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Apache Tomcat vs. Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform

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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

    Red Hat JBoss EAP

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/AN/AN/A
    Pricing
    Apache TomcatRed Hat JBoss EAP
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Apache TomcatRed Hat JBoss EAP
    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 TomcatRed Hat JBoss EAP
    Considered Both Products
    Apache
    Chose Apache Tomcat
    Apache Tomcat is more lightweight and much quicker to deploy, so compared to JBoss or Weblogic it's much more efficient and cost effective for deploying small apps. The instances start up almost immediately and almost no maintenance is needed from the admins. There is also no …
    Incentivized
    Chose Apache Tomcat
    It's clear that JBoss is a full JEE stack implementation while Tomcat isn't, but if you don't need the whole JEE stack there are many lightweight alternatives that implement the required feature with Tomcat.
    Incentivized
    Red Hat
    Chose Red Hat JBoss EAP
    JBoss does practically everything Apache Tomcat and Weblogic does in terms of our requirements, but JBoss is more suited for larger enterprise J2EE apps compared to Tomcat. Boot time is not as quick as Tomcat, but still relatively fast for our deployments. The system can also …
    Incentivized
    Chose Red Hat JBoss EAP
    We selected JBoss because of compatibility with EJB's. We currently are trying to reduce our footprint and will highly consider using Tomcat.
    Incentivized
    Chose Red Hat JBoss EAP
    Jboss supports JEE standards and provides features like high availability, clustering, hot deployments, configurable features. you can quickly add or remove needed features and cut jboss footprint and reduce boot time.
    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 TomcatRed Hat JBoss EAP
    Application Servers
    Comparison of Application Servers features of Apache Tomcat and Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
    Feature
    Apache Tomcat
    9.2
    24 Ratings
    15% above category average
    Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
    6.8
    9 Ratings
    15% below category average
    IDE support10.022 Ratings6.09 Ratings
    Security management9.024 Ratings7.09 Ratings
    Administration and management8.224 Ratings8.09 Ratings
    Application server performance8.124 Ratings8.09 Ratings
    Installation10.024 Ratings5.09 Ratings
    Open-source standards compliance10.024 Ratings7.09 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Apache TomcatRed Hat JBoss EAP
    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 TomcatRed Hat JBoss EAP
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (24 ratings)
    8.1
    (8 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    5.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (3 ratings)
    8.5
    (3 ratings)
    Availability
    6.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    8.7
    (3 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    5.2
    (2 ratings)
    Configurability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.5
    (3 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Apache TomcatRed Hat JBoss EAP
    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
    Red Hat
    JBoss EAP is subscription based/open source platform. It's very reliable and great for deploying high transaction Java based enterprise applications. It integrates well with third party components like mod_cluster and supports popular Java EE web-based frameworks such as Spring, Angular JS, jQuery Mobile, and Google Web Toolkit.
    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
    Red Hat
    • MOD_CLUSTER integration. JBoss EAP integrates pretty well with mod_cluster. This is an intelligent load balancer especially useful in highly clustered environments.
    • Supports enterprise-grade features such as high availability clustering, distributed caching, messaging etc.
    • Supports deployment in on-premise, virtual and hybrid cloud environments.
    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
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    Red Hat
    • Difficult to replicate configuration outside of a container environment
    • Still requires quite a bit of knowledge of the CLI
    • Integration with deployment tools requires CLI knowledge
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Red Hat
    We are planning to migrate away from Jboss to Tomcat as Jboss has shown not interest in supporting OSGi which is heavily used at our shop
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    JBoss overall is easy to use. The installation and deployment of applications are quick. Documentations and support are also readily available.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
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    Red Hat
    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
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    Red Hat
    JBoss EAP is lightweight and doesn't really consumes much physical resources. It's high performing and suites well for high transaction Java enterprise applications. The out of box performance settings are not really great and you will have to configure the settings to suite your environment to leverage it's full benefits.
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    Fast response.
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    We selected JBoss because of compatibility with EJB's. We currently are trying to reduce our footprint and will highly consider using Tomcat.
    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
    Red Hat
    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
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    Red Hat
    • Jboss EAP is easy to deploy and configure. This lead to lower cost and faster delivery.
    • Even though we have large number of machines running JBoss, we have only two Jboss Administrators. It doesn't requires too much administration and maintenance on daily basis and reduces number of administrators required for large implementations.
    Incentivized
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