Microsoft IIS Reviews & Insights

Score7.4 out of 10

93 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Microsoft IIS are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Compatibility with Various Technologies: Users have praised Microsoft IIS for its compatibility with a wide range of technologies, including ASP.NET, SFTP, Node JS, and PHP content. Some users have found this feature particularly beneficial for their diverse web development needs.

Ease of Installation and Maintenance: Reviewers have highlighted the ease of installing and maintaining Microsoft IIS, mentioning the straightforward process of configuring the Farm center. They appreciate how it integrates seamlessly with Azure DevOps build/release pipelines for efficient operations.

Focus on Security Features: Customers have positively noted the focus on security features in Microsoft IIS, such as SSL support, authentication options, and configuration settings for connection strings. This has been a significant advantage for users concerned about safeguarding their web infrastructure.

Microsoft IIS Reviews

29 Reviews

Microsoft IIS - Native Windows Web Server

Rating: 6 out of 10

Incentivized

August 12, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have a couple of legacy applications that have backend written in .NET Core & frontend in Angular. Due to the .NET Core part, as well as some other reasons, it was decided that the applications would be hosted on Windows Server VMs, both frontend & backend.

It means we use Microsoft IIS to host the frontend, with redirect routes for backend API calls.

Pros

Native integration with Windows Server
Intuitive enough for static web pages hosting
Good enough URL rewrite rules to support hosting both frontend & backend on the same VM, while avoiding CORS issue at the same time

Cons

Virtually no infra-as-code support
Powershell API to automate CI/CD is quite limited
Troubleshooting is quite cumbersome, with lots of guesswork

Likelihood to Recommend

Tbvh, I would only recommend Microsoft IIS if you have specific requirements to host something on Windows Server.

If it's Linux environment, there are certainly much better container products to use.

Even on Windows, those alternative containers are still available, making Microsoft IIS much less appealing.

Anyways, tight integration with Windows & Powershell is certainly an advantage for Microsoft IIS, if itself & those mentioned tools fit into your tech landscape.

Verified User

Team Lead in Engineering (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

For Microsoft environment the best option of WebServices

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

August 2, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Hosting websites on-premises or in the cloud, Microsoft IIS is the best choice for deploying websites using Microsoft technology such as asp.net pages. In our company, we have developed some systems for our customers, such as access control, timesheet, and hotel checkin/out, among others; the simplicity to automatically create and configure a website is a differential of the solution, because the end user is not always an IT technician with the necessary knowledge to install and configure a web application, that's why the "NNF" configuration (Next-Next- Finish) is a big differentiator. However, Microsoft IIS has great features for advanced users, allowing for example, to host several sites on the same server and segregate them for internal publication such as on an intranet, as well as for external publication on the Internet.

With constant evolution, security requirements and compatibility with new technologies are implemented in each version; and the availability of extensions allows hosting of non-Microsoft content such as PHP pages and Node.

Pros

Host native Microsoft technology as ASPNET
Extension to expand technology support as SFTP, Node JS and PHP content
Easy to install and maintenance, including Farm center configuration
Scalable
Compatible with Cloud services and containers
Rich documentation and lots of community interaction

Cons

Integrated to Windows version. It is not possible to upgrade the Microsoft IIS version without upgrading the Windows version
Not easy to implement security recommendations as Top 10 OWASP, some times you need to edit the Windows registry, It sounds good for me.
Need to keep Windows update "updated." Frequently security paths are released by the Windows update channel.

Likelihood to Recommend

Publishing applications or websites is easy with Microsoft IIS. You don't need external software or complicated tutorials involving command lines and editing configuration files.

On other hand, sometimes the troubleshooter needs a high knowledge of Windows Server, Registry, and tools to debug the application. If you need to host non-Microsoft technology as PHP pages or have a low budget, I recommend IIS equivalent software as Apache.

Sandro Silva

IT Consultant in Customer Service at dormakaba (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

20 years of experience

The only choice to host Microsoft platform web apps

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

June 2, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use IIS to host web applications for both internal and external use. Years ago we made the switch from traditional desktop apps to web applications. When the decision was made to do so, we leaned on the Microsoft .Net platform and IIS as our choice for web technology. We have a plethora of custom web apps, and IIS is currently hosting our home grown ESB.

Pros

Easy to setup
Easy to maintain
Works well with build/release pipelines in Azure devops

Cons

Angular/node apps don't run on IIS, or at least we never figured out how. Rather we ended up using nginx.
There are still occasional memory leaks - check your recycle settings!
If you have very heavy usage for web APIs, IIS requires regular restarts for reasons unknown.

