Product Recommendations Adds PHP 8.4 Support

On March 11, 2025, Adobe announced PHP 8.4 compatibility for Product Recommendations, extending support across the Adobe Commerce ecosystem. This update is particularly significant for merchants relying on recommendations for revenue generation—PHP 8.4 delivers measurable performance improvements for ML-based recommendations.

Why Product Recommendations Matter

Product Recommendations, powered by machine learning, drives significant revenue for merchants. Adobe data shows merchants implementing recommendations see average revenue lift of 5-15%. However, recommendation engines are computationally intensive—they analyse customer behaviour, product attributes, and purchase history to generate personalised suggestions. Modern PHP versions like 8.4 directly improve this performance.

PHP 8.4 Performance Gains

PHP 8.4 introduces JIT compilation improvements, better type handling, and optimised array processing. For recommendation engines, this translates to faster model inference, reduced latency in fetching recommendations, and more efficient customer session handling. Merchants will notice faster storefront load times and more responsive recommendation widgets.

Supported Versions

Product Recommendations now supports PHP 8.4 on Adobe Commerce 2.4.4 and later. This covers most merchants on recent Commerce versions. For those on earlier versions, Adobe recommends planning upgrades to realise PHP 8.4 performance benefits.

Implementation

No configuration changes are required—Product Recommendations works seamlessly with PHP 8.4 out of the box. Merchants upgrading to PHP 8.4 will automatically benefit from improved recommendation performance. Testing in staging environments is recommended, but migration risk is minimal.

Business Impact

Faster recommendations mean higher conversion rates—customers seeing recommendations more quickly are more likely to engage with them. For merchants selling multiple categories or managing large catalogues, the latency improvements are particularly valuable. This is a case where platform upgrades directly translate to revenue improvements.

Adoption Timeline

PHP 8.4 support is available immediately. For merchants planning platform upgrades in 2025, PHP 8.4 compatibility removes a blocker and enables them to realise both language and recommendation performance gains simultaneously. For Tom&Co partners, this represents an opportunity to discuss commerce optimisation through platform modernisation.