What users are saying about

Apache Tomcat vs Oracle GlassFish Server

Apache Tomcat
98 Ratings
Oracle GlassFish Server
14 Ratings

Apache Tomcat

98 Ratings
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Score 9.3 out of 100

Based on 98 reviews and ratings

Oracle GlassFish Server

14 Ratings
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Score 9.2 out of 100

Based on 14 reviews and ratings

Likelihood to Recommend

Apache Tomcat

Tomcat is more than enough to deploy most of the mid-end web applications without any problem but for the high-end applications which require high scalability and high availability, which might need some tune-ups with the support of expertise in this regard. Otherwise, you may realize numerous performance issues, memory leaks, server crashes etc.

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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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Oracle GlassFish Server

Glassfish is well suited for large-scale cluster deployments and integrates well with F5 load balancers.

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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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Feature Rating Comparison

Application Servers

Apache Tomcat
8.8
Oracle GlassFish Server
8.8
IDE support
Apache Tomcat
8.9
Oracle GlassFish Server
9.0
Security management
Apache Tomcat
8.8
Oracle GlassFish Server
9.0
Administration and management
Apache Tomcat
8.5
Oracle GlassFish Server
8.0
Application server performance
Apache Tomcat
8.5
Oracle GlassFish Server
10.0
Installation
Apache Tomcat
9.4
Oracle GlassFish Server
7.0
Open-source standards compliance
Apache Tomcat
8.9
Oracle GlassFish Server
9.8

Pros

Apache Tomcat

  • 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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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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Oracle GlassFish Server

  • The product offers Java EE support.
  • As the version supported by Oracle we have an extensive documentation, the Oracle GlassFish server online documentation library, patches ,and support from the supplier.
  • Ease of use through the administration console.
  • Integration with the NetBeans development interface.

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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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Cons

Apache Tomcat

  • 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 | TrustRadius Reviewer
Candy Carrizales
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Oracle GlassFish Server

  • One of the areas where we found Glassfish adaptation difficult for our company was the lack of documentation and community forums covering important issues.
  • We ran into a roadblock with OAuth 2.0 implementation and did not get great support on that issue.

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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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Likelihood to Renew

Apache Tomcat

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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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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Oracle GlassFish Server

No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic

Usability

Apache Tomcat

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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trang nguyen | TrustRadius Reviewer
trang nguyen
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Oracle GlassFish Server

No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic

Reliability and Availability

Apache Tomcat

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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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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Oracle GlassFish Server

No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic

Performance

Apache Tomcat

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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trang nguyen | TrustRadius Reviewer
trang nguyen
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Oracle GlassFish Server

No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic

Support Rating

Apache Tomcat

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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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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Oracle GlassFish Server

No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic

Alternatives Considered

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.

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Tharanga Wickramsinghe | TrustRadius Reviewer
Tharanga Wickramsinghe
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Oracle GlassFish Server

At the time we did a small proof of concept with both platforms and Oracle Glassfish had more intuitive administration and configuration functions

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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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Scalability

Apache Tomcat

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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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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Oracle GlassFish Server

No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic

Return on Investment

Apache Tomcat

  • 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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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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Oracle GlassFish Server

  • Glassfish which initially spun off from an Open Source project has a community edition which is free to use and offers great ROI.
  • In comparison to cloud offerings like AWS and Google App Engine, Glassfish requires more cost upfront for installation and management.

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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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Pricing Details

Apache Tomcat

General

Free Trial
—
Free/Freemium Version
—
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—
Entry-level set up fee?
No

Oracle GlassFish Server

General

Free Trial
—
Free/Freemium Version
—
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—
Entry-level set up fee?
No

Rating Summary

Likelihood to Recommend

Apache Tomcat
9.7
Oracle GlassFish Server
9.0

Likelihood to Renew

Apache Tomcat
10.0
Oracle GlassFish Server
—

Usability

Apache Tomcat
8.0
Oracle GlassFish Server
—

Reliability and Availability

Apache Tomcat
6.0
Oracle GlassFish Server
—

Performance

Apache Tomcat
9.0
Oracle GlassFish Server
—

Support Rating

Apache Tomcat
9.4
Oracle GlassFish Server
—

Scalability

Apache Tomcat
9.0
Oracle GlassFish Server
—

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