Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Apache Tomcat
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Tomcat is an open-source web server supported by Apache.N/A
Cloudflare
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Cloudflare’s connectivity cloud is a unified platform of cloud-native services designed to help enterprises regain control over their IT environments. Powered by an intelligent, programmable global cloud network, it is built to offer security, performance, visibility, and reliability.
$20
per month
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
NGINX, a business unit of F5 Networks, powers over 65% of the world's busiest websites and web applications. NGINX started out as an open source web server and reverse proxy, built to be faster and more efficient than Apache. Over the years, NGINX has built a suite of infrastructure software products o tackle some of the biggest challenges in managing high-transaction applications. NGINX offers a suite of products to form the core of what organizations need to create…N/A
Pricing
Apache TomcatCloudflareNGINX
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Pro
$20
per month
Business
$200
per month
Free
Free
Enterprise
Contact sales team
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Apache TomcatCloudflareNGINX
Free Trial
NoNoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apache TomcatCloudflareNGINX
Considered Multiple Products
Apache Tomcat
Chose Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat is very smooth tool compared to other applications. Since there are very less feature it's very smooth. NGINX server doesn't need Apache Tomcat we can directly deploy so it faster comparatively. In my working time I have never come across the UI of NGINX. Apache …
Chose Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat is lightweight but performs well, even when running multiple applications. Its performance and security features are the reasons for choosing Apache Tomcat among its competitors. Also, there is a huge community support than other products.
Chose Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat is a much wider open standard than Microsoft IIS. It also seems to use fewer resources and is simpler to maintain. Troubleshooting when an issue arises is difficult. We had trouble managing the Tail logs when something strange happened. Logging is very complex and …
Cloudflare
Chose Cloudflare
Akamai and Edgecast/Verizon are way over-priced, and also require hassling sales people to negotiate prices, and cloudflare just has their prices posted, and don't require a multi-year contract, etc.
StackPath is a regular CDN provider, and is probably cheaper than Cloudflare …
NGINX
Chose NGINX
Nginx's cache mechanism is better than Apache and HAProxy. Also Nginx is very light weight and works for multiple sites with much less work. i.e. As front end proxy server configuration is very easy as compared to other applications. Apache sometimes crashes and is not able to …
Chose NGINX
The support and ability to provide near zero downtime for changes is a winner. The lightweight engine also helps reduce cost.
Chose NGINX
How does it compare? We use Apache ATP server and we also use Tom Cat also owned by Apache, but both Apache, ATP, and MKA. They are relatively older than GX and so they're one problem for Apache and MKA they need more power, more memory, and more space.
Chose NGINX
NGINX have higher market share which obviously show to us it is the preferred choice of most of the customers. Both of platform competes in the Web and Application server areas, but due the security features of NGINX be more flexible this in my opinion makes more sense.
Chose NGINX
It's lightweight and it does not require complex configurations for simple scenarios. If you want you can accomplish some other complicated tasks like reverse proxies which are well supported by the product.
Chose NGINX
Nginx is one of the top three web servers and sits in the second position in terms of the amount of servers deployed. The main competition comes from Apache and Apache-based forks on Linux based servers, and less-so from Microsoft IIS on Windows based servers. As stated …
Features
Apache TomcatCloudflareNGINX
Application Servers
Comparison of Application Servers features of Product A and Product B
Apache Tomcat
9.2
24 Ratings
14% above category average
Cloudflare
-
Ratings
NGINX
8.7
32 Ratings
9% above category average
IDE support10.022 Ratings00 Ratings7.617 Ratings
Security management9.024 Ratings00 Ratings8.627 Ratings
Administration and management8.224 Ratings00 Ratings8.827 Ratings
Application server performance8.124 Ratings00 Ratings9.327 Ratings
Installation10.024 Ratings00 Ratings8.929 Ratings
Open-source standards compliance10.024 Ratings00 Ratings9.025 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Apache TomcatCloudflareNGINX
Small Businesses
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10

No answers on this topic

Apache HTTP Server
Apache HTTP Server
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
IBM Cloud Internet Services
IBM Cloud Internet Services
Score 9.0 out of 10
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat
Score 8.0 out of 10
Enterprises
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
Akamai App & API Protector
Akamai App & API Protector
Score 8.5 out of 10
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat
Score 8.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apache TomcatCloudflareNGINX
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(24 ratings)
9.0
(184 ratings)
8.9
(50 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.2
(4 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(3 ratings)
8.6
(8 ratings)
8.3
(3 ratings)
Availability
6.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(2 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(3 ratings)
7.8
(149 ratings)
8.1
(4 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
8.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apache TomcatCloudflareNGINX
Likelihood to Recommend
Apache
Excellent value for companies wishing to host Java applications in the cloud. Utilizing hosting tools such as load balancers and network and application firewalls, Tomcat can be part of a powerful system to host web applications to thousands of users. There has been consistency in the development and support of Tomcat since its initial release in the late '90s and the best commonalities have been carried forward. If you host Java web applications, Tomcat is as good as any for an application server.
