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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Apache Tomcat

    Score7.9 out of 10
    N/ATomcat is an open-source web server supported by Apache.N/A

    Oracle GlassFish Server

    Score9 out of 10
    N/AOracle GlassFish Server was originally developed by Sun Microsystems and is available open source or supported by Oracle. It is an application server.N/A
    Pricing
    Apache TomcatOracle GlassFish Server
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Apache TomcatOracle GlassFish Server
    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 TomcatOracle GlassFish Server
    Considered Both Products
    Apache
    Chose Apache Tomcat
    Tomcat is a more lightweight container in comparison to Oracle's Glassfish server. Glassfish however, became an enterprise product and can offer better after sales service.
    Incentivized
    Chose Apache Tomcat
    GlassFish seemed to be fairly comparable in terms of easy of configuration and deployment, but we didn't do any side-by-side performance comparisons. Tomcat was better-known by the team, has more online forum support, and met the requirements of our project. Tomcat is fairly …
    Incentivized
    Oracle
    Chose Oracle GlassFish Server
    Tomcat is a more lightweight container in comparison to Oracle's Glassfish server and has wider adaptability in development for local testing. Glassfish however, as an enterprise product can offer better after sales service to clients.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    8 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    8 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    8 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    6 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    8 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    Apache TomcatOracle GlassFish Server
    Application Servers
    Comparison of Application Servers features of Apache Tomcat and Oracle GlassFish Server
    Feature
    Apache Tomcat
    9.2
    24 Ratings
    15% above category average
    Oracle GlassFish Server
    8.8
    3 Ratings
    10% above category average
    IDE support10.022 Ratings9.03 Ratings
    Security management9.024 Ratings9.03 Ratings
    Administration and management8.224 Ratings8.03 Ratings
    Application server performance8.124 Ratings10.03 Ratings
    Installation10.024 Ratings7.03 Ratings
    Open-source standards compliance10.024 Ratings9.82 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Apache TomcatOracle GlassFish Server
    Small Businesses
    NGINX
    Score9.1 out of 10
    NGINX
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Oracle WebLogic Server
    Score7.3 out of 10
    Oracle WebLogic Server
    Score7.3 out of 10
    Enterprises
    NGINX
    Score9.1 out of 10
    NGINX
    Score9.1 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Apache TomcatOracle GlassFish Server
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (24 ratings)
    9.0
    (3 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Availability
    6.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Configurability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Apache TomcatOracle GlassFish Server
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Oracle
    Glassfish is well suited for large-scale cluster deployments and integrates well with F5 load balancers.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Oracle
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Oracle
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Oracle
    No answers on this topic
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Oracle
    No answers on this topic
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Oracle
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Oracle
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Oracle
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Oracle
    At the time we did a small proof of concept with both platforms and Oracle Glassfish had more intuitive administration and configuration functions
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Oracle
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Oracle
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
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