It’s honestly surprising to see that Yii still has a relatively small active community (like ~3887 users in some spaces i have all in xlsx), especially considering how solid and stable the framework is. I’ve been working with Yii for the last 3+ years and I’ve really grown attached to it. I haven’t switched to other frameworks because I find Yii powerful, structured, and well-suited for building ERP and business-level applications.
The only real challenge is its limited visibility in the job market. In Pakistan especially, very few software houses actively advertise Yii-based roles. Most companies have shifted toward Laravel or CodeIgniter, so Yii talent often ends up working on freelance or legacy systems rather than new projects.
That said, in real-world ERP development, Yii performs extremely well when it comes to speed, structure, and maintainability especially when the code is properly optimized. In my experience, well-written Yii applications can easily compete with or even outperform poorly optimized Laravel or CodeIgniter projects in terms of performance and scalability.
If there are others working on Yii, especially in freelance or product-based development, it would actually be great to collaborate and build stronger, more modern Yii-based solutions together. With the right optimization and architecture, Yii can still be a very strong choice for enterprise systems and if people see well-built examples, it could help shift perception back in its favor.