Alternatives to Apache Tomcat logo

Alternatives to Apache Tomcat

JBoss, Microsoft IIS, NGINX, Jetty, and Flask are the most popular alternatives and competitors to Apache Tomcat.
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What is Apache Tomcat and what are its top alternatives?

Apache Tomcat is an open-source implementation of the Java Servlet, JavaServer Pages, Java Expression Language, and Java WebSocket technologies. It is widely used for developing and deploying Java-based web applications. Key features of Apache Tomcat include cross-platform support, scalability, high performance, and integration with other Apache projects. However, some limitations of Tomcat include complex configuration settings and slower response times compared to some other servers.

  1. Jetty: Jetty is a lightweight and highly scalable Java-based web server and servlet container. It is known for its simplicity, speed, and low memory footprint. The key features of Jetty include support for different protocols, pluggable architecture, and integration with various Java frameworks. Pros of Jetty include fast startup time and low resource consumption, while its cons may include less robust administrative features compared to Tomcat.
  2. Undertow: Undertow is a lightweight and high-performance web server written in Java. It offers a flexible and efficient API for building web applications. Key features of Undertow include non-blocking I/O, HTTP/2 support, and easy integration with various Java frameworks. Pros of Undertow include high performance and low resource usage, while potential cons may include a steeper learning curve for beginners.
  3. WildFly: WildFly, formerly known as JBoss Application Server, is a popular open-source Java application server that includes a servlet container. It offers a wide range of features such as clustering, management capabilities, and support for the latest Java EE specifications. Pros of WildFly include robust security features and extensive documentation, while its cons may include a more complex setup compared to Tomcat.
  4. GlassFish: GlassFish is an open-source Java EE application server that provides a Java web server environment. It supports the latest Java EE specifications and offers features like clustering, monitoring, and administration tools. Pros of GlassFish include its compliance with Java EE standards and extensive tooling, while its cons may include a larger memory footprint compared to Tomcat.
  5. Payara Server: Payara Server is an open-source application server derived from GlassFish. It offers a lightweight, flexible, and stable platform for deploying Java EE applications. Key features of Payara Server include scalability, reliability, and support for microservices architecture. Pros of Payara Server include regular updates and patches, while its cons may include potentially limited community support compared to Tomcat.
  6. Resin: Resin is a fast and reliable Java application server that includes a servlet container. It is known for its performance, scalability, and ease of use. Key features of Resin include clustering, load balancing, and support for the latest Java EE standards. Pros of Resin include high performance and stability, while its cons may include fewer third-party integrations compared to Tomcat.
  7. Winstone: Winstone is a small, lightweight, and standalone servlet container that can be embedded in Java applications. It is designed for simplicity and ease of use, making it suitable for small projects. Pros of Winstone include its simplicity and small footprint, while its cons may include limited features compared to full-fledged application servers like Tomcat.
  8. WebLogic Server: WebLogic Server is a robust and feature-rich Java EE application server from Oracle. It offers advanced capabilities for enterprise-level applications, including high availability, scalability, and management tools. Pros of WebLogic Server include its comprehensive features and support for large-scale deployments, while its cons may include higher licensing costs and complexity compared to Tomcat.
  9. Jboss EAP: JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (EAP) is a commercially supported version of WildFly that provides enterprise-level features for developing and deploying Java applications. It offers enhanced security, performance, and support options. Pros of JBoss EAP include its stability and professional support, while its cons may include higher costs compared to using open-source servers like Tomcat.
  10. IBM WebSphere Application Server: IBM WebSphere Application Server is a Java EE-compliant application server that offers a range of features for building and running enterprise applications. It provides tools for development, testing, deployment, and monitoring of Java applications. Pros of WebSphere Application Server include its comprehensive features and integration with other IBM products, while its cons may include higher resource requirements and licensing costs compared to Tomcat.

Top Alternatives to Apache Tomcat

  • JBoss
    JBoss

    An application platform for hosting your apps that provides an innovative modular, cloud-ready architecture, powerful management and automation, and world class developer productivity. ...

  • Microsoft IIS
    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. ...

  • NGINX
    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. ...

  • Jetty
    Jetty

    Jetty is used in a wide variety of projects and products, both in development and production. Jetty can be easily embedded in devices, tools, frameworks, application servers, and clusters. See the Jetty Powered page for more uses of Jetty. ...

  • Flask
    Flask

    Flask is intended for getting started very quickly and was developed with best intentions in mind. ...

