NGINX vs. Ubuntu

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
NGINX, a business unit of F5 Networks, powers over 65% of the world's busiest websites and web applications. NGINX started out as an open source web server and reverse proxy, built to be faster and more efficient than Apache. Over the years, NGINX has built a suite of infrastructure software products o tackle some of the biggest challenges in managing high-transaction applications. NGINX offers a suite of products to form the core of what organizations need to create…N/A
Ubuntu
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Ubuntu Linux is a Linux-based operating system for personal computers, tablets and smartphones. There is also a Server version which is used on physical or virtual servers in the data center.N/A
Pricing
NGINXUbuntu
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
NGINXUbuntu
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
NGINXUbuntu
Considered Both Products
NGINX
Chose NGINX
Other Web servers are either not performant enough or locked to a platform. The main competitor in my opinion is the Apache Web Server, that can be extended in functionality through a diverse set of modules to perform almost any task related to a network server. But at scale, I …
Chose NGINX
We were happy to drop Apache to serve our applications.
Ubuntu
Chose Ubuntu
We chose Ubuntu largely because of the large user base and because desktop setups can be easy to learn for people used to Windows computers and, of course, other distributions of Linux. Not a single one of the people we work with has had formal education or training with …
Chose Ubuntu
Historically Ubuntu has been one step forward from Red Hat and CentOS distributions about software versions and tools usability. In the last years they've caught up and it's very comparable, but at this point, my decision was already made and I will continue choosing Ubuntu, …
Features
NGINXUbuntu
Application Servers
Comparison of Application Servers features of Product A and Product B
NGINX
8.7
32 Ratings
9% above category average
Ubuntu
-
Ratings
IDE support7.617 Ratings00 Ratings
Security management8.627 Ratings00 Ratings
Administration and management8.827 Ratings00 Ratings
Application server performance9.327 Ratings00 Ratings
Installation8.929 Ratings00 Ratings
Open-source standards compliance9.025 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
NGINXUbuntu
Small Businesses
Apache HTTP Server
Apache HTTP Server
Score 9.1 out of 10
Android
Android
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat
Score 8.0 out of 10
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat
Score 8.0 out of 10
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
NGINXUbuntu
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(50 ratings)
9.5
(47 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(1 ratings)
6.0
(2 ratings)
Usability
8.3
(3 ratings)
9.5
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
8.1
(4 ratings)
8.6
(6 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
NGINXUbuntu
Likelihood to Recommend
F5
Nginx is well-suited for any web server scenarios, such as web applications, backend or reverse proxy for both application and HTTP requests, and distribution. It is less appropriate for Windows-based applications that run directly on a Windows Server host. In any case, it is very easy to manage, through separate conf files for each application or site you want to host with it.
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Canonical Ltd
If somebody whishes to be an IT professional, learning the basics of Linux is amust. Ubuntu [Linux] is one of the most beginner-friendly, widely supported, easy-to-use-relative-to-the-fact-that-its-still-linux OS on the market. As somebody who learned the basics of UNIX/LINUX on Ubuntu, it was a very good experience. It is customizable, has a lot of improvements over the years, and live up to be a viable alternative to any modern OS in 2021 as well.
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Pros
F5
  • Very low memory usage. Can handle many more connections than alternatives (like Apache HTTPD) due to low overhead. (event-based architecture).
  • Great at serving static content.
  • Scales very well. Easy to host multiple Nginx servers to promote high availability.
  • Open-Source (no cost)!
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Canonical Ltd
  • PACKAGE MANAGEMENT. You can update everything - OS installed software, you name it with either a few clicks in a GUI or a single command.
  • No bloatware.
  • No need for antivirus software.
  • Certainly the price is right.
  • My 83 year old grandmother has been using it - and because of this I rarely need to provide tech support. But I still visit my grandmother.
  • You can choose from a variety of user interfaces or rock it in the terminal.
  • Generally speaking, Ubuntu is as polished an OS as any you might pay for.
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Cons
F5
  • Customer support can be strangely condescending, perhaps it's a language issue?
  • I find it a little weird how the release versions used for Nginx+ aren't the same as for open source version. It can be very confusing to determine the cross-compatibility of modules, etc., because of this.
  • It seems like some (most?) modules on their own site are ancient and no longer supported, so their documentation in this area needs work.