Likelihood to Recommend

IIS as a web application server is perfectly suited for .net, .net core, asp.net applications. Our core ESB runs on IIS and has hundreds of gigabytes of data moved through it every day spread across millions of transactions. We have other mission critical applications that deliver our results to patients and doctors relying on IIS web application servers. If you stay in the Microsoft development stack, IIS is a top tier, efficient, and reliable web server.

Gordon Lo

Digital Solutions Architect in Information Technology at Dynacare (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

14 years of experience

View profile

Pretty solid value for the cost

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

June 2, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

IIS is being used as a centralized web farm management tool for my company. We deploy and manage web sites and applications across large farms of web servers from a centralized location. Microsoft IIS makes it easy to centrally deploy and manage the configuration and content across a bunch of different web servers.

Pros

Delegated remote management.
Admin tool center is great.
Scalable web infrastructure when needed.

Cons

The installation process had bugs.
The pricing structure was confusing.
The diagnostic tools could have a better UX.

Likelihood to Recommend

Depending on your needs a company, Microsoft IIS may or may not be a great solution. In the case of my company, we do not have a ton of security protocols to go through like some other companies. Take for example, a government agency or maybe health care, which has numerous data privacy restrictions that need to be considered.

Scott Kennedy

Director, eCommerce Analytics and Digital Marketing in Marketing at Franklin Sports (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

View profile

Microsoft IIS is a great web server that allows you to deploy web apps with a few button clicks!!

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

May 20, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We deploy all of our .NET web based apps on Microsoft IIS. We are using these apps for our many of our core business applications which require maximum uptime. IIS is a great web server with many options and configurations to help deliver web based applications to a large pool of end users!

Pros

Scaling
Connections
SSL
Authentication and Security
Configuration
Connection Strings

Cons

Could be a little hard to use if you are just starting out
Has many configurations options you learn about when you hit an issue

Likelihood to Recommend

Microsoft IIS is great for easily serving up web applications! Any developer can easily write a quick web based app and deploy it for end users to access with a few clicks of a button as long as they have the access they need! Since developers have access to dev environments/servers, they can easily deploy their apps and test everything and configure it based on the needs of the application and just provide the configuration file once ready for production use.

IIS can, however, be a little difficult to use for new developers. It has many configurations, but easy to find the documentation.

Verified User

Analyst in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

IIS is an effective and efficient tool that needs modernising

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

May 13, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use it to manage several internal monitoring websites that keep a track a of different threads and pieces of work that out OCR software is running. It allows us to host a variety of these websites across the business to manage different applications within the service. The business problem is addresses is that it allows us to easily host and change these monitoring websites to suit our business needs.

Pros

Easily available on MS products.
Lightweight with no frills application suitable for most machines.
Works as it should 99.9% of the time.

Cons

Application and UI are outdated.
Convoluted to use for those not familiar.
A set up wizard would be a nice touch.

Likelihood to Recommend

We found it most suited for hosting our lightweight internal monitoring sites. The host environment easily handles the load and the websites are able to be maintained and hosted with little fuss. Familiarity with the software is required to do anything complicated but once you get the hang of it, it becomes a straight forward tool for hosting.

Ben Williams

Automation Developer (RPA and OCR Datacap) in Information Technology at Admiral Group plc (5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

View profile

Integral to my organization's infrastructure but lacking compared to Linux counterparts

Rating: 5 out of 10

Incentivized

May 10, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Microsoft IIS is being used by my organization to serve business and scientific applications for users in the organization and externally. The applications are a mixture of ASP.NET, .NET MVC, and more recently .NET Core. It is an integral part of our IT services, and each instance often serves over 10 applications.

Pros

Microsoft familiarity
Already on most Windows machines
Fairly easy to setup a .NET application in it
Fairly robust

Cons

Complicated to configure if it's not out of the box
Shuts down app pools and applications after a certain amount of non-use time and makes it hard to stop this behavior--this makes running scheduled tasks with something like Hangfire in your app more difficult (you often need to pull this out into a Windows service or something), which I think is unnecessary
Quite slow when compared to modern open-source servers
Logging errors and things in EventViewer is hell--considering EventViewer on an under load Windows server can barely draw itself in under five minutes
Unlikable interface

Likelihood to Recommend

Microsoft IIS is well suited if you already have the expensive Windows Server infrastructure--it will already be on there, most likely (or not very hard to get on if it isn't). If you are going to serve static sites or some kind of .NET (including Core) application, it is the obvious choice. If you are going to serve a PHP or Node.JS application behind it, I wouldn't--I'd recommend getting all the better and free tools like Linux, NGINX, Apache, etc. to do that for you--you'll save money and time.

