A lightweight PHP framework — smaller footprint and less ceremony than Laravel, useful when raw simplicity and speed matter more than Laravel's larger feature set.
Why I use it
Minimal overhead — a good fit for simpler CRUD-style applications that don't need Laravel's full toolkit
Fast to pick up and maintain for a small internal tool
Common in existing legacy PHP codebases I get asked to maintain or extend
Where it fits
Smaller internal tools and admin panels
Maintaining or extending an existing CodeIgniter application