NGINX

Score9.1 out of 10

184 Reviews and Ratings

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NGINX

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What is NGINX?

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 applications with performance, reliability, security, and scale. This includes NGINX Plus for load balancing, reverse proxy, and application delivery controller features, NGINX App Protect for high performance web application firewall security, and NGINX Unit to run the application code, all monitored and managed by the NGINX Controller.

NGINX Plus: An all‑in‑one load balancer, web server, and content cache.
NGINX Controller: Centralized monitoring and management for NGINX Plus.
NGINX App Protect: Web application firewall, powered by F5
NGINX Unit: Lightweight application server, with support for multiple languages and a dynamic REST API‑driven configuration
NGINX Ingress Controller: Traffic management solution for cloud‑native apps in Kubernetes and containerized environments.
NGINX Service Mesh: Lightweight, Turnkey, Developer-Friendly Service Mesh Using NGINX Plus as an Enterprise Sidecar

Categories & Use Cases

Media

Screenshot of Overview of the NGINX Application Platform

Screenshot of NGINX Controller - Monitoring

Screenshot of NGINX Controller - Configuration

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Screenshot of Overview of the NGINX Application Platform

Application server performance
Speed of deploy time, initialization time and other performance metrics
Category average: 8.6
Installation
Ease of download and installation
Category average: 8.5
Open-source standards compliance
Support for open-source standards like J2EE
Category average: 8.4

Administration and management
Ease of management via administration console
Category average: 7.8
Security management
Integrated security management for applications
Category average: 8.5
IDE support
Support for a number of different programming environments or IDEs
Category average: 7.4

Most Frequent Users

Top 3 industries using NGINX.

Based on HG Insights installation data

View all Reviews

#1 most frequent

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

6.6%

504,469 installations of 7,642,564

“We use Nginx in our organization as a web server for Node.js applications, and as a reverse proxy for HTTP requests for backend applications such as APIs.”
— System Administrator, JET e-business

#2 most frequent

Manufacturing

3.0%

226,566 installations of 7,642,564

#3 most frequent

Other Services (except Public Administration)

2.4%

183,243 installations of 7,642,564

Pros

Effective load balancing for traffic distribution
Reliable reverse proxy capabilities for request routing
High stability and performance for application delivery

Cons

Complex configuration for initial setup and advanced features
Limited out-of-the-box monitoring and observability options
Lack of readily available Kubernetes charts

Luiz Eduardo Garcia View profile

System Administrator in Information Technology at JET e-business (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Nginx in our organization as a web server for Node.js applications, and as a reverse proxy for HTTP requests for backend applications such as APIs. For reverse proxy usage, we configure Nginx servers in pairs for high availability in active/passive mode. The failover is very smooth, almost with zero downtime - it loses only 1 packet during the transfer of the main role from one host to another.

Pros

Web Application Server.
Reverse Proxy.
High Availability for web applications.
Request rate limit.

Cons

HTTP Request Rewrite rules.
External modules maintained, such as mod security.
Request filtering.

Return on Investment

Positive: easy of management.
Negative: free license only supports active/passive mode on HA.
Positive: free license almost without limitations.
Negative: paid version too expansive.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft IIS, Amazon Elastic Load Balancing and Azure Load Balancer

Other Software Used

Microsoft IIS, Grafana Loki, Kong Gateway Community (Open Source), Portainer, NAKIVO Backup & Replication, Azure DevOps, Microsoft Visual Studio Code

Miguel Abbruzzese

Ciso in Engineering at Link (501-1000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use it as an API gateway and CDN, simplifying our interaction.

Lo usamos como api gateway y cnd , simplificando nuestra interacción

Pros

Api gateway
Cnd
Concurrency

Cons

Statistics

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Apache HTTP Server

James Chua

IT Engineer in Engineering at LG (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In our organization, We need to secure the application gateway, using NGINX waf to protect the application

Pros

In my opinion, a secure application is done well in NGINX
In my experience, NGINX does stable well
In my experience, NGINX does reliable well

Usability

Roland Araza

Technical Delivery Manager in Engineering at Meralco (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In our organization, We use NGINX as our primary load balancer across all our product line integrations.

Pros

I think Performance is done well in NGINX
I think Quality is done well in NGINX
I think Reliability is done well in NGINX

Cons

I think there is room for improvement in NGINX because I Would love to see more AI functionalities for this product

Return on Investment

The impact NGINX has on our organization's overall business objectives is NGINX's primary function to split load effectively.

Usability

Zhe Cheng

Associate Director in Information Technology at CGS International Securities (501-1000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In our organization, we Use NGINX as Load balancer

Pros

In my opinion, Performance is done well in NGINX
In my experience, NGINX is Stable
I think NGINX is Easy to configure and troubleshooting

Return on Investment

The impact NGINX has on our organization's overall business objectives is that, in our experience, NGINX's ROI is good, valuable

Usability

Microsoft IIS

HAProxy Community Edition

NGINX

What is NGINX?

Categories & Use Cases

Media

NGINX Key Features

Top Performing Features

Application server performance

Installation

Open-source standards compliance

Areas for Improvement

Administration and management

Security management

IDE support

Who Buys & Uses NGINX

Most Frequent Users

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

Manufacturing

Other Services (except Public Administration)

Most Frequent Users

Small Businesses

Mid-sized Companies

Enterprises

Most Frequent Users

United States of America

Germany

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Most Frequent Users

Engineering

IT

Sales

NGINX Reviews

Pros

Cons

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Usability

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Usability

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Return on Investment

Usability

NGINX Alternatives