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Caddy

338
275
+ 1
20
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15.4K
7.6K
+ 1
236
NGINX

113.3K
60.9K
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5.5K

Caddy vs Microsoft IIS vs nginx: What are the differences?

Introduction

In the world of web servers, there are several options to choose from. Three popular web servers that are widely used are Caddy, Microsoft IIS, and nginx. While all three serve the same purpose of hosting websites, there are important differences between them that make each unique. In this article, we will explore and highlight the key differences between Caddy, Microsoft IIS, and nginx.

  1. Installation and Configuration: Caddy stands out from the rest by offering a simplified installation and configuration process. With a single command, Caddy can be installed and is ready to be used. Compared to Caddy, Microsoft IIS and nginx have relatively complex installation processes and require more manual configurations.

  2. Automatic HTTPS: Caddy by default provides automatic HTTPS encryption for websites. It comes with built-in Let's Encrypt integration, making it easy to secure websites with SSL/TLS certificates. On the other hand, Microsoft IIS and nginx require additional configuration steps to enable HTTPS and obtain SSL/TLS certificates.

  3. Ease of Use: Caddy focuses on simplicity and ease of use. It has a user-friendly interface and provides clear and concise configuration files. Microsoft IIS, although it has improved over the years, still retains some complexity in its configuration settings. nginx, while powerful, has a steeper learning curve due to its extensive range of configuration options.

  4. Platform Support: Microsoft IIS is specifically designed for the Windows operating system and integrates well with other Microsoft products. Caddy, on the other hand, is cross-platform and can run on multiple operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and Linux. nginx, being highly versatile, can also run on various platforms, including Windows and Unix-like systems.

  5. Performance: Caddy is known for its efficient resource utilization and high performance. It is designed to be lightweight and fast. Microsoft IIS and nginx, both being mature and widely-used web servers, also offer good performance but may require additional optimizations for specific scenarios.

  6. Module Ecosystem: nginx has a vast and active module ecosystem that provides a wide range of features and functionalities. It offers extensive options for customization and can be tailored to suit specific needs. Caddy, while relatively newer, has a growing module ecosystem. Microsoft IIS, however, has a smaller module ecosystem compared to both Caddy and nginx.

In Summary, Caddy stands out with its simplified installation and configuration process, automatic HTTPS, ease of use, cross-platform support, and good performance. It also has a growing module ecosystem. Microsoft IIS has tighter integration with Windows and provides good performance. nginx is known for its extensive module ecosystem, versatility, and high performance.

Advice on Caddy, Microsoft IIS, and NGINX

I am diving into web development, both front and back end. I feel comfortable with administration, scripting and moderate coding in bash, Python and C++, but I am also a Windows fan (i love inner conflict). What are the votes on web servers? IIS is expensive and restrictive (has Windows adoption of open source changed this?) Apache has the history but seems to be at the root of most of my Infosec issues, and I know nothing about nginx (is it too new to rely on?). And no, I don't know what I want to do on the web explicitly, but hosting and data storage (both cloud and tape) are possibilities. Ready, aim fire!

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Replies (1)
Simon Aronsson
Developer Advocate at k6 / Load Impact · | 4 upvotes · 716.4K views
Recommends
on
NGINXNGINX

I would pick nginx over both IIS and Apace HTTP Server any day. Combine it with docker, and as you grow maybe even traefik, and you'll have a really flexible solution for serving http content where you can take sites and projects up and down without effort, easily move it between systems and dont have to handle any dependencies on your actual local machine.

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Needs advice
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Apache HTTP ServerApache HTTP Server
and
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From a StackShare Community member: "We are a LAMP shop currently focused on improving web performance for our customers. We have made many front-end optimizations and now we are considering replacing Apache with nginx. I was wondering if others saw a noticeable performance gain or any other benefits by switching."

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Replies (3)
Recommends
on
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I use nginx because it is very light weight. Where Apache tries to include everything in the web server, nginx opts to have external programs/facilities take care of that so the web server can focus on efficiently serving web pages. While this can seem inefficient, it limits the number of new bugs found in the web server, which is the element that faces the client most directly.

