2026 PHP Container Adoption Trends

PHP container adoption has become a defining trend in modern PHP infrastructure. And, as organizations look modernize their applications, technologies like Docker and Kubernetes are helping them to deploy faster, scale more efficiently, and gain greater operational flexibility. What was once considered an advanced practice has clearly transitioned to a standard part of the PHP development lifecycle.

The latest PHP Landscape Report shows just how widespread this shift has become. In this blog, I explore the newest PHP container adoption trends, the technologies teams are using, and the challenges emerging as containerized environments become more complex. I’ll also examine what’s ahead for PHP container usage and discuss ways you can make the most of PHP containers without sacrificing control.

About the PHP Landscape Report

The PHP Landscape Report, published annually, seeks to track the current and future state of how PHP is being used by organizations around the world. Built from an anonymous survey of self-identified PHP developers and administrators, it covers a variety of topics, such as:

• PHP usage and deployment trends
• Patterns in PHP migration and version adoption
• PHP security and compliance trends
• How teams are keeping up with PHP maintenance
• And other topics surrounding PHP web applications

All of our findings are compiled together into a comprehensive report, which is available as a free download. Click the button below to get your copy.

Get the Most Recent PHP Landscape Report

New PHP Container Adoption Trends

We started this section of our survey simply, asking the participating PHP users to share if they were using containers in their web applications. Here are the highlights of what we found.

Over Half of Surveyed PHP Users Deploy PHP Containers

57% of survey participants reported that they currently use PHP containers, with an additional 4% using them but planning to scale back in the next year. 27% did not use containers at time of survey but were planning to use them in within the next year, and 12% did not use containers and did not have any plans to use them. This is shown in the chart below.

European PHP Teams Were Most Likely to Containerize PHP

We wanted to dig deeper, so we compared our results by region. We found that Europe and the UK were the most likely regions to currently be using container technologies at 61% of teams, followed by North and South America (55%) and Asia (48%). PHP users in the Americas were the most likely to not currently be using containers with no plans to implement them in the next 12 months. PHP users in Asia were the most likely to not currently be using containers, but planned to within the next year. This data can be viewed in the following chart.

As shown in the chart above, regardless of geographic location, container adoption is now widespread — though Europe is leading the charge. Strategically, strong container adoption in this region may support greater infrastructure flexibility. This means that organizations could deploy across on-prem or regional providers, reducing dependence on US-based IaaS platforms.

2026 Top PHP Container Technologies

We then asked survey participants to share which container technologies their organizations use, with the option to select multiple answers as needed. The majority (88%) use Docker as their top container technology, followed by Kubernetes (31%) and Prometheus (17%). These and our full findings are shown in the following chart.

Considering the prominence of Docker, it makes sense that the largest percentage of surveyed PHP users (78%) then shared that they get their container images from Docker Hub. However, as displayed below, it is interesting to see that 52% build PHP containers from scratch, and only about 1 in 4 applications deploy third-party images or images from the PHP community, respectively.

While the majority of PHP users are embracing PHP container technologies, the data shows uneven maturity. While many teams build container images from scratch, this often assumes in-house security expertise. But, without proper hardening, these images can introduce security risks.

Likewise, heavy reliance on official Docker Hub images suggests that convenience may be getting prioritized over enterprise-grade security, as these images are not hardened by default.

What’s Next for PHP Container Usage?

The container adoption trends in the 2026 PHP Landscape Report reveal a clear reality: container adoption is becoming standard practice across the PHP ecosystem. As organizations embrace Docker, Kubernetes, observability tooling, and automated deployments, they gain flexibility and scalability. But, at the same time, they also inherit greater operational complexity.

Challenges that Follow Containerizing Applications

Building and maintaining containerized PHP environments requires significant effort. While containers simplify deployment and improve portability, they also introduce new operational responsibilities that teams must manage across the application lifecycle.

Common challenges that follow containerizing applications include:

• Building, maintaining, and updating images while ensuring consistency across development, testing, and production environments
• Continuously patching operating systems, runtimes, and dependencies to address newly discovered vulnerabilities
• Integrating logs, metrics, traces, and alerting systems to gain visibility into increasingly distributed environments
• Managing deployment configurations, scaling policies, networking, and service discovery
• Securing credentials, environment variables, certificates, and application configurations across multiple environments
• Meeting internal security policies and external regulatory standards
• Developing and retaining expertise across containers, orchestration platforms, security tooling, and cloud infrastructure

These responsibilities quickly consume valuable engineering time that could otherwise be spent building applications and delivering new features. Then, as you increase the use of containers and orchestration platforms, infrastructure management often becomes a growing operational burden.

The Zend Web Platform: A New Approach to Modern PHP Management

As container adoption becomes more common, PHP teams must find methods to manage containerized environments efficiently. While Docker and Kubernetes provide flexibility and scalability, they also introduce operational overhead related to security, monitoring, maintenance, and deployment management.

That’s why we built the Zend Web Platform.

The Zend Web Platform, a custom-configured PHP command center, is designed to help organizations modernize PHP applications without taking on additional burden. Available deployed using Docker Compose (the Core edition) or Kubernetes (the Enterprise edition), the Zend Web Platform combines the capabilities modern PHP teams need most:

• The deployment model that best matches your business goals and current infrastructure
• Unified monitoring with integrated telemetry, accessible via easy-to-use templated or fully custom visualizations
• Secure, supported runtime environments built on CIS-hardened Docker images
• Complete infrastructure portability
• Turnkey configuration, guided onboarding, and enterprise-grade support from proven PHP experts

The Zend Web Platform makes it easy to put your attention where it matters most: on delivering business value.

Additional Resources

• Report – The PHP Landscape Report
• Guide - How to Develop Web Applications with PHP
• Guide – Introduction to PHP Security
• Article - Containers Solved Deployment. What's Solving Operations?
• On-Demand Webinar - The Peaks and Valleys of PHP Containerization and Orchestration
• Blog – PHP Web Application Hardening With CIS Hardened Docker Images
• Blog – Using a GitOps Model for Web Application Development