Apache Tomcat vs. Gradle Build Tool (Open Source) vs. NGINX

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
Gradle Build Tool (Open Source)
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Gradle is an open source build system. Gradle boasts a rich API and mature ecosystem of plugins and integrations to support automation. Users can model, integrate and systematize the delivery of software from end to end.
$0
per month
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 TomcatGradle Build Tool (Open Source)NGINX
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Apache TomcatGradle Build Tool (Open Source)NGINX
Free Trial
NoNoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apache TomcatGradle Build Tool (Open Source)NGINX
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.
Gradle Build Tool (Open Source)

No answer on this topic

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 TomcatGradle Build Tool (Open Source)NGINX
Application Servers
Comparison of Application Servers features of Product A and Product B
Apache Tomcat
9.2
24 Ratings
14% above category average
Gradle Build Tool (Open Source)
-
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 TomcatGradle Build Tool (Open Source)NGINX
Small Businesses
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.1 out of 10
GitLab
GitLab
Score 8.7 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
GitLab
GitLab
Score 8.7 out of 10
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat
Score 8.0 out of 10
Enterprises
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.1 out of 10
GitLab
GitLab
Score 8.7 out of 10
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat
Score 8.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apache TomcatGradle Build Tool (Open Source)NGINX
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(24 ratings)
9.0
(12 ratings)
8.9
(50 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(3 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.3
(3 ratings)
Availability
6.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(2 ratings)
3.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(3 ratings)
9.0
(4 ratings)
8.1
(4 ratings)
Configurability
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apache TomcatGradle Build Tool (Open Source)NGINX
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.
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Open Source
Gradle Build Tool is more suitable with the Java projects. It has helped us to automate the build part of the devops cycle. Its configuration and Groovy script is really easy to understand and can be implemented with ease. It can be used both for automation and manual buids of the projects. Gradle Build Tool is easy to use and easy to integrate.
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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.
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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
Open Source
  • Gradle's methods to manipulate files is very flexible. It minimizes the amount of code one has to write to copy, move, or expand zip or tar files.
  • Gradle uses Groovy, which is a Java like language. This allows for most computer engineers to come up to speed fairly quickly, for writing or maintaining gradle code.
  • Gradle also supports DSL (Domain Specific Language), which is based on Groovy. The DSL language allows engineers to automate build jobs that otherwise could be very cumbersome to maintain or modify.
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)!
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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.
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Open Source
  • I'd like to see a way to specify how to run only certain tests in parallel, I tried this feature and for tests that involve interaction with SQL Databases sometimes I can't because of deadlocks.
  • Not sure if there is something else, gradle has been working really good for us and they are adding improvements all the time which is awesome. I used to think the performance is a deal but the latest versions are addressing this issue very well
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.
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Likelihood to Renew
Apache
We have a huge knowledge of the product within our company and we're satisfied with the performance.
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Open Source
No answers on this topic
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.
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Open Source
Gradle's language construct is good
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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
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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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Open Source
No answers on this topic
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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Open Source
I have tried to use Gradle for projects several times in the past, but there is just so much work in maintaining the build file that it quickly becomes untenable. I have been using Maven for many years, and even though the build file can be complex, it works without maintenance between releases.
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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.
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Open Source
Gradle has been an excellent tool for Android development. It has helped us create multiple versions of the app for different environments. It also takes care of all the packaging needs in the background without having to write all the code related to that. It is a no brainer to use Gradle with Android applications.
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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.
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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.
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Open Source
[Gradle is] a more modern version of open source build tools like Ant and Maven.
Whereas the build config was XML files which were tedious and error
prone, the modern DSL usage of Groovy to write these build files is a
great advancement. Also these config files can be inherited from top
level to each associated project.
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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
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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
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Open Source
No answers on this topic
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.
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Open Source
  • In a distributed development environment, once we established a strong CI/CD model, Gradle proved to be a great choice to automate the various processes. Gradle also provides much flexibility, which is essential in today's development environment. The important benefit is that the CI/CD engineers can support development's needs quickly and reliably. This in turn supports faster testing and deployment, which generates higher ROI.
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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