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
FortiGate
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
FortiNet FortiGate is a firewall option with high integrability. It offers a variety of deployment options and next-gen firewall capabilities, including integration with IaaS cloud platforms and public cloud environments.N/A
NGINX
Score 9.1 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 TomcatFortinet FortiGateNGINX
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Apache TomcatFortiGateNGINX
Free Trial
NoYesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeOptional
Additional DetailsFortiGate pricing starts at $250 for home office use, up to $300,000 for large enterprise appliances. Must contact sales team for pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apache TomcatFortinet FortiGateNGINX
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.
FortiGate
Chose Fortinet FortiGate
I know I am repeating myself but Fortigate, for the price, is the most complete and customizable product there is. It might not be the best but we always were able to fix or workaround the problems we encountered with the help of their support.
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 TomcatFortinet FortiGateNGINX
Application Servers
Comparison of Application Servers features of Product A and Product B
Apache Tomcat
9.2
24 Ratings
14% above category average
Fortinet FortiGate
-
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
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
Apache Tomcat
-
Ratings
Fortinet FortiGate
8.7
53 Ratings
1% above category average
NGINX
-
Ratings
Identification Technologies00 Ratings8.951 Ratings00 Ratings
Visualization Tools00 Ratings8.351 Ratings00 Ratings
Content Inspection00 Ratings8.852 Ratings00 Ratings
Policy-based Controls00 Ratings8.953 Ratings00 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP00 Ratings8.750 Ratings00 Ratings
Firewall Management Console00 Ratings7.752 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting and Logging00 Ratings8.353 Ratings00 Ratings
VPN00 Ratings9.152 Ratings00 Ratings
High Availability00 Ratings9.348 Ratings00 Ratings
Stateful Inspection00 Ratings9.251 Ratings00 Ratings
Proxy Server00 Ratings8.539 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Apache TomcatFortinet FortiGateNGINX
Small Businesses
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.1 out of 10
pfSense
pfSense
Score 8.6 out of 10
Apache HTTP Server
Apache HTTP Server
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.1 out of 10
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.2 out of 10
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat
Score 8.0 out of 10
Enterprises
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.1 out of 10
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Score 9.1 out of 10
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat
Score 8.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apache TomcatFortinet FortiGateNGINX
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(24 ratings)
8.8
(79 ratings)
8.9
(50 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
7.0
(5 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(3 ratings)
8.6
(21 ratings)
8.3
(3 ratings)
Availability
6.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(2 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(3 ratings)
9.0
(27 ratings)
8.1
(4 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
8.0
(1 ratings)
7.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.0
(1 ratings)
7.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.0
(1 ratings)
7.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apache TomcatFortinet FortiGateNGINX
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
Fortinet
Fortinet FortiGate addressed an immediate security issue we had a few years ago. The device gave us a much clearer picture of the activities on our network and also more importantly, increased our awareness of threats from the internet as a whole. Fortinet FortiGate helps us to mitigate these threats with regular signature updates from Fortiguard labs, identifying certain characteristics which, once recognised by Fortinet FortiGate, can be harnessed to deploy powerful 'playbooks'.
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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
Fortinet
  • SD-WAN - Load balancing of Internet traffic is a USP of Fortigate and makes it stand tall in the competition. Be it 3 or more Internet Links, multiple Subnets/segments of users to distribute and bandwidth load balancing for links and users. SLA based monitoring of Internet Links / MPLS links, makes it even better to choose the links on the basis of performance (Latency, packet loss, Jitter etc).
  • SSL VPN configuration - As we all have WFH force (to some extend or all employee) during Covid-19, it is impossible to plan BCP without having a SSL VPN. In Fortigate, the SSL VPN configuration is very easy with the help of wizard. The deep CLI-level debugging is also very helpful in troubleshooting. Type of tunnel can be easily configured - Full Tunnel or Split Tunnel for SSL.
  • Explicit Proxy - This is also a great feature to shape and re-route the traffic, configuring the Proxy on the Firewall itself. We are using this feature in Pilot for now, and planned to rollout in few weeks looking at the success rate of the POC.
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
Fortinet
  • Documentation is missing a great deal of detail and assumes the customer and just guess and fill in the blanks themselves
  • Fortinet has lots and lots of video guides on topics that only a small percentage of customers would ever need
  • The documentation and video guides do not get updated so most is only relevant to older software versions
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
Fortinet
Fortinet's products have kept improving with new software releases and they continue to deliver great value. Their support is also very good. I believe that as a small enterprise, their products have given us competitive advantage delivering features and functionality that enable us to innovate and do things better. They also continue to be a leader in the markets they serve.
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
Fortinet
The firewall runs very well, firmware updates are fairly quick but you must follow the upgrade path. Neglecting this step will cause a lot of pain. If you decide to go with Fortinet FortiGate switches and/or access points, they can be managed within the firewall which is great. We're also using the FortiAnalyzer which easily plugs into the firewall for any reporting you may require.
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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.
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Fortinet
We had didn't any hardware failures at our two main office locations and upgraded our units last year after using them for about 5-6 years
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.
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Fortinet
Good performance and really good integration. We have integration with Microsoft AD.
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
Fortinet
The Support team at Fortinet is excellent. They can not only help you configure the device for what you are trying to do, they offer suggestions on improving rules, and troubleshooting issues. Their response time is fast, ensuring you are up and running immediately with no questions asked. We had a hard drive failure in one of our Fortinet Fortigate appliances. The tech answered immediately, and started rebuilding the drive after some preliminary investigations. After rebuilding, there were still errors and issues, so they dispatched a brand new Fortinet Fortigate appliance. The tech then backed up the configurations for when the new device came in, which showed up in a few hours. A restore of the configuration took less than a minute, and there were no more errors or issues.
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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
In-Person Training
Apache
No answers on this topic
Fortinet
I received it a couple years afters use it and it was just to confirm my knowledge about the tool.
Read full review
F5
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Apache
No answers on this topic
Fortinet
Make sure that you have the most current version of FortiOS. Make sure all Fortigates are on the same version
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
Fortinet
[Fortinet] FortiGate is not only cost effective but it gives the comprehensive security against the APT attacks and gives the complete traffic visibility and granular control. You can easily create the VDOMs (Virtual firewall) within a Fortigate firewall and customize the dashboard as per your requirement if you have multiple VDOMs within a single firewall.
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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
Read full review
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Apache
No answers on this topic
Fortinet
No changes needed to terms and conditions.
Read full review
F5
No answers on this topic
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
Fortinet
My environments are pretty small (less than 100 users per location) so no issues here.
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
Fortinet
  • The pricing given to us for our firewall was well within what we were already spending for other vendors solutions and had the added value of eliminating a separate expense for a dedicated web filtering appliance.
  • We have also adopted Fortinet's security fabric approach and thus changed vendors for our switch and AP devices. These devices have come at reduced prices as compared to another previous vendor we were using, particularly in relation to ongoing annual maintenance costs.
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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