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Apache Tomcat

Apache Tomcat

Overview

What is Apache Tomcat?

Tomcat is an open-source web server supported by Apache.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Tomcat has proven to be a versatile and reliable choice for hosting web applications and services across various industries. Its …
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Best web application server

9 out of 10
October 09, 2022
Apache Tomcat is great tool for the deployment of the application. Its the web server in short called as WAS. We deploy lot application …
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Apache Tomcat Review

9 out of 10
October 13, 2019
Incentivized
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 …
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Quick Review on Tomcat

9 out of 10
January 24, 2018
Incentivized
My organization offers a web product for mobile operators to expose their own web APIs as a managed service, which is expected to be …
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Popular Features

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  • Installation (24)
    9.9
    99%
  • Security management (24)
    8.6
    86%
  • Administration and management (24)
    8.4
    84%
  • Application server performance (24)
    8.2
    82%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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What is Apache Tomcat?

Tomcat is an open-source web server supported by Apache.

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  • No setup fee

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  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Product Demos

Jenkins tutorials | 08 | Deploying a web app | Demo | Automated | Deployment with Jenkins | Tamil

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Metasploit Demo Meeting 2019-07-16

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#ACEU19: Remy Maucherat – Apache Tomcat, your webapp, and the Graal

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How to setup Tomcat 8 Server on Raspberry Pi 4

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How to Deploy VueJS application to apache Tomcat

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Features

Application Servers

An Application Server provides services and infrastructure for developing, deploying, and running applications

8.9
Avg 8.0
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Product Details

What is Apache Tomcat?

Apache Tomcat Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Tomcat is an open-source web server supported by Apache.

Reviewers rate Installation highest, with a score of 9.9.

The most common users of Apache Tomcat are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(122)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Tomcat has proven to be a versatile and reliable choice for hosting web applications and services across various industries. Its lightweight nature and stability make it suitable for small to middle-sized applications, while also offering excellent scalability. Users have found Tomcat to be a low-cost solution that requires minimal maintenance, making it an attractive option for organizations looking to streamline their application hosting. Tomcat's popularity within the development community has also made it a preferred choice for quick proof-of-concept projects and marketing content development. Additionally, Tomcat is highly regarded for its ability to handle modern security demands, serving as an SSL encrypted web server for hosting sensitive systems such as attendance and billing systems in non-profit private schools. Overall, Tomcat's wide adoption and solid track record make it a reliable choice for developers seeking a robust servlet container for their web-based applications.

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.

Limited User Interface: Reviewers have expressed that the user interface of Tomcat is limited and basic, lacking advanced features and functionality. Some users felt that an improvement in the user interface would greatly enhance their experience with the software.

Difficult Troubleshooting: Several reviewers have mentioned that troubleshooting in Tomcat can be challenging at times. Users found error messages to be vague and not very informative, often requiring them to dig into log files for more detailed information about problems.

Complex Configuration: Many users have stated that configuring Tomcat can be difficult, particularly when it comes to setting up security and understanding how to set up realms for password hashing. Some reviewers also suggested that configuration could be made easier by using JSON instead of XML.

Users of Apache Tomcat commonly recommend the following:

Consider Apache Tomcat for Java web applications, especially for quick and easy deployments. Users find it easy to use and lightweight, making it suitable for small to mid-size web server solutions.

Try Apache Tomcat as a free and reliable server option. It performs well and has a large community, offering support for newbies and providing a user-friendly experience.

For better performance on Windows, users suggest trying the Apache Portable Runtime (APR) runtime with Apache Tomcat. This combination can enhance the server's speed and efficiency.

Overall, users recommend Apache Tomcat for its simplicity, elegance, and usefulness in various projects. It is especially recommended for less complex applications that require faster application loading on restart and adds valuable support to Apache's HTTPD Server for Java Servlets and JavaServer Pages.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-8 of 8)
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Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
  • 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
  • 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
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.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
  • Built-in security features
  • Relationship with IDEs like Eclipse
  • Easy to configure and run
  • User interface (the admin page)
  • SSL installation
  • A way to handle logs
  • Memory leaks
Apache Tomcat is open-source, easy to use, and easy to install. Get a running server with good performance in less than 5 minutes.
October 13, 2019

Apache Tomcat Review

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
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.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.

  • 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..
  • Default log is not good enough and need to customize
  • Tomcat interface is simple and have limit function
  • Support for cluster is not good
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.
yixiang Shan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use tomcat bundled with the SpringBoot in Fedex IT departments, majorly for small/middle-scaled and light-weighted web application and RESTful based micro services. Those light applications are supposed to be containerized to support the cloud-native initiative. Also for a quick POC purpose, we use Tomcat as the light solution to host some pure servlet based codes.
  • tomcat is very light-weighted, that means a small memory footprint and a very quick starting time
  • It also supports the modern security demands well
  • Using the version bundled with the SpringBoot, saving the extra deployment efforts, making your single JVM application become the quick web service solution easily
  • tomcat is just part of the J2EE specification implementation, majorly focusing on the servlet (front-end) part. If you requires the full J2ee stack, like EJB support, you need consider other containers like Weblogic
  • tomcat's cluster level support is very limited
  • tomcat's admin/configuration is not so intuitive, and default logging needs a lot of improvement
tomcat is suitable for small/middle business [that wants a] light and portable solution and [wants] to be containerized and hosted in the public cloud. If you need more advanced needs like JMS or global transaction management, tomcat is not your best option for sure.
January 24, 2018

Quick Review on Tomcat

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My organization offers a web product for mobile operators to expose their own web APIs as a managed service, which is expected to be highly performed since it handles millions of transactions on daily basis. So Apache Tomcat is a part of it by deploying all the web applications/services associated with the product.
  • Apache Tomcat is the best lightweight servlet container for j2ee web applications.
  • Unless you want advanced j2ee features, Tomcat is the right choice.
  • Since this is open source, it is freely available for anyone to use.
  • Apache tomcat does not come with the implementations of full j2ee stack.
  • Developers who need the advanced features may realize that tomcat lacks some functionalities.
  • Tomcat may raise memory issues if is not tuned up.
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.
omar ghaznavi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used by our IT department as a main web server. Most of our Java apps are hosted on this web container. We also use Tomcat to run our F5 application. So it acts as the main traffic controller for our domain.
  • It's a lightweight Java servlet container. Has minimal memory footprint.
  • It is fast and robust.
  • Has good security features built in.
  • Tomcat needs to improve its offerings for cluster based environments.
  • They need to start providing support for Java EJBs
I found Tomcat to be ideal for testing out Java EE applications on the localhost environment. It has very easy integration with leading IDEs like Eclipse and Netbeans. Tomcat can be improved for handling JNDI connections and database connection pooling.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Apache Tomcat is the most widely adopted application server used in our company. We have currently over 2000 Tomcat 6 and Tomcat 7 instances and we're starting the adoption of Tomcat 8. Tomcat is used to run internal applications and hosted applications.
  • It's very easy to install and requires few customizations in order to be production grade.
  • Very low memory consumption compared to, for example, to JBoss.
  • Nearly immediate start up time.
  • It lacks a built-in feature to provide auto-recovery in case of failure, for example,OutOfMemoryError.
  • In our company, we've been forced to use external tools like Monit or Java service wrapper.
It's more appropriate for highly scalable stateless applications since it's very easy to add instances to your deploy. Session clustering is not natively implemented, so if you've stateful applications you'll need some externally provided persistency layer.
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