MAMP installs a local server environment in a matter of seconds on your computer. It comes free of charge, and is easily installed. MAMP will not compromise any existing Apache installation already running on your system. You can install Apache, PHP and MySQL without starting a script or having to change any configuration files! Furthermore, if MAMP is no longer needed, just delete the MAMP folder and everything returns to its original state (i.e. MAMP does not modify any of the "normal" system).

Licensing

Similar to a Linux-Distribution, MAMP is a combination of free software and thus it is offered free of charge. MAMP is released under the GNU General Public License and may thereby be distributed freely within the boundaries of this license. Please note: some of the included software is released using a different license. In these cases, the corresponding license applies.

Apache, the open source http web server is one of the primary parts of MAMP. Because of its modular structure, it can easily be enhanced with add ons. MAMP comes with over 70 Apache Modules such as PHP, SSL, Webdav, Auth, Cache and many more. Many ISPs use Apache, making MAMP the perfect tool for testing your websites locally before releasing them.

Nginx is a web server. It can act as a reverse proxy server for HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP, POP3, and IMAP protocols, as well as a load balancer and an HTTP cache.

A database is at the heart of every modern, dynamic website. MAMP comes with MySQL which is the most commonly used relational database system. There is a MySQL interface for nearly every programming and scripting language available. Thanks to MAMP you can easily develop complex MySQL database applications on your local PC and upload them afterwards on to your live system. For easy configuration MAMP PRO comes with phpMyAdmin.

81% (and growing) of all websites are using PHP as its server side programming language. This means PHP is the most commonly used programming language for creating websites. PHP is preinstalled by nearly every ISP. MAMP comes with 2 versions of PHP. You can switch between the versions in the settings. The most popular extensions such as XCache, Sqlite, Curl, Freetype and libxml come pre-installed with MAMP.

Complicated installation routines are now a part of the past. MAMP automatically installs the most recent version of Python, including mod_wsgi and mod_python. This means, MAMP can be configured in a similar way to how most common ISPs are set up. Python is a widely used general-purpose, high-level programming language. Python is known as an easy to learn language because of its clear structure.

Perl is a family of high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. For many years Perl was the preferred programming language for Unix administrators and Unix developers. Because of its popularity Perl was used more and more as a web programming language for creating CDGI-Scripts. MAMP integrates Perl by using mod_perl which means perl scripts can be executed outside of cgi-bin.

The MAMP start page provides information about all installed components. It also contains access to web tools such as phpMyAdmin, SQLite Manager and phpLiteAdmin. The start page can be directly accessed within the MAMP application.