Comparing Different Linux Web Servers

Earlier in our posts, we have explained what a Web Server is. In the same post, it is mentioned that there are different Web Servers that some work on Windows servers and some work on Linux Servers. Here we are going to compare different Linux Web Servers.

Nginx, Apache and LiteSpeed are the three famous Linux Web Servers. Nginx and Apache are both free and open source. Between these two, Apache is more popular and it’s the default web server for most control panels. Apache is a modular web server which makes it very flexible and easy to use. It pretty much has a module for anything you want along with a good GUI. On the other hand, Nginx doesn’t offer us an easy GUI to use. Nginx has a built-in dashboard that allows you to control things by it. Another thing about Nginx is that it doesn’t support .htaccess file which makes it really risky for us to switch between Apache and Nginx.

LiteSpeed is much faster and more optimized than the other two but it comes with a cost. You need to buy a license to use this web server. If you have a website with lots of viewers and data this can help you speed up your websites functionality a lot. However, this doesn’t mean that if your website is slow because of its codes you can solve the problem with Litespeed! You can make it faster but it’s better to take care of your codes and then use Litespeed if needed. Just like Apache, Litespeed also has a great GUI to work with.

Which Linux Web Server is more secured?

Security has so many layers and you take care of all those layers to make your server safe. But if we only want to answer this question about the web servers, we should say that since Apache and Nginx are open source, their security holes can be found and fixed sooner and easier.

Every web server uses a different PHP handler that each have their own features. Litespeed uses its own PHP handler which is LSPHP and Nginx uses php-fpm. On the other hand, Apache supports all PHP handlers like SUPHP, CGI and etc except LSPHP that is for Litespeed. CGI is faster than SUPHP but if you permissions for SUPHP it can be more secured.

Which Web Server do we recommend?

We surly can’t decide which Linux web server works for you the best. What we can say is that Nginx is designed for special usages. This means that because of Nginx’s features, it works perfectly if you have one website with lots and lots of audiences. But for multiple websites it might be easier to use Litespeed and Apache because of their GUI. However this is just a suggestion and the results may differ according to your websites and usages.

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