Originally published at: PHP 8.3 is Out! - 60% Still Using End-of-Life PHP 7
Yesterday, on November 23, 2024, the PHP community welcomed the release of PHP 8.3, marking another milestone in the evolution of this widely used scripting language. With PHP powering 76.7% of all websites with known server-side programming languages, upgrading PHP is critical in ensuring the security, efficiency, and overall user experience of a significant portion…
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Well, this is all well and good, but do you have any tips for persuading a client to update their servers? I still manager servers running PHP 5.6, 7.2, 7.3 and 7.4. 
Getting clients to update their code has been a formidable undertaking.
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Indeed that is challenging. Usually you have to highlight the security risk and cost related to that. Performance of course and the fact that usually the application or software is a lot easier to manage and keep secure going forward. Often more recent versions of app will break older PHP versions or result in compatibility issues that require time to solve with workarounds.
Uninstall current PHP version and reinstall everything from scratch is a lot of work. Especially you could have composer and docker cli installed and configured with PHP 7.4 and everything works either laravel application. Upgrade PHP version also need to reinstall vendor files from scratch. I am still using too PHP 7.4 for same reason.