Read full review
Cloudflare
Cloudflare works well as security measure that gives peace of mind without needing to work too hard to get it functioning well. It provides great tools to customize the security experience as well. This is all the same for the caching tools as well. They have a lot of built in tools that make using the caching easy right out of the box, but they provide the customization options to get things just right for your site.
Read full review
F5
Nginx is well-suited for any web server scenarios, such as web applications, backend or reverse proxy for both application and HTTP requests, and distribution. It is less appropriate for Windows-based applications that run directly on a Windows Server host. In any case, it is very easy to manage, through separate conf files for each application or site you want to host with it.
Read full review
Pros
Apache
  • Fast to start up, which is useful when we need to just check that our changes are working correctly.
  • Free, which allows us to not be involved with the finance/legal team about using it.
  • Bundled with Spring Boot, which makes it even more convenient for our testing.
Read full review
Cloudflare
  • The best part is the content delivery network. Cloudflare has a large network of data centres around the world that helps cache and delivers content quickly to our customers.
  • Cloudflare offers us with a fast and reliable DNS service and with the world class features such as Cloudflare workers, SSL verification, certificate management and web application firewall. When all of these are combined together, it provides very strict security for our organization.
  • One of the most important feature that we use is the analytics and threat detection. It provides us with the real time insights of all the threats originating from multiple locations and landing on our websites.
Read full review
F5
  • Very low memory usage. Can handle many more connections than alternatives (like Apache HTTPD) due to low overhead. (event-based architecture).
  • Great at serving static content.
  • Scales very well. Easy to host multiple Nginx servers to promote high availability.
  • Open-Source (no cost)!
Read full review
Cons
Apache
  • Using tomcat manager to troubleshoot is not very informative. Error messages are vague, you have to dig into log files for more information about the problems.
  • Is great for simple web applications, but may not work for heavy development which may require a full J2EE stack, might like JBoss better.
  • Security in tomcat is not straightforward, as I discovered that you have to understand how to set up realms in tomcat in order to hash passwords, which I was not overly familiar with, which is a big deal when setting up users in the tomcat-users.xml file.
Read full review
Cloudflare
  • In some cases, using Cloudflare can actually lead to slower website speeds if the network is congested or if the website's traffic is particularly heavy.
  • Some website owners may find that the level of customization offered by Cloudflare is limited, especially in comparison to other solutions.
  • While Cloudflare is easy to set up and manage, it may be too complex for users who are not familiar with web technologies.
Read full review
F5
  • Customer support can be strangely condescending, perhaps it's a language issue?
  • I find it a little weird how the release versions used for Nginx+ aren't the same as for open source version. It can be very confusing to determine the cross-compatibility of modules, etc., because of this.
  • It seems like some (most?) modules on their own site are ancient and no longer supported, so their documentation in this area needs work.
  • It's difficult to navigate between nginx.com commercial site and customer support. They need to be integrated together.
  • I'd love to see more work done on nginx+ monitoring without requiring logging every request. I understand that many statistics can only be derived from logs, but plenty should work without that. Logging is not an option in many environments.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Apache
We have a huge knowledge of the product within our company and we're satisfied with the performance.
Read full review
Cloudflare
lower cost
Read full review
F5
Great value for the product
Read full review
Usability
Apache
Tomcat has a very rich API set which allows us to implement our automation script to trigger the deployment, configure, stop and start Tomcat from the command line. In our projects, we embedded Tomcat in our Eclipse in all of the developer's machines so they could quickly verify their code with little effort, Azure Webapp has strong support for Tomcat so we could move our application to Azure cloud very easy. One drawback is Tomcat UI quite poorly features but we almost do not use it.
