I agree on the point of frameworks. I don't like any that exist so I made my own Rails-inspired one. Unfortunately this means I prefer not to do consulting jobs

I agree on the point of frameworks. I don't like any that exist so I made my own Rails-inspired one. Unfortunately this means I prefer not to do consulting jobs in PHP because it's considered bad practice to use a framework that no one else knows. (Mine has dynamic ORM (reads db schema), a console (REPL that loads project config and autoloader file), and similar project layout. Recently added REST API system that generates MD and HTML documentation at /path/to/project/help/.) Anyway, I would say the main selling point is ubiquity. Every cheap host I've seen people (clients and semi-technical friends) use supports PHP. It often takes more work to get a Ruby project running on those hosts. Or worse for a Node project.