TrustRadius Insights for Apache Tomcat are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Quick and Convenient Deployment: Many users have found the deployment process of Spring Boot applications using Tomcat to be quick and convenient. They appreciate how easy it is to set up Tomcat, with its straightforward installation process and compatibility with popular IDEs like Eclipse. This convenience allows developers to get started quickly and efficiently.
Stability and Robustness: Reviewers frequently highlight that Tomcat is a lightweight Java servlet container with a minimal memory footprint, making it efficient for running web applications without consuming excessive resources. Users praise Tomcat for its stability and robustness, requiring minimal maintenance and ensuring a stable and reliable application server environment. This reliability instills confidence in users regarding its performance.
Extensive Documentation: Users appreciate the availability of extensive documentation for Tomcat, making it easy to find solutions and troubleshoot any issues. The comprehensive documentation not only helps users understand the features of Tomcat but also provides guidance on how to configure and optimize their deployments. Having access to detailed documentation enhances the overall user experience by reducing time spent on problem-solving.
These three pros - Quick and Convenient Deployment, Stability and Robustness, Extensive Documentation - were commonly mentioned by reviewers when discussing their positive experiences with Tomcat.
I have used it for many years..it is our first web server to deploy and test our application.Simple to use and configure.it is open source and it is use to deploy java based applications.
Pros
Web application server
Deployment of web application
Provide security to our application
Cons
Sometime it crashed so we need to restart the server
Likelihood to Recommend
It is well suited for web based application.
and has some limitation to deploy large complex application.
VU
Verified User
Manager in Information Technology (5001-10,000 employees)
We use Apache Tomcat to serve Java applications to our end users. These are main line-of-business applications, aimed both at staff and students, from a major vendor. Their uptime and performance are important to us, and Tomcat is key to delivering them.
Pros
performance
reliability
management
Cons
logging
Likelihood to Recommend
Tomcat is an enormous improvement on WebLogic Server (which is what we used to use in some places) because it's managed via configuration files and not through a GUI. This means that scripting new installs and configuration changes is reliable and straightforward and clear -- especially with a tool like Ansible. Horizontal scaling, DR, and the situations calling for a new server are so much easier with Tomcat!
VU
Verified User
Manager in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees)
Apache Tomcat is great tool for the deployment of the application. Its the web server in short called as WAS. We deploy lot application with help of kubernetes which creates the container and the application will be running in the Apache Tomcat server. It is very light weight application which is very easy to install and remove .
Pros
Web application
Deployment
Integration with kubernetes and jenkins
Cons
Apache Tomcat UI needs be improved in my opinion
Additional features can be added in main page
Likelihood to Recommend
It is well suited for the product deployment in web server without much hassle. It can even be deployed directly through UI or through Linux terminal. We basically use gitbash to connect to Aws and then deploy it to Apache Tomcat. Apache Tomcat is easy to install having 4 directories which can easily be remembered and edited the .conf file
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)
Usage of Apache Tomcat was chosen because we wanted to use WebSockets and no others implemented. So Tomcat was a forced-choice but we finished loving it. we did a very pioneering project injecting Tibco rendezvous inside tomcat so from web users have two-way communications with the backend!
Pros
Loading shared libraries.
Speed
Very lightweight and scalable.
Cons
Stability and debugging.
A better IDE for local test.
Logging in, not very clear at the beginning.
Likelihood to Recommend
Well suited for easy tasks in the backend and maybe it is better to integrate with angular rather than using "its" native JSP things. Better to choose JBoss.
VU
Verified User
Employee in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)
We use Apache Tomcat the primary application server for our company's software-as-a-service application. We have used Apache Tomcat since 2008. We use Apache Tomcat due to its many years of industry support and huge user community and ease-of-use. Tomcat is easy to configure and performs well for our needs.
Pros
Seamless integration with the Apache Web Server
Simple and fast deployment of Java applications
Easy-to-integrate data sources
Provides the most common capabilities for Java web deployments
Cons
Management console takes work to secure so it is usually not used or usable for public applications
Application memory leaks can be hard to trace and Tomcat does not always handle them well. This has improved greatly since version 7 though.