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Leandro Barral
Recommends
on
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I use nginx because its more flexible and easy to configure

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Christian Cwienk
Software Developer at SAP · | 1 upvotes · 682.5K views
Recommends
on
Apache HTTP ServerApache HTTP Server

I use Apache HTTP Server because it's intuitive, comprehensive, well-documented, and just works

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Decisions about Caddy, Microsoft IIS, and NGINX
Grant Steuart
  • Server rendered HTML output from PHP is being migrated to the client as Vue.js components, future plans to provide additional content, and other new miscellaneous features all result in a substantial increase of static files needing to be served from the server. NGINX has better performance than Apache for serving static content.
  • The change to NGINX will require switching from PHP to PHP-FPM resulting in a distributed architecture with a higher complexity configuration, but this is outweighed by PHP-FPM being faster than PHP for processing requests.
  • The NGINX + PHP-FPM setup now allows for horizontally scaling of resources rather vertically scaling the previously combined Apache + PHP resources.
  • PHP shell tasks can now efficiently be decoupled from the application reducing main application footprint and allow for scaling of tasks on an individual basis.
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Manage your open source components, licenses, and vulnerabilities
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Pros of Caddy
Pros of Microsoft IIS
Pros of NGINX
  • 6
    Easy HTTP/2 Server Push
  • 6
    Sane config file syntax
  • 4
    Builtin HTTPS
  • 2
    Letsencrypt support
  • 2
    Runtime config API
  • 83
    Great with .net
  • 55
    I'm forced to use iis
  • 27
    Use nginx
  • 18
    Azure integration
  • 15
    Best for ms technologyes ms bullshit
  • 10
    Fast
  • 6
    Reliable
  • 6
    Performance
  • 4
    Powerful
  • 3
    Simple to configure
  • 3
    Webserver
  • 2
    Easy setup
  • 1
    Shipped with Windows Server
  • 1
    Ssl integration
  • 1
    Security
  • 1
    Охуенный
  • 1.4K
    High-performance http server
  • 894
    Performance
  • 730
    Easy to configure
  • 607
    Open source
  • 530
    Load balancer
  • 289
    Free
  • 288
    Scalability
  • 226
    Web server
  • 175
    Simplicity
  • 136
    Easy setup
  • 30
    Content caching
  • 21
    Web Accelerator
  • 15
    Capability
  • 14
    Fast
  • 12
    High-latency
  • 12
    Predictability
  • 8
    Reverse Proxy
  • 7
    The best of them
  • 7
    Supports http/2
  • 5
    Great Community
  • 5
    Lots of Modules
  • 5
    Enterprise version
  • 4
    High perfomance proxy server
  • 3
    Embedded Lua scripting
  • 3
    Streaming media delivery
  • 3
    Streaming media
  • 3
    Reversy Proxy
  • 2
    Blash
  • 2
    GRPC-Web
  • 2
    Lightweight
  • 2
    Fast and easy to set up
  • 2
    Slim
  • 2
    saltstack
  • 1
    Virtual hosting
  • 1
    Narrow focus. Easy to configure. Fast
  • 1
    Along with Redis Cache its the Most superior
  • 1
    Ingress controller

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Cons of Caddy
Cons of Microsoft IIS
Cons of NGINX
  • 3
    New kid
  • 1
    Hard to set up
  • 10
    Advanced features require subscription

Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

- No public GitHub repository available -

What is Caddy?

Caddy 2 is a powerful, enterprise-ready, open source web server with automatic HTTPS written in Go.

What is Microsoft IIS?

Internet Information Services (IIS) for Windows Server is a flexible, secure and manageable Web server for hosting anything on the Web. From media streaming to web applications, IIS's scalable and open architecture is ready to handle the most demanding tasks.

What is NGINX?

nginx [engine x] is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, as well as a mail proxy server, written by Igor Sysoev. According to Netcraft nginx served or proxied 30.46% of the top million busiest sites in Jan 2018.

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What are some alternatives to Caddy, Microsoft IIS, and NGINX?
Traefik
A modern HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer that makes deploying microservices easy. Traefik integrates with your existing infrastructure components and configures itself automatically and dynamically.
HAProxy
HAProxy (High Availability Proxy) is a free, very fast and reliable solution offering high availability, load balancing, and proxying for TCP and HTTP-based applications.
Envoy
Originally built at Lyft, Envoy is a high performance C++ distributed proxy designed for single services and applications, as well as a communication bus and “universal data plane” designed for large microservice “service mesh” architectures.
Apache HTTP Server
The Apache HTTP Server is a powerful and flexible HTTP/1.1 compliant web server. Originally designed as a replacement for the NCSA HTTP Server, it has grown to be the most popular web server on the Internet.
Amazon EC2
It is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.
See all alternatives