  • GlassFish
    GlassFish

    An Application Server means, It can manage Java EE applications You should use GlassFish for Java EE enterprise applications. The need for a seperate Web server is mostly needed in a production environment. ...

  • Websphere
    Websphere

    It is a highly scalable, secure and reliable Java EE runtime environment designed to host applications and microservices for any size organization. It supports the Java EE, Jakarta EE and MicroProfile standards-based programming models. ...

  • Wildfly
    Wildfly

    It is a flexible, lightweight, managed application runtime that helps you build amazing applications. It supports the latest standards for web development. ...

Apache Tomcat alternatives & related posts

JBoss logo

JBoss

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An open source Java EE-based application server
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      Microsoft IIS logo

      Microsoft IIS

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      PROS OF MICROSOFT IIS
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        Great with .net
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        I'm forced to use iis
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        Use nginx
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        Azure integration
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        Best for ms technologyes ms bullshit
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        Fast
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        Reliable
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        Performance
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        Powerful
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        Simple to configure
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        Webserver
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        Easy setup
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        Shipped with Windows Server
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        Ssl integration
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        Security
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        Охуенный
      CONS OF MICROSOFT IIS
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        Hard to set up

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      I am currently in school for computer science and am doing a class project about web servers. Our assignment is to research and select one of these web servers. Could you please let me know which one you would choose among NGINX, Microsoft IIS, and Apache HTTP Server and why?

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      Hi, I have an old web app written in HTML and JavaScript and hosted at Microsoft IIS. But due to some restrictions on the production environment, we can not enable IIS. I tried to create an Owin app and hosted it in a desktop service and everything is working fine. But I am not aware of the Pros and Cons of using OWIN app and hosting in windows service. Can anyone please tell me the Pros and Cons of using OWIN interface and windows service and also if there are any other alternatives available and why should I go for that alternative? Note: All of my web app pages are static pages. Thanks, Nirbhay

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      NGINX logo

      NGINX

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      A high performance free open source web server powering busiest sites on the Internet.
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      PROS OF NGINX
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        Performance
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        Easy to configure
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        Open source
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        Load balancer
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        Free
      • 288
        Scalability
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        Web server
      • 175
        Simplicity
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        Easy setup
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        Content caching
      • 21
        Web Accelerator
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        Capability
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        Fast
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        High-latency
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        Predictability
      • 8
        Reverse Proxy
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        The best of them
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        Supports http/2
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        Great Community
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        Lots of Modules
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        Enterprise version
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        High perfomance proxy server
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        Embedded Lua scripting
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        Streaming media delivery
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        Streaming media
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        Reversy Proxy
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        Blash
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        GRPC-Web
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        Lightweight
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        Fast and easy to set up
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        Slim
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        saltstack
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        Virtual hosting
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        Narrow focus. Easy to configure. Fast
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        Along with Redis Cache its the Most superior
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        Ingress controller
      CONS OF NGINX
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        Advanced features require subscription

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      Simon Reymann
      Senior Fullstack Developer at QUANTUSflow Software GmbH · | 30 upvotes · 10.7M views

      Our whole DevOps stack consists of the following tools:

      • GitHub (incl. GitHub Pages/Markdown for Documentation, GettingStarted and HowTo's) for collaborative review and code management tool
      • Respectively Git as revision control system
      • SourceTree as Git GUI
      • Visual Studio Code as IDE
      • CircleCI for continuous integration (automatize development process)
      • Prettier / TSLint / ESLint as code linter
      • SonarQube as quality gate
      • Docker as container management (incl. Docker Compose for multi-container application management)
      • VirtualBox for operating system simulation tests
      • Kubernetes as cluster management for docker containers
      • Heroku for deploying in test environments
      • nginx as web server (preferably used as facade server in production environment)
      • SSLMate (using OpenSSL) for certificate management
      • Amazon EC2 (incl. Amazon S3) for deploying in stage (production-like) and production environments
      • PostgreSQL as preferred database system
      • Redis as preferred in-memory database/store (great for caching)

      The main reason we have chosen Kubernetes over Docker Swarm is related to the following artifacts:

      • Key features: Easy and flexible installation, Clear dashboard, Great scaling operations, Monitoring is an integral part, Great load balancing concepts, Monitors the condition and ensures compensation in the event of failure.
      • Applications: An application can be deployed using a combination of pods, deployments, and services (or micro-services).
      • Functionality: Kubernetes as a complex installation and setup process, but it not as limited as Docker Swarm.
      • Monitoring: It supports multiple versions of logging and monitoring when the services are deployed within the cluster (Elasticsearch/Kibana (ELK), Heapster/Grafana, Sysdig cloud integration).
      • Scalability: All-in-one framework for distributed systems.
      • Other Benefits: Kubernetes is backed by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), huge community among container orchestration tools, it is an open source and modular tool that works with any OS.
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      John-Daniel Trask
      Co-founder & CEO at Raygun · | 19 upvotes · 276.4K views

      We chose AWS because, at the time, it was really the only cloud provider to choose from.

