Posted by: Stewart Roberts
Date: Sat Mar 12 2022
Reflections on ColdFusion: A UK Developer’s Perspective
The use of ColdFusion in the UK over 2 decades
In the early 2000s, ColdFusion was a widely used web development language—and engine—throughout the UK. Speaking from the perspective of a UK-based developer, it was hard to ignore its dominance. Every day, job boards like Indeed, CWJobs, and The IT Job Board would send out listings for ColdFusion developers—from London to Leeds and nearly everywhere in between. Occasionally, you’d also receive an email from a recruiter working on European Commission projects, especially if you had experience with CF.
Over two decades, I worked on, maintained, and rebuilt ColdFusion applications for a broad mix of organisations: the NHS Pensions Agency (as it was then), Manheim Lead Management, Volvo and Volkswagen reporting suites, Harley Davidson, property service PLCs, rail delay systems—you name it. ColdFusion was a heavy hitter in the UK software market.
By the mid to late 2010s, though, that demand began to fade. Many well-known companies that once relied on ColdFusion transitioned to newer stacks. But Belgium—specifically the European Commission—remained a notable holdout. Even today, some of their systems are still powered by ColdFusion, though they’re gradually migrating.
Our own team made the shift to PHP with Symfony on the back end and Angular on the front end. It works well, but I sometimes wonder whether moving to Lucee with FW/1 and DI/1 might have been a more efficient (and cost-effective) route—requiring little retraining and preserving the strengths of the original platform. Just my 0.02p.
So why did ColdFusion fall out of favour in the UK and Europe? Licensing costs for CF Enterprise certainly didn’t help. As more developers moved into contracting, their rates increased, and businesses grew reluctant to invest in proprietary technology. As open-source platforms gained popularity, companies were eager to move on—and developers followed suit.
Would I use ColdFusion again? Absolutely—if the right project came along. But the reality is, the landscape has moved on. Front-end frameworks are more powerful than ever, and modern platforms make it easier to connect directly to back-end services or databases. As much as I used to enjoy architecting with CF, its time may well have passed.
Still… never say never.