Verified User

Professional in Corporate (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

19 years of experience

Microsoft IIS Review

Rating: 6 out of 10

Incentivized

April 30, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In my department we are using Microsoft IIS on Window Server 2012 R2 for several internal web site and web service. Most of those applications are written in ASP .NET and with ISS very easy to publish.

Pros

Ease websites deployment
Strong integration Microsoft SQL
Microsoft Active Directory Authentication

Cons

Poor security
Application pools difficulties

Likelihood to Recommend

I consider IIS a good solution when you have to publish internal web applications, but I feel to suggest to use other system, for security reason,if you need to go outside your organization.

Paolo Carzaniga

Senior Application Engineer in Information Technology at STMicroelectronics (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

View profile

Build for ease.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

April 28, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We're a Microsoft based organization... we use .NET Framework C#, azure, teams, outlook etc etc. [Microsoft] IIS is our first choice for an internet web server. But even if we weren't so Microsoft focused, it's hard to find an easier to use product than IIS. Installation, usage, configuration is easy, without any lack of functionality.

Pros

The user interface is very clean and intuitive
The is almost no learning curve
Installation is very easy

Cons

There are some hidden and not very easy to find configurations that would have been better if completely left out, like machine.config. I understand the idea, but sometimes things are easier without trying to make things easy for you.
After 15 years of usage I still don't understand why IIS sometimes complains that I already used my *.domain https certificate for another website in the same domain.
There are too many versions... IIS should be a product with almost no other functionality than being a web server. It's not necessary to have imcompatible versions.

Likelihood to Recommend

[Microsoft IIS is] well suited for any scenario... I can't imagine a scenario where it's not suited. Compared to apache of any other server, IIS is what this kind of application is supposed to do: be simple! Of course, there might be scenario's where you want a leaner or modular product with a web server that works for just one application, but in my opinion that is never an advantage, since a centrally managed application is always faster to use, and speed is, in the end, the only thing that matters in IT.

Verified User

Team Lead in Information Technology (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

15 years of experience

Microsoft IIS can handle simple to complex hosting requirements

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

September 25, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

IIS is being used by our organization to host all of our internal and external web sites and applications. All users in our company use IIS by using our applications. We are using IIS for both simple and complex applications which the company relies on. A big problem it has solved is allowing us to integrate it with TFS allowing for seamless and highly efficient changes to occur on our applications when requested by the business.

Pros

A big advantage that we use all the time is reviewing the logs that automatically get generated in IIS. It has helped us troubleshoot various problems in our applications over the years.
IIS integrates really well with Visual Studio and TFS. We are able to quickly deploy new applications and changes to applications when requested by the business.
IIS has proven that it is easy to configure and maintain with minimal effort.

Cons

There have been times where we have been concerned about the security vulnerabilities that IIS has been exposed to.
Logging in IIS is good but at times the error message are quite vague or point us in the wrong direction. More succinct and clear error messages would be nice.
Configuring IIS as a reverse proxy server has too many steps and is confusing at times.

Likelihood to Recommend

We have used IIS to host our applications for decades and we are very happy with it. One thing we have used IIS for is as a reverse proxy server. All of our external traffic runs through it and it acts as an added layer of security and obfuscation from external attacks. We are also able to finely control traffic through the server.

Verified User

Professional in Information Technology (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

19 years of experience

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For Microsoft environment the best option of WebServices

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

August 2, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Host native Microsoft technology as ASPNET
Extension to expand technology support as SFTP, Node JS and PHP content
Easy to install and maintenance, including Farm center configuration
Scalable
Compatible with Cloud services and containers
Rich documentation and lots of community interaction

Cons

Integrated to Windows version. It is not possible to upgrade the Microsoft IIS version without upgrading the Windows version
Not easy to implement security recommendations as Top 10 OWASP, some times you need to edit the Windows registry, It sounds good for me.
Need to keep Windows update "updated." Frequently security paths are released by the Windows update channel.

Likelihood to Recommend

Sandro Silva

IT Consultant in Customer Service at dormakaba (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

20 years of experience