While Local and DesktopServer allow you to customize domain names for local sites, XAMPP and MAMP (unless you’re using Pro) don’t. The major differences between MAMP, XAMPP, DesktopServer, and Local is the ability to manage multiple sites and ease of use. There are quite a few different applications and tools that fit this bill, but for now we’ll be comparing the four GUI-based tools that seem to me to be the largest players in this space: XAMPP, MAMP (Pro), DesktopServer, and Local. We have another complete article covering Laravel Valet, VVV ( Vagrant), Chassis, etc.

Note that I won’t be covering CLI-based local dev environments in this article. So we need something that’s easy to use and will do most of the heavy lifting for us. Most of all though, you shouldn’t have to be a sysadmin in order to be able to spin up, maintain, and tear down development environments on your local server. Being able to switch those on the fly or at least select different configs for different dev sites is extremely helpful. If you’re developing a WordPress theme or plugin, it’s also often necessary to make sure that your code runs well on different servers, under different versions of PHP and MySQL. For example: most devs work on more than one project, so it’s extremely helpful to be able to quickly spin up a new web server with dedicated urls.

While many computers are capable of hosting a WordPress site without needing to install any extra packages, there are a few advantages that a dedicated local development environment can offer. It also greatly reduces the risk of making and breaking changes on a live web server.

Developing in a local environment lets you make changes to dev sites quickly and easily without having to transfer files anywhere. An easy-to-use local testing server is one of the most important tools in a WordPress developer’s utility belt.

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