Apache Tomcat vs Microsoft Application Server | TrustRadius

What users are saying about

Score 9.3 out of 10

Based on 98 reviews and ratings

Score 8.3 out of 10

Based on 102 reviews and ratings

Feature Rating Comparison

Apache Tomcat

Microsoft Application Server

IDE support

Security management

Administration and management

Application server performance

Installation

Open-source standards compliance

Pros

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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Verified User

Employee in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employees

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Enables you to host on-prem and legacy applications remotely without the complexity.
MS Application Server has been rock solid and requires very little maintenance.
You have the ability to manage your on-prem and legacy applications in one centralized location.
Applications are very fast and responsive even while being access remotely.

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Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology

Health, Wellness and Fitness Company, 501-1000 employees

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Cons

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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Candy Carrizales

Database Administrator

Kern Community College DistrictHigher Education, 1001-5000 employees

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Wish MS Application Server has support for more third-party providers.
Patching the server requires reboots which is a common issue with MS hotfixes and service packs.
Cheaper technical support options from Microsoft would be great.

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Verified User

C-Level Executive in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 501-1000 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

Apache Tomcat 10.0

Based on 1 answer

We have a huge knowledge of the product within our company and we're satisfied with the performance.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 501-1000 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Usability

Apache Tomcat 8.0

Based on 3 answers

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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Software Engineer

FPT softwareComputer Software, 5001-10,000 employees

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Microsoft Application Server 10.0

Based on 1 answer

I have found Microsoft Application Server to be incredibly easy to use. I have used dozens of similar programs and have always struggled to navigate through all the functions. So far I have been able to adapt and learn this software with ease. I rarely run into a problem that I wasn’t easily able to move forward on with a few tips.

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Verified User

Employee in Finance and Accounting

Higher Education Company, 51-200 employees

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Reliability and Availability

Apache Tomcat 6.0

Based on 2 answers

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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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 501-1000 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Performance

Apache Tomcat 9.0

Based on 4 answers

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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Software Engineer

FPT softwareComputer Software, 5001-10,000 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Support Rating

Apache Tomcat 9.4

Based on 5 answers

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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Verified User

Employee in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employees

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Microsoft Application Server 9.0

Based on 5 answers

MS Application Server has been great for our company it has enabled us to free up IT staff and lowered the maintenance costs of our internal application maintenance.

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Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology

Health, Wellness and Fitness Company, 501-1000 employees

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Alternatives Considered

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.

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Tharanga Wickramsinghe

Software Engineer

KPMGInformation Services, 5001-10,000 employees

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It has a similar feature to what Microsoft Application Server has but at a greater cost and also having to deal with another vendor when we could use a full Microsoft Stack for better training and support.

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Verified User

C-Level Executive in Information Technology

Media Production Company, 51-200 employees

View all 7 answers on this topic

Scalability

Apache Tomcat 9.0

Based on 1 answer

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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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 501-1000 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Return on Investment

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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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Health, Wellness and Fitness Company, 5001-10,000 employees

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We are able to perform our accounting and timekeeping tasks in a worry free environment
Are employees are able to do their functions quicker, therefore leaving more time to focus on our children and clients.
We purchased the server at a great price at a time we were willing to pay just about any amount of money to purchase a new server since we the server we had previously crashed.

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Frances LeClair

Finance Specialist

Mid-West New Mexico Community Action ProgramNon-Profit Organization Management, 201-500 employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

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Free/Freemium Version

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Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

—

Rating Summary

Apache Tomcat

Microsoft Application Server

Apache Tomcat

Microsoft Application Server

Apache Tomcat

Microsoft Application Server

Apache Tomcat

Microsoft Application Server

Apache Tomcat

Microsoft Application Server

Apache Tomcat

Microsoft Application Server

Apache Tomcat

Microsoft Application Server

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