Its better than the Node Js in the respect that it manages the server management and setup more efficiently than the Node Js server setup. We have used it for the Single page application (SPA) building and it has served its purpose by providing all the features that we are looking for.

1- Flexibility and Modularity: Express.js provide developer high degree of flexibility,allowing developer to customize there application acc. to there neends 2-Middleware Ecosystem:its offering a wide range of pre-built module to to handle various aspect of web development such as routing , authentications ,and error Handling

it implemented nice features for PHP development that were desperately needed, like ORM, and provided more structure to a wild wild west kind of development that surrounded a lot of the PHP development