CakePHP is described as 'Rapid development framework for PHP that provides an extensible architecture for developing, maintaining, and deploying applications. Using commonly known design patterns like MVC and ORM within the convention over configuration paradigm, CakePHP reduces development' and is a Web Framework in the development category. There are more than 25 alternatives to CakePHP for a variety of platforms, including Linux, Windows, Mac, Self-Hosted and Web-based apps. The best CakePHP alternative is Laravel, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like CakePHP are Ruby on Rails, Symfony, CodeIgniter and Zend Framework.