Adobe ColdFusion
The most recommended of 3 application servers
Recommended for fast, template-friendly web development and a stable, well-documented platform that some have used for decades. Common caveat: many find its tag-based language and legacy codebases painful.
Recommended for fast, template-friendly web development and a stable, well-documented platform that some have used for decades. Common caveat: many find its tag-based language and legacy codebases painful.
26 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 11
- criticize it
- 15
- approval share
- 42%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 26 years
Median of the 3 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 11 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Templating and good vendor support
“Using HTML templating and good support from a small and agile company had a lot to recommend it”
Comment from 27 Oct 2026 in “Is PHP Running on Your ColdFusion Server? How to Check, and Remove It” “They're well-documented, well-supported products.”
Comment from 27 Oct 2026 in “Is PHP Running on Your ColdFusion Server? How to Check, and Remove It” Lively community and solid documentation
“They're well-documented, well-supported products.”
Comment from 27 Oct 2026 in “Is PHP Running on Your ColdFusion Server? How to Check, and Remove It” “ColdFusion has a very lively community”
Comment from 27 Oct 2026 in “Is PHP Running on Your ColdFusion Server? How to Check, and Remove It” Preferred over PHP and Ruby
“I will go to my grave insisting that Coldfusion was a better platform than PHP”
Comment from 10 Aug 2026 in “Because It's Not Fun Enough: why languages fail” “I still think its a better alternative to PHP or Ruby(rails)”
Comment from 27 Oct 2026 in “Is PHP Running on Your ColdFusion Server? How to Check, and Remove It” Steady living for many years
“I've made a very good living with ColdFusion consistently since I picked it up in 1997.”
Comment from 27 Oct 2026 in “Is PHP Running on Your ColdFusion Server? How to Check, and Remove It” “It put a lot of food on my table in the early 2000's.”
Comment from 26 Oct 2026 in “Is PHP Running on Your ColdFusion Server? How to Check, and Remove It”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Dated reputation and bad memories
“Hackers have historically derided any website generators or tools like ColdFusion[tm]”
Comment from 26 Nov 2025 in “I don't care how well your "AI" works” “Don't recall having a great time using it, though I was very young at the time”
Comment from 14 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: HyTags – HTML as a Programming Language” “I remember Cold Fusion quite well. You might have PTSD.”
Comment from 15 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: HyTags – HTML as a Programming Language” - Comment from 18 May 2026 in “Iran Starts Bitcoin-Backed Ship Insurance for Hormuz Strait”
- Comment from 6 Aug 2026 in “Let's all meet up in the Y2K”
Tag-based language and paradigm
“I have very mixed feeling on the language as a whole, both the tag and script language”
Comment from 25 Feb 2026 in “I Pitched a Roller Coaster to Disneyland at Age 10 in 1978” “I've lived through some horrific 10M line coldfusion codebases that embraced this paradigm to death”
Comment from 28 Jan 2026 in “Pandas 3.0” “one of the primary criticisms of ColdFusion was programming logic in the form of tags”
Comment from 14 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: HyTags – HTML as a Programming Language” Legacy codebases seen as nightmares
“That I dislike especially given the code base was written by amateur developers”
Comment from 25 Feb 2026 in “I Pitched a Roller Coaster to Disneyland at Age 10 in 1978” “I've lived through some horrific 10M line coldfusion codebases that embraced this paradigm to death”
Comment from 28 Jan 2026 in “Pandas 3.0” “The entire stack described in the post is the stuff of nightmares.”
Comment from 27 Oct 2026 in “Is PHP Running on Your ColdFusion Server? How to Check, and Remove It”
Other application servers people recommend
The two most recommended other application servers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adobe ColdFusionThis page | 11 | 15 | 42% | 7 | 26 yrs3 owners | — |
| Apache Tomcat | 6 | 1 | 86% | 4 | — | — |
| GlassFish | 5 | 1 | 83% | 1 | — | — |
What people said
27 of the 29 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“CF is pretty fast all by itself”
“I still think its a better alternative to PHP or Ruby(rails)”
“ColdFusion has a very lively community”
“Using HTML templating and good support from a small and agile company had a lot to recommend it”
“They're well-documented, well-supported products.”
“we did try it, and it was not amazing.”
“I've made a very good living with ColdFusion consistently since I picked it up in 1997.”
“The entire stack described in the post is the stuff of nightmares.”
“It put a lot of food on my table in the early 2000's.”
“something a bit finnicky with how cfquery in ColdFusion handled the automatic caching stuff”
“ColdFusion is the COBOL of web programming”
“I spent my evenings building an intranet that replaced the Access database”
“I will go to my grave insisting that Coldfusion was a better platform than PHP”
“I will forever have a hate for ColdFusion”
“Python and PHP have changed a great deal since then why wouldn't CFML have done so?”
“I read that as coldfusion and I got some ptsd”
“modern CF isn't actually that bad to work with these days”
“I have very mixed feeling on the language as a whole, both the tag and script language”
“That I dislike especially given the code base was written by amateur developers”
“I've lived through some horrific 10M line coldfusion codebases that embraced this paradigm to death”
“the cfquery blocks are really neat, and I say that without any sarcasm”
“I remember Cold Fusion quite well. You might have PTSD.”
“Don't recall having a great time using it, though I was very young at the time”
“one of the primary criticisms of ColdFusion was programming logic in the form of tags”
“Hackers have historically derided any website generators or tools like ColdFusion[tm]”
“could be something better if it hadn't ended up in Adobe's hands”
“that hardly justifies the use of the technology”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.