Apache Tomcat vs. Microsoft IIS

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Apache Tomcat
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Tomcat is an open-source web server supported by Apache.N/A
Microsoft IIS
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft IIS is an application server and infrastructure.N/A
Pricing
Apache TomcatMicrosoft IIS
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Apache TomcatMicrosoft IIS
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apache TomcatMicrosoft IIS
Considered Both Products
Apache Tomcat
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 …
Microsoft IIS
Chose Microsoft IIS
IIS much easier to install, configure and maintain in a Windows environment. Tomcat is more appropriate when it comes bundled with third party applications.
Chose Microsoft IIS
On Windows, Microsoft IIS is easier to implement and maintain than Apache web service. Normally if you need to host PHP or other apache native content on a Windows server, it's recommended to use WAMP or equivalent software to simplify the installation, administration, and …
Chose Microsoft IIS
Microsoft IIS is a lot more easier for Microsoft .NET developers to integrate and configure. It is MUCH more easier to install and therefore less time consuming to deliver applications to end users. IIS can be installed with a few clicks of a button by anyone with …
Chose Microsoft IIS
Microsoft IIS is more simple to configure and also to maintain against other solutions. Often IIS help me to troubleshoot with its administartive tool.
Chose Microsoft IIS
Apache is java. Java is unnecessary complex. No developer wants to invest in learning all the hundreds of text based configuration files to get something done. Also, apache gives you the most evil and un-usable user interface possible. [Microsoft] IIS makes [life] after …
Chose Microsoft IIS
Positive: Better integration with Active Directory
Negative: Appache Tomcat is open source and can be deployed on all operating systems including Linux, which allows for easier cross-platform deployments.
Chose Microsoft IIS
I have had a couple of tries at using Apache and Linux as a whole but I guess I am not of the right mindset to get over the learning barrier to make this work.
Chose Microsoft IIS
Nginx is hard to support for smaller multiple projects, which is one reason we use the Microsoft IIS server, which is best fit for a set-up once and forget scenario. The Apache server is more recommended for smaller sized projects due to its cost factor, as the Microsoft IIS …
Chose Microsoft IIS
Apache and Nginx are what we use for our large websites and public data. When dealing with the type of traffic we see on our sites IIS just doesn't scale out well. For our staff levels, Apache and Nginx are very hard to support for all of our projects so we can't always use …
Chose Microsoft IIS
In my experience, Microsoft IIS was definitely easier to wrap my head around and also to troubleshoot. The GUI was a great visual way to see what "sites" and "app pools" you have, what is running, what is currently up. Microsoft IIS also offers the flexibility to have multiple …
Chose Microsoft IIS
Microsoft IIS is the only official way to run ASP.NET framework sites and for Microsoft System management tools (SCCM and WSUS). While open source options like Apache and NGINX are more commonly used in our department, to maintain the best compatibility we use IIS in certain …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Apache TomcatMicrosoft IIS
Application Servers
Comparison of Application Servers features of Product A and Product B
Apache Tomcat
8.9
24 Ratings
11% above category average
Microsoft IIS
7.5
28 Ratings
6% below category average
IDE support9.122 Ratings8.020 Ratings
Security management8.624 Ratings7.028 Ratings
Administration and management8.424 Ratings8.028 Ratings
Application server performance8.224 Ratings8.028 Ratings
Installation9.924 Ratings9.028 Ratings
Open-source standards compliance9.324 Ratings5.017 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Apache TomcatMicrosoft IIS
Small Businesses
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apache TomcatMicrosoft IIS
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(24 ratings)
8.9
(28 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(3 ratings)
10.0
(9 ratings)
Availability
6.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(2 ratings)
7.8
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(3 ratings)
9.4
(6 ratings)
Configurability
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.2
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apache TomcatMicrosoft IIS
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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Microsoft
Publishing applications or websites is easy with Microsoft IIS. You don't need external software or complicated tutorials involving command lines and editing configuration files. On other hand, sometimes the troubleshooter needs a high knowledge of Windows Server, Registry, and tools to debug the application. If you need to host non-Microsoft technology as PHP pages or have a low budget, I recommend IIS equivalent software as Apache.
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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.
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Microsoft
  • A big advantage that we use all the time is reviewing the logs that automatically get generated in IIS. It has helped us troubleshoot various problems in our applications over the years.
  • IIS integrates really well with Visual Studio and TFS. We are able to quickly deploy new applications and changes to applications when requested by the business.
  • IIS has proven that it is easy to configure and maintain with minimal effort.
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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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Microsoft
  • Angular/node apps don't run on IIS, or at least we never figured out how. Rather we ended up using nginx.
  • There are still occasional memory leaks - check your recycle settings!
  • If you have very heavy usage for web APIs, IIS requires regular restarts for reasons unknown.
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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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Microsoft
We have no intention to replace all applications running on top of the IIS platform. Not all applications support other platforms and not all support staff are skilled in Linux/Apache platform support. Whereas IIS may not be the best performing or most secure web platform available, for the aforementioned reasons, it is impossible not to continue use of this product.
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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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Microsoft
As I've mentioned earlier, Microsoft IIS is very simple and easy to use. The user interface is a little bit overloaded with a huge number of different options, but once you have a little clue of what you are doing and what you need - no issues at all.
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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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Microsoft
ARR (application request routing) in Microsoft IIS Server enables the web-admins to increase the web app reliability and availability through the rule based routing and load balancing of HTTP requests which in turn provides highly available server. IIS 7.0 Manager also provides kernel as well as user mode caching for faster performance and in case if the server fails, the IIS server has good amount of details logged in its log files which help understand and debug the cause quickly. Load balancing facilitates IIS server to fight against availability issues.
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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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Microsoft
In my experience, I have never had significant issues with IIS performance. Sometimes I've experienced issues with loading time, but it is mostly related to the web site code. However Amazon, Microsoft and Google providing free cloud services with very limited resources, and in that scenario, "heavy" websites on IIS could be the issue. In other situations - performance is good.
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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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Microsoft
As mentioned earlier there is so much documentation or guides or stack overflow questions out there that someone will have faced the same or very similar scenario to what you are going through that you will almost certainly find a solution to what you are after.
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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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Microsoft
Apache is java. Java is unnecessary complex. No developer wants to invest in learning all the hundreds of text based configuration files to get something done. Also, apache gives you the most evil and un-usable user interface possible. [Microsoft] IIS makes [life] after development easy, which is already complex enough to be bothered by something as mundane as exposing your work over the internet.
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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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Microsoft
Microsoft IIS Server is scalable if the underlying server configuration is done correctly. Use x64 edition v/s 32bit and using 32bit mode application pools are some of the tweaks to be done to make the IIS server scalable. There are too many small configurations need to be carried out in order to make a highly scalable IIS server hence not giving full score in this area.
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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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Microsoft
  • Allowing us to internally host our monitoring websites allows quick access to data that can be quite hidden, saving developer time.
  • It was inexpensive compared to more bulky solutions saving upfront cost.
  • It’s easy to install and enable allowing more developer savings.
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