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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)
    8.7
    87%
  • 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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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

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

(1-12 of 12)
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Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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.
  • Web application server
  • Deployment of web application
  • Provide security to our application
  • Sometime it crashed so we need to restart the server
It is well suited for web based application.
and has some limitation to deploy large complex application.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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 .
  • Web application
  • Deployment
  • Integration with Kubernetes and jenkins
  • Apache Tomcat UI needs be improved in my opinion
  • Additional features can be added in main page
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
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.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
  • 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.
  • The User Interface is limited and very basic and needs to be improved.
  • Support for full J2EE stack.
Apache Tomcat works well with Java-based web applications. Those applications can run without any performance issues.
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.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Apache Tomcat is being used in my organization to run seven of my ten applications. It has been our preferred solution for an application server for years as a lightweight and stable solution for hosting applications. It is currently being standardized across the whole company; however, we standardized on it years ago. It solves the problem of providing low-cost application servers that require very little maintenance but also provides excellent scalability at the web tier. The desire to drive down costs, while still providing solid secure solutions was a driving business factor in choosing to move to Tomcat.
  • It is very lightweight and not resource intensive, which leads to fast start-up times
  • It is very stable, I have not had an outage related to Tomcat in over 10 years and no longer even have support contracts for it.
  • It's very scalable, especially in a cloud solution where you can perform auto-scaling and add nodes within short periods of time.
  • Configuration could be made easier, but then again it's open source.
It's well suited for typical web and application workloads. It is not well suited where you do not need advanced application server functionality, such as persistence. There are also scenarios where you may wish to use even more lightweight technologies such as "play" and "akka" which have some of the functionality built into them.
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.
Candy Carrizales | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using tomcat as a middleware web server for some of our Ellucian products including Degree Works and XE. It will soon be replacing all of our middleware products, particularly Oracle Fusion Middleware.
  • Deploying and un deploying .war files is simple using either tomcat manager or the tomcat scripts
  • Setting up is extremely easy, does not take much experience to set up the first time
  • Startup and shutdown scripts are easily customizable.
  • 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.
For us, we use it as a javlet container, which makes deploying java applets super simple. Much of what we do is customized, so our system admins are able to mod some of the .war files, which are easily deployed by myself of the other dba. Again, this is for simple java applets, so for us it's perfect. However, for extensive development which require more java libraries, a heavier container may be needed. But I can't say for sure, because we don't develop to that extent, as we only administer ERP systems; at least from our end here.
David McCann | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Apache Tomcat served as the Servlet Container for any web-based applications written in Java. It was used throughout the organization for a number of different products.
  • Apache Tomcat is easy to install and get rolling quickly with a basic single-application deployment
  • Tomcat provides a lot of fine-grained configuration around administrator permissions, and security in a multi-app environment
  • Tomcat's management API actually makes it pretty easy to manage automatic code updates and self-updating code
  • As an apache product, it would be nice to automate the common install/configuration/deployment of httpd alongside Tomcat, where httpd serves static files and only passes control to Tomcat in the case that a servlet needs to be invoked.
  • Another nice-to-have would be the ability to, at installation time, specify the jar/war/folder that should be served from ROOT, rather than having the management interface be the default.
Tomcat is well suited for simple Servlet-based applications that use more modern approaches to web-based applications (a simple servlet entry point, backed by web MVC resources). For EJB-style applications, perhaps WebLogic might be more appropriate.
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