Microsoft IIS vs Mongoose Web Server vs NGINX

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Microsoft IIS

15.2K
7.5K
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Mongoose Web Server

12
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NGINX

112.1K
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Microsoft IIS vs Mongoose Web Server vs nginx: What are the differences?

Introduction:

In the realm of web servers, Microsoft IIS, Mongoose Web Server, and nginx are popular choices among developers for hosting websites. Each of these servers has its unique features and functionalities that cater to different needs of users.

1. Performance and scalability: Microsoft IIS is known for its performance and scalability, making it a preferred choice for large websites with high traffic. Mongoose Web Server, on the other hand, is lightweight and designed for embedded systems, making it efficient for IoT devices. Nginx falls in between, offering a balance of performance and scalability suitable for a range of websites.

2. Support for platforms: Microsoft IIS is mainly designed for Windows servers, which may limit its compatibility with other platforms. Mongoose Web Server is versatile and can run on various platforms, including Windows, Linux, and macOS. Nginx is known for its cross-platform compatibility, running smoothly on Windows, Linux, and Unix-based systems.

3. Configuration and customization: Microsoft IIS provides a user-friendly interface for configuration, making it easier for beginners to set up websites. Mongoose Web Server offers minimal configuration options, ideal for straightforward setups. Nginx is highly customizable through its configuration files, allowing advanced users to fine-tune settings for optimal performance.

4. Module support: Microsoft IIS has a vast array of modules available for extending its functionality, allowing users to add features as needed. Mongoose Web Server is more limited in terms of modules but is designed to be lightweight and efficient. Nginx boasts a rich set of modules, offering users flexibility in customizing their web server setup.

5. Security features: Microsoft IIS has robust security features built-in, including support for SSL/TLS encryption and advanced access control settings. Mongoose Web Server focuses more on simplicity and may lack some advanced security measures found in other servers. Nginx is renowned for its security capabilities, with features like rate limiting, DDoS protection, and secure communication protocols.

6. Community and support: Microsoft IIS benefits from strong support from Microsoft and a large user community, ensuring users can find extensive resources and help online. Mongoose Web Server has a smaller community due to its niche use cases, but users can still access forums and documentation for assistance. Nginx has a thriving open-source community, providing users with a wealth of resources, plugins, and community-contributed modules.

In Summary, the key differences between Microsoft IIS, Mongoose Web Server, and nginx lie in performance, platform support, configuration options, module availability, security features, and community support.

Advice on Microsoft IIS, Mongoose Web Server, 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 · 650.3K 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
on
Apache HTTP ServerApache HTTP Server
and
NGINXNGINX

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
NGINXNGINX

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
NGINXNGINX

I use nginx because its more flexible and easy to configure

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Christian Cwienk
Software Developer at SAP · | 1 upvotes · 619K 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 Microsoft IIS, Mongoose Web Server, and NGINX
Daniel Calvo
Co-Founder at Polpo Data Analytics & Software Development · | 8 upvotes · 223.8K views

For us, NGINX is a lite HTTP server easy to configure. On our research, we found a well-documented software we a lot of support from the community.

We have been using it alongside tools like certbot and it has been a total success.

We can easily configure our sites and have a folder for available vs enabled sites, and with the nginx -t command we can easily check everything is running fine.

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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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Pros of Microsoft IIS
Pros of Mongoose Web Server
Pros of NGINX
  • 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
    Light weight
  • 1
    Easy to configure
  • 1
    Web server
  • 1.4K
    High-performance http server
  • 893
    Performance
  • 730
    Easy to configure
  • 607
    Open source
  • 530
    Load balancer
  • 288
    Free
  • 288
    Scalability
  • 225
    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
    Reversy Proxy
  • 3
    Streaming media delivery
  • 3
    Streaming media
  • 3
    Embedded Lua scripting
  • 2
    GRPC-Web
  • 2
    Blash
  • 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 Microsoft IIS
Cons of Mongoose Web Server
Cons of NGINX
  • 1
    Hard to set up
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 10
      Advanced features require subscription

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    - No public GitHub repository available -

    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 Mongoose Web Server?

    Mongoose is built on top of Libmongoose embedded library, which can turn anything into a web server in 5 minutes worth of effort and few lines of code. Libmongoose is used to serve Web GUI on embedded devices, implement RESTful services, RPC frameworks (e.g. JSON-RPC), handle telemetry data exchange, and perform many other tasks in various different industries including aerospace, manufacturing, finance, research, automotive, gaming, IT.

    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 Microsoft IIS, Mongoose Web Server, and NGINX?
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      LiteSpeed
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