      We tend to use their basic building blocks (EC2, ELB, Amazon S3, Amazon RDS) rather than vendor specific components like databases and queuing. We deliberately decided to do this to ensure we could provide multi-cloud support or potentially move to another cloud provider if the offering was better for our customers.

      We’ve utilized c3.large nodes for both the Node.js deployment and then for the .NET Core deployment. Both sit as backends behind an nginx instance and are managed using scaling groups in Amazon EC2 sitting behind a standard AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB).

      While we’re satisfied with AWS, we do review our decision each year and have looked at Azure and Google Cloud offerings.

      #CloudHosting #WebServers #CloudStorage #LoadBalancerReverseProxy

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      Jetty logo

      Jetty

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      PROS OF JETTY
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        Very fast
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      CONS OF JETTY
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        Student

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      Flask

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      PROS OF FLASK
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        For it flexibility
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        Flexibilty and easy to use
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        Flask
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        User friendly
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        Secured
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        Secure
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        Customizable
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        Simple to use
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        Powerful
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        Rapid development
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        Beautiful code
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        Easy to develop and maintain applications
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        Easy to setup and get it going
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        Easy to use
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        Documentation
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        Python
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        Minimal
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        Lightweight
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        Easy to get started
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        Orm
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        Not JS
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        Perfect for small to large projects with superb docs.
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        Easy to integrate
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        Speed
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        Get started quickly
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        Open source
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        Well designed
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        Flexibilty
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        Productive
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        Awesome
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        Expressive
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        Love it
      CONS OF FLASK
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        Not JS
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        Context
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        Not fast
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        Don't has many module as in spring

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      James Man
      Software Engineer at Pinterest · | 46 upvotes · 2.8M views
      Shared insights
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      FlaskFlaskReactReact
      at

      One of our top priorities at Pinterest is fostering a safe and trustworthy experience for all Pinners. As Pinterest’s user base and ads business grow, the review volume has been increasing exponentially, and more content types require moderation support. To solve greater engineering and operational challenges at scale, we needed a highly-reliable and performant system to detect, report, evaluate, and act on abusive content and users and so we created Pinqueue.

      Pinqueue-3.0 serves as a generic platform for content moderation and human labeling. Under the hood, Pinqueue3.0 is a Flask + React app powered by Pinterest’s very own Gestalt UI framework. On the backend, Pinqueue3.0 heavily relies on PinLater, a Pinterest-built reliable asynchronous job execution system, to handle the requests for enqueueing and action-taking. Using PinLater has significantly strengthened Pinqueue3.0’s overall infra with its capability of processing a massive load of events with configurable retry policies.

      Hundreds of millions of people around the world use Pinterest to discover and do what they love, and our job is to protect them from abusive and harmful content. We’re committed to providing an inspirational yet safe experience to all Pinners. Solving trust & safety problems is a joint effort requiring expertise across multiple domains. Pinqueue3.0 not only plays a critical role in responsively taking down unsafe content, it also has become an enabler for future ML/automation initiatives by providing high-quality human labels. Going forward, we will continue to improve the review experience, measure review quality and collaborate with our machine learning teams to solve content moderation beyond manual reviews at an even larger scale.

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      Hey, so I developed a basic application with Python. But to use it, you need a python interpreter. I want to add a GUI to make it more appealing. What should I choose to develop a GUI? I have very basic skills in front end development (CSS, JavaScript). I am fluent in python. I'm looking for a tool that is easy to use and doesn't require too much code knowledge. I have recently tried out Flask, but it is kinda complicated. Should I stick with it, move to Django, or is there another nice framework to use?

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      GlassFish logo

      GlassFish

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      The Open Source Java EE Reference Implementation
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          Websphere

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          Application and integration middleware
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              Wildfly

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              A Java EE8 Application Server
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              PROS OF WILDFLY
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                Eclipse integration
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                Java
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