:
Beginners have the lowest rates, while professionals get seriously expensive. Therefore, business managers need to evaluate their projects and decide what kind of developers they need with which level of expertise.
c. Technology Implemented:
It’s obvious that the complexity of an employed technology identifies the price of the final product. If you decide to implant a complex solution in your web app, you must decide first if it is just an additional feature or it drastically affects your app.
To understand how good technology will suit your product, you must perform a deep project analysis. Most development companies offer this service to their customers by calculating expenses, picking the best technologies for an app, and gathering the best development teams.
4. Factors to consider while outsourcing PHP developers:
Check out the company website before you hire them. See whether their website has some accurate display of their PHP development skills or not. Check the website to know if their skills match your requirement or not.
a. Website Testimonial does matter with industry experience:
The industry experience of an outsourcing development company and online review & testimonials give a sense of satisfaction from the client side. You can take it as a green signal to consider them. Positive reviews and testimonials show that the company has strong ethics and professionalism with its clients. Also, before going with an offshore PHP developers company, it is vital to know how much experience they possess in the industry.
b. Talk to the company’s expert PHP developers before hiring:
If you don’t know how every PHP development team works, speaking to them before hiring lets you understand the work methodologies. If it matches your standard, it’s a positive sign to hire them as your PHP developers. You can ask about the technologies or also see their work presentation; which you can compare with your business needs.
However, always remember to choose a team of PHP developers from an outsourcing company that follows the latest web development technologies.
c. Make sure your developer has minimum of 2+ years of experience with:
● CMS WordPress and Magento.
● Development of rest web services
● Payment Gateway Integration (PayPal, Stripe, etc.)
● One framework (Cake PHP, Zend, CodeIgniter)
Should have knowledge of:
● Javascript (Angular JS)
● Database Designing
● Jquery
● Twitter Bootstrap
5. Pros of Outsourcing PHP projects:
Professional PHP developers are skilled in industrial knowledge along with other benefits like-
a. Good communication:
PHP developers understand clients’ requirements with good communication skills and act accordingly. They must be a good listener and speaker as well.
b. Time management:
If the project is not finished in time, it would seem like a failure to serve purpose time management. A professional PHP developer should be capable of managing their time.
c. The Bottom Line Improvement
We hope that this article has is helpful in showing how you can get started with hiring PHP developers. If you want to hire PHP programmers, you can never be sure if you are making the right choice unless you are equipped with the knowledge necessary to make this choice.
d. A perfect company doesn’t exist
Every company has different services and a way to work. No one company will fit the requirement of every individual even if it’s the topmost just because every individual’s requirement is different. That’s why it’s essential to browse through numerous companies to find out the perfect fit.
Top 3 PHP Developer Companies to outsource-
● Mindfire Solutions: https://www.mindfiresolutions.com/
Industries served- Publishing, Healthcare, Retail and e-Commerce, e-Learning, Transportation and and Financial Services.
● Toptal: https://www.toptal.com/php
Industries served- AI/machine learning, cloud services, smart manufacturing, data analytics, software development solutions, for global industrial companies.
● Intellectsoft- https://www.intellectsoft.net/
Industries served- Construction, healthcare, insurance, Fintech, retail and e-commerce, travel, and hospitality.
Content Source: Medium