Securing Tomcat could be made easier by not shipping with default demo applications enabled as these have had historical security issues
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
VU
Verified User
Technician in Information Technology (1-10 employees)
All our development teams use Apache Tomcat. It is our best choice for our servers that run business modules and cron tasks. We use it as well in localhost for testing purposes. We use the Tomcat plugin with Jenkins for deployment.
Pros
Built-in security features
Relationship with IDEs like Eclipse
Easy to configure and run
Cons
User interface (the admin page)
SSL installation
A way to handle logs
Memory leaks
Likelihood to Recommend
Apache Tomcat is open-source, easy to use, and easy to install. Get a running server with good performance in less than 5 minutes.
VU
Verified User
Project Manager in Information Technology (11-50 employees)
We use Apache Tomcat to deploy our web applications in our organization. Web app deployment is simplistic with Apache Tomcat. Apache Tomcat also supports modern security demands. This is a lightweight and stable solution for hosting applications. Apache Tomcat has provided a rich API set. Documentations are widely available to learn about Apache Tomcat. Also, we host web application locally before deploying those to the production environment for development and testing purposes.
Pros
Apache Tomcat is Open-sourced, and it's free to use.
Easy to install and configure.
Multiple applications can run at the same time without any issues.
Apache Tomcat Has excellent built-in security features and provided a rich API sets.
Cons
The User Interface is limited and very basic and needs to be improved.
Support for full J2EE stack.
Likelihood to Recommend
Apache Tomcat works well with Java-based web applications. Those applications can run without any performance issues.
Apache Tomcat, for us, is used only when we need to stand up an application in our localhost machine. It addresses the need for local servers to test our changes before we push the application to the cloud. As far as I'm aware, it is used by any application that uses the Spring Boot framework when standing the server in the local workspace, so I believe it is used across the whole organization.
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.
Cons
It is not as robust as its competition, i.e. Oracle WebLogic.
When dealing with much larger and more complex applications, there could be more crashes, failures, and memory leaks.
The interface is very basic, comparatively, which allows for limited configuration.
Likelihood to Recommend
The fact that Apache Tomcat is free and open-source allows for anyone to be able to use it, which is great for small to medium-sized applications. However, if you have a million/billion-dollar company, you are better suited to getting something more robust that provides better configuration, better support, and more reliability.
VU
Verified User
Employee in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)
We use Tomcat as our Web Application server for small and middle size web application and expose Restful API microservices in our multiple projects. Tomcat provides a rich set of API so we could easy to integrate with our Gitlab pipeline to have full lifecycle CICD or build script to automate all deployment process.
Pros
Tomcat support almost Web server feature we need including Connection pool, Tread pool, Https, Mutual and data Source
Tomcat is lightweight, easy to install and configuration
easy to customize startup and stop script to adjust memory or startup option
provide rich API set
intergrate with almost main IDE such as Eclipse, Intellij..
Cons
Default log is not good enough and need to customize
Tomcat interface is simple and have limit function
Support for cluster is not good
Likelihood to Recommend
Tomcat is well suited for small and middle Servlet-based Java application, and is a great application server which does not require much effort to get started and also provide a wide range of feature so we could customize our server and could build our automation script to handle all deployment process base on Tomcat API. Tomcat does not fit if you need EJB or socket feature, and if your application is too complex or requires a cluster.
Our organization use Tomcat to deploy mostly light Java based web applications. Many of our applications are being deployed in Apache Tomcat, due to the ease of deployment and cost factoring. We use Tomcat as our main applications server due to its performance and light weight.
Pros
Lightweight. Does not require many resources to run.
Stable. Once tuned almost no maintenance is required for the instance.
Ease of deployment. Easy to install and set up. Documentations are widely available
Cost. Open sourced!
Cons
Mostly CLI based. GUI console although exist but not as user-friendly and basic.
Custom configurations are not as intuitive and may have a steep learning curve.
Likelihood to Recommend
Tomcat is open source and free to use so it's very good for developers to deploy their applications without incurring additional cost to business. Due to it being lightweight it's more suited to smaller scale deployments, simple web applications instead of a full stack Java app.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (5001-10,000 employees)
