Why use ColdFusion?
Put quite simply, ColdFusion is one the most powerful yet easy to learn web development languages around. From small websites to large scale enterprise projects - ColdFusion's rapid development ability will get your project up and running in record time.
Customers using ColdFusion
To see more people who are using ColdFusion, visit www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/customers/
Automotive
- BMW USA
- GlobalSpec.com
- Goodyear
- Jaguar Australia
- Michelin
Education
- East Carolina University
- Georgetown University
- George Washington University
- Johns Hopkins University
- Prometheus
- Rhode Island School of Design
- Smithsonian
- The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
- United States Air Force Academy
Financial services
- America First Credit Union
- Bank of America
- Citigroup
- Inmarkets Training, Ltd.
- InvestEdge
- JPMorgan Chase
- Sun Life
- Wells Fargo
Government
- City of Davis, California
- County of San Diego, Department of Child Support Services
- Department of Homeland Security
- DISA / NSA
- Environmental Protection Agency
- European Commission
- Federal Reserve Bank
- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
- State of New York
- United States Senate
- United States Air Force
Healthcare
- Blue Cross Blue Shield
- Eli Lilly
- Mayo Clinic
- Mayo Health Systems
- Roche Pharmaceuticals
- Sloan-Kettering
IT
- Amkor Technology
- Cisco
- eBay
- eMCSaatchi
- Intuit
- McAfee / Foundstone
- Siemens
- Symantec
- 192.com
Manufacturing
- Boeing
- Casio USA
- Caterpillar
- Honeywell
- Logitech
- Qualcomm
- Scott's Corporation
- Xerox
Retail
- Allied Office Products
- Crayola
- eBags
- FAO Schwarz
- Foot Locker
- Hasbro
- Moen
- New Era Cap Company
- Pottery Barn
- Simon & Schuster
- The Limited
- Under Armour
Telecommunications
- AT&T
- British Telecom
- Cingular Wireless
- Sprint
- Verizon
Travel and leisure
- Aspen Skiing Company
- Chicago Bears
- Dallas Stars
- iHotelier
- International Speedway Corporation
- MySwitzerland.com
- New York Giants
- One World Alliance
- PGA of America
- Rugby Football Union
- Sandals
- United States Olympic Committee
ColdFusion Technology Comparison
In this section, we compare ColdFusion against other web development languages and find out what makes it the best choice for new developers.
| ColdFusion | Java/JSP | ASP.NET | PHP | |
| Rapid application development | Simplifies difficult tasks to only a few lines of code. Integrates easily with any client or server-side environment. Simplifies RIA development through tight integration with Flash, Flex, and Adobe AIR. | Requires 88% more lines of code in comparison with ColdFusion for small to medium-sized applications. | Requires 2.5 times more lines of code in comparison with ColdFusion to accomplish simple tasks. | Requires 3 times more lines of code in comparison with ColdFusion to accomplish simple tasks. |
| Ease of use | Takes 1-2 weeks to learn easy-to-use tag-based language. | Can take more than 1.5-2.5 months to learn object-oriented programming concepts and Java syntax. | Can take more than 1.5-2.5 months to learn object-oriented and event-driven programming concepts and VBScript or C# syntax. | Can take 1-2 months to learn script-based language. |
| Development time | Takes 2-4 months to develop a small to medium-sized application. | Takes twice the time to develop a small to medium-sized Java application. | Takes 1.5 times the amount of time to develop a small to medium-sized ASP.NET application. | Takes 1.5 times the amount of time to develop a small to medium-sized PHP application. |
| Maintenance | Takes 0.5-1 person-month to maintain a small to medium-sized application. | Takes 3 times as long to maintain a small to medium-sized application. | Takes 2 times as long to maintain a small to medium-sized application. | Takes 2 times as long to maintain a small to medium-sized application. |
| Security | Makes it easier to build more secure applications with built-in tags and functions for authentication and authorization, input validation, Ajax proxy security, encryption libraries, and sandboxes for application separation. | Yields a longer development cycle to secure Java applications due to manual coding required for authentication, authorization, and data validation. | Requires more lines of code to accomplish input validation than ColdFusion. | Requires more time to secure PHP applications due to manual coding required for authentication, authorization, and data validation. |
| Out-of-the-box services | Increases developer productivity by decreasing development time and error with hundreds of out-of-the-box services. | Requires manual coding to create the same services, meaning more errors and longer development and testing cycles. | Requires manual coding to create the same services, meaning more errors and longer development and testing cycles. | Requires additional installation and inclusion of external frameworks to enable services, adding overhead to the development cycle. |
Total cost of ColdFusion ownership
Although ColdFusion carries a licence fee versus other "free" languages such as PHP, ASP or JAVA, the ease of learning the language and reduced costs in maintaining applications developed in ColdFusion reduce the total cost of ownership BELOW that of these other lanuages.
