As I mentioned earlier, the Apache HTTP Server has a small disadvantage compared to the competition (NGINX) in terms of performance. If you run websites that really have a lot of visitors, NGINX might be the better alternative.
On the other hand, the Apache HTTP Server is open source and free. Further functionalities can be activated via modules. The documentation is really excellent.
Burp Suite is a good general tool to test websites as long as your website is not too large or you have the time for it to complete. We have some websites that only about five to ten minutes for Burp Suite to complete an attack and a spider only takes about two minutes. Other websites have taken a few hours to complete. I have seen a tester actually run Burp Suite against one of our websites and it took all day to complete.
Street Cred: Apache Web Server is the Founder for all of Apache Foundation's other projects. Without the Web Server, Apache Foundation would look very different. That being said, they have done a good job of maintaining the code base, and keeping a lot of what makes Apache so special
Stability: Apache is rock-solid. While no software is perfect, Apache can parse your web sources quickly and cleanly.
Flexibility: Need to startup your own Webpage? Done. Wordpress? Yup. REST Endpoint? Check. Honeypot? Absolutely.
The default configurations which comes with Apache server needs to get optimized for performance and security with every new installation as these defaults are not recommended to push on the production environment directly.
Security options and advanced configurations are not easy to set up and require an additional level of expertise.
Admin frontend GUI could be improved to a great extent to match with other enterprise tools available to serve similar requirements.
The interface is a big problem: No matter how many features a software provides you, if the features are not well presented, you will miss most of them when they are actually required. The presentation of the software should be improvised and made more presentable.
Tutorial videos for beginners: This software lacks a lot in tutorials. A beginner almost wastes most of the time in finding and understanding the features and the implementation of the same. The software vendor should work on providing more in-depth videos so that people can learn and understand the concepts.
The workflow between features like Proxy, Scanner, Intruder, and Repeater feels seamless, making it easy to intercept, manipulate, and analyze web traffic. Despite its advanced capabilities, the tool remains accessible and flexible, which significantly speeds up testing without overwhelming the user.
I give this rating because there is so much Apache documentation and information on the web that you can literally do anything. This has to do with the fact that there is a huge Open Source community that is beyond mature and perhaps one of the most helpful to be found. The only thing that should hold anyone back from anything is that they can not read. RTFM, my friend. And I must say that the manual is excellent.
BurpSuite does not have an amazing customer support. All the major help that you will find is from public forums and Google. Although you will find all the required information on Google, still at time professional support helps you solve the problem in much less time and make your operations go smoothly.
I has a lot more features, except that IIS is more integrated in a Windows environment. But now with .net core also possible from Apache it would work anywhere really. Only in a full Windows environment where full integration is needed I would chose to go for IIS. Otherwise Apache it is.
Each tool is specific and are good for what they do. While Burp Suite can perform some level of the same functions, somehow security consultants prefer these tools as additional to the Burp Suite. Maybe due to open source and easy setup when compared to Burp Suite. But Burp Suite allows for one tool for many templates for each project.
