ALT-PHP vs EA-PHP: What is the difference?

ALT-PHP

ALT-PHP includes PHP versions that CloudLinux provides along with their PHP Selector feature. These versions of PHP are often hardened and patched against vulnerabilities to allow users to continue to use applications that require outdated PHP versions.

As of this time, PHP Selector currently allows users to install and use PHP 4.4+. The options for these versions are managed via CloudLinux's LVE Manager plugin in WHM.

A key advantage of PHP Selector is that it gives individual cPanel users control over their own PHP environment without requiring server administrator involvement. Each user can:

• Switch between any installed ALT-PHP version independently of other accounts on the server.
• Enable or disable individual PHP extensions (e.g. curl, gd, mbstring) for their own account via the cPanel interface.
• Override PHP configuration options (e.g. memory_limit, upload_max_filesize) at the per-account level using a php.ini editor in cPanel.

This per-user module management makes ALT-PHP and PHP Selector particularly useful on shared hosting environments where different accounts have different application requirements.

For more details regarding the installation of ALT-PHP and PHP Selector, please refer to CloudLinux documentation.

CloudLinux PHP Selector

Hardened PHP

Hardened PHP is a security-enhanced build of PHP provided by CloudLinux through its integration with Imunify360. It applies additional security patches and exploit mitigations on top of standard PHP releases, reducing the attack surface for common PHP-based vulnerabilities — including on versions still within their upstream support lifecycle.

Hardened PHP is available for EasyApache 4 (EA-PHP) versions and integrates with the standard MultiPHP Manager in WHM, requiring no changes to existing PHP management workflows. When enabled, sites transparently use the hardened builds instead of standard EA-PHP binaries.

For full installation and configuration details, refer to the Imunify360 documentation:

Imunify360 – Hardened PHP Documentation

Imunify360 also provides a version of CloudLinux's Hardened PHP for EasyApache 4 & MultiPHP Manager

TuxCare PHP ELS

TuxCare PHP Extended Lifecycle Support (ELS) provides ongoing security patches for PHP versions that have officially reached End-of-Life (EOL) upstream. This allows servers running legacy applications dependent on outdated PHP versions to continue receiving security fixes without requiring an immediate application migration.

TuxCare PHP ELS patches are compatible with EA-PHP EOL versions on CloudLinux systems and are delivered through the standard CloudLinux/TuxCare yum repositories. Covered versions have included PHP 5.1 through select older 7.x branches, depending on the ELS coverage period.

For the full list of currently covered PHP versions and repository setup instructions, refer to the TuxCare documentation:

TuxCare – Extended Lifecycle Support Documentation