  • It's difficult to navigate between nginx.com commercial site and customer support. They need to be integrated together.
  • I'd love to see more work done on nginx+ monitoring without requiring logging every request. I understand that many statistics can only be derived from logs, but plenty should work without that. Logging is not an option in many environments.
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Canonical Ltd
  • The repository system could be a little better, as some of the software needed is not easily available there.
  • Ubuntu sometimes does not play nicely or easily with some modern firmwares.
  • Some people report slow responses with newer versions of Ubuntu, although we have not experienced any.
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Likelihood to Renew
F5
Great value for the product
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Canonical Ltd
While it works, we're finding that SNAP is getting more and more annoying, so we're probably going to migrate to Debian.
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Usability
F5
This tool is really easy to use and configure. Consumes very less system resources. It is highly modular and configurable. You can easily use it with other tools like certbot for SSLs. You can configure basic security with configuration and headers
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Canonical Ltd
I gave it 10 out of 10 because it allows me to do the work I need on a server, such as running a website and database, and making developments. In addition, thanks to its easy and useful interface during installation, it can be easily installed. In addition, thanks to its easily accessible documents, when a problem occurs, it can be solved easily and quickly.
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Support Rating
F5
Community support is great, and they've also had a presence at conferences. Overall, there is no shortage of documentation and community support. We're currently using it to serve up some WordPress sites, and configuring NGINX for this purpose is well documented.
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Canonical Ltd
We did not use the managed commercial support, but instead relied on community forums and official documentation. Ubuntu is very well documented across both instructional documentation from the developers themselves as well as informal support forums [ServerFault, YCombinator, Reddit]. It's easy enough to find an answer to any question you may have
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Implementation Rating
F5
No answers on this topic
Canonical Ltd
It was all pretty much automatic for our use cases. It integrates nicely with Laravel Forge, which is our primary use case.
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Alternatives Considered
F5
I have found that [NGINX] seems to perform better throughout the years with less issues although I've used Apache more. I would definitely recommend [NGINX] for any high volume site and I've seen this to usually be the case from most provided web hosts who will pick [NGINX] over alternatives
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Canonical Ltd
Windows 10: Expensive, with more security problems, more difficult to keep updated and less variety of free / open source applications. Its use encourages bad information security practices. OpenSuse Linux: A different distribution at source (Suse Linux), use of rpm packages (with fewer repositories and incompatible with Ubuntu Linux dpkg packages), and whose main objective is to be a "testing ground" for its paid version / professional, SUSE enterprise Linux.
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Return on Investment
F5
  • By using Nginx, we can host multiple web services on a single server, keeping our infrastructure costs lower.
  • Nginx maintains our HTTPS connections, allowing us to keep our promise to our customers that their data is safe in transit.
  • Due to Nginx's extremely low failure rate, our web addresses always return something meaningful, even when individual services go down. In sense, this means we are "always online" and allows us to maintain brand and support our customers even in the face of catastrophe.
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Canonical Ltd
  • Systems administration with Ubuntu is easy with little deep knowledge about it. Docs and community publications are great resources for any task you need to perform on any Ubuntu server and the organization can save several salaries of specialized sys admins in favor of more active roles.
  • Having been an Ubuntu user for many years personally, setting up new Ubuntu servers on my organization came with zero cost for me. I just deployed one instance from my hosting/cloud provider and started working right after it was running, no need to ask support or hire new staff for these tasks.
  • Replacing paid options with Ubuntu have also saved thousands of dollars on Windows Server licenses. I've migrated Windows/SQL Server based systems to Ubuntu/MySQL/PostgreSQL several times during my career and saved about USD 5000/year in licenses to many of them.
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ScreenShots

NGINX Screenshots

Screenshot of Overview of the NGINX Application PlatformScreenshot of NGINX Controller - MonitoringScreenshot of NGINX Controller - Configuration