Should we drop PHP 7 support?

Posted by Eugenio on 14 Aug 2026

Dear users,
the next release of DaDaBIK (v13.6) will officially support PHP 8.5 and I am wondering whether we should finally drop PHP 7 support.

Yes, apart from a few features that require PHP 8.3 (Barcode / QR Code generation, Google OAuth2 authentication and iCal export), DaDaBIK still supports PHP 7.

I personally haven't used PHP 7 for many years, but according to our installation statistics, more than 10% of the DaDaBIK installations made in 2026 are still running PHP 7. This is higher than I expected, and I am curious to understand what is keeping those installations on PHP 7: hosting limitations, legacy applications running on the same server, compatibility requirements, or something else.

Dropping PHP 7 support would allow us to use PHP 8-only syntax and features, simplify some parts of the codebase and, importantly, reduce the size of the DaDaBIK ZIP package by about one third.

On the other hand, I don't want to drop PHP 7 support if a significant number of users still have good reasons for relying on it (although, at least from a security standpoint, they should absolutely be planning to upgrade to a supported PHP version).

Let me know what you think. I am particularly interested in hearing from users who are still using PHP 7 and understanding why they haven't moved to PHP 8 yet.

You can reply to this email or, even better, add your thoughts to this forum post.

Best,

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Eugenio Tacchini
Founder, DaDaBIK