Version upgrades
Moving an application off an unsupported PHP version without breaking it. Usually the cheapest way to fix a security problem and a performance problem at the same time.
PHP development
PHP, including the codebases other shops decline.
Most of the web still runs on PHP, and a lot of it is older than the people maintaining it. That work has to go somewhere. It tends to come here.
Why this is still the deepest thing we do
We started in PHP and servers, and never stopped. That means modern PHP with current tooling, and it also means the parts nobody advertises: reading unfamiliar code, working out what a decade of undocumented changes was for, and getting an application onto a supported version without breaking the business that depends on it.
Plenty of shops will build you something new in PHP. Far fewer will take on what you already have.
What usually brings people here
- A host is forcing a PHP upgrade and the application does not survive it.
- The developer is gone and nobody else will touch the code.
- It has become slow and nobody knows which part.
- A security scan came back badly and now it is urgent.
Servers are part of the job
PHP problems are frequently server problems wearing a disguise — a misconfigured OPcache, a missing extension, a database with no useful indexes, a process limit nobody set. We administer the servers too, so there is no handoff between diagnosing and fixing.
The work
Four kinds of PHP job.
Rescues
Code with no documentation, no tests, and no original developer. We stabilize first, get visibility into what it is doing, then decide what is worth keeping.
New builds
Applications built in modern PHP with a framework where one helps and without one where it does not. Straightforward code someone else can pick up later.
Performance work
Profiling the slow requests, fixing the queries and indexes behind them, and adding caching where it actually helps rather than everywhere.
Straight answers
What people ask about old PHP.
My site runs an old version of PHP. How bad is that?
Unsupported versions stop receiving security patches, so known vulnerabilities stay open indefinitely. Hosts eventually force the upgrade, which is a bad time to discover the application does not survive it. Doing it deliberately is much cheaper than doing it in an emergency.
Will you work on code someone else wrote?
Yes, and it is a large share of what we do. We will read it and tell you honestly whether it is worth maintaining or worth replacing — including when replacing it is the cheaper answer, which is the less profitable thing for us to say.
Do you use Laravel, Symfony, or WordPress?
All three where they fit. WordPress is the right answer for a lot of content sites and we have written plugins for it. A framework is the right answer for an application. Neither is the right answer for everything, and picking the tool before understanding the problem is how projects go wrong.
Is PHP still a reasonable choice in 2026?
For a large share of business web applications, yes. Modern PHP is fast, well supported, and cheap to host, and the talent pool is deep. The wrong reason to leave PHP is fashion; the right reason is a requirement it genuinely does not serve, and we will tell you when that is the case.
Start here
Got PHP nobody wants to touch?
Send it over. You'll get an honest read on whether it's worth maintaining or worth replacing.