Read full review
Cloudflare
Everything is extremely concise and all settings apply immediately and take effect globally. There is no reason to explicitly plan/think in terms of individual regions as one would have to traditional cloud offerings (AWS, OCI, Azure). All Cloudflare products integrate seamless as part of a single pipeline that executes from request to response.
Read full review
F5
This tool is really easy to use and configure. Consumes very less system resources. It is highly modular and configurable. You can easily use it with other tools like certbot for SSLs. You can configure basic security with configuration and headers
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Apache
Tomcat doesn't have a built-in watchdog that ensures restart upon failure, so you have to provide it externally. A very good solution is java service wrapper. The community edition is able to restart Tomcat upon out of memories exceptions.
Read full review
Cloudflare
In 6+ years of relying on Cloudflare, I think we experienced one or two brief outages that were Cloudflare's fault.
Read full review
F5
No answers on this topic
Performance
Apache
Tomcat support to customize memory used and allow us to define the Connection pool and thread pool to increase system performance and availability, Tomcat server itself consume very little memory and almost no footprint. We use Tomcat in our production environment which has up to thousands of concurrent users and it is stable and provides a quick response.
Read full review
Cloudflare
Their Argo for the global network is the core feature we love.
Read full review
F5
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Apache
Well, in actuality, I have never needed support for Apache Tomcat since it is configured and ready-to-go with no configuration needed on my end.
Read full review
Cloudflare
Excellent product, Cloudflare is a true pioneer of the modern Internet, providing tools, services, and expertise that vastly improve the performance and security of web services. Any issues are resolved quickly with detailed RCA and follow-ups published publicly. I'm thankful to Cloudflare and use their services both at work and at home.
Read full review
F5
Community support is great, and they've also had a presence at conferences. Overall, there is no shortage of documentation and community support. We're currently using it to serve up some WordPress sites, and configuring NGINX for this purpose is well documented.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Apache
No answers on this topic
Cloudflare
Very well executed implementation where our team was able to handle the implementation with guidance.
Read full review
F5
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Apache
Eclipse Jetty is the best alternative for Apache Tomcat because which is also an open-source and lightweight servlet container like Tomcat. A major advantage of this over Tomcat is that Jetty server can easily be embedded with the source code of web applications. Since it requires less memory to operate, you may realize that it is very efficient.
Read full review
Cloudflare
They have the most generous free offering, and after the free offering limit is reached - you're still getting plenty of value for the buck.
They have very good reputation.
They have an ever expanding list of tools that can support multiple scenarios under one roof.
Read full review
F5
I have found that [NGINX] seems to perform better throughout the years with less issues although I've used Apache more. I would definitely recommend [NGINX] for any high volume site and I've seen this to usually be the case from most provided web hosts who will pick [NGINX] over alternatives
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Scalability
Apache
It's very easy to add instances to an existing deployment and, using apache with mod proxy balancer, to scale up the serving farm
Read full review
Cloudflare
They are built for scale and have the capacity to handle all the traffic we could ever expect to get.
Read full review
F5
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Apache
  • Tomcat is cheap and very quick to deploy, so it has benefited much when situation needs applications to be deployed quickly without wasting time on licensing and installations.
  • Plenty of documentation available so no vendor training is required. Support contract is not needed as well.
Read full review
Cloudflare
  • Immediate ROI on Registrar and DNS hosting while giving a single plane of glass to managing both with domain registrations at cost, and no cost DNS hosting
  • WAF helped us move at risk servers/applications into a protected state allowing us to perform remediations at a measured pace and get them done right instead of band aide solutions.
  • CDN proxying increase the speed of our website while simultaneously reducing server load.
  • DMARC management and report interpretation allow use to identify weak points in our email systems, remediate and move to stricter policies without significantly increasing staff time spent managing it.
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F5
  • By using Nginx, we can host multiple web services on a single server, keeping our infrastructure costs lower.
  • Nginx maintains our HTTPS connections, allowing us to keep our promise to our customers that their data is safe in transit.
  • Due to Nginx's extremely low failure rate, our web addresses always return something meaningful, even when individual services go down. In sense, this means we are "always online" and allows us to maintain brand and support our customers even in the face of catastrophe.
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ScreenShots

NGINX Screenshots

Screenshot of Overview of the NGINX Application PlatformScreenshot of NGINX Controller - MonitoringScreenshot of NGINX Controller - Configuration