Item: Apache HTTP Server
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Apache HTTP Server

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use exclusively Apache HTTP Server on all our webservers across our department on our division. I have knowledge that other branches also use it. On our area, we come from Windows Servers and Apache give us a solid web server, with a lot of options that are useful for the kind of websites we have. On the past IIS was great, but at scale, and specially with PHP websites, was not great, so HTTPD help us to serve several websites with absolutely no problem.

Pros and Cons

Pros

PHP Integration.
Powerful configuration.
Redirects made easy.

Cons

Configuration files are located on different places depending on your Linux distro.
If you have an error on one configuration file, apache refuses to start and sometimes is difficult to know why.
Security is not great by default, but making a todo list help when you configure a new server.

Most Important Features

Reliable.
Secure.
Fast.

Return on Investment

Works as intended, so it's less to worry about.
Works great on elastic environments (like EC2).
As an Open Source project, you can get support for almost any problem you can have.
Configuration files, while powerful, can be tricky to dominate for some.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft IIS

IIS has a clear advantage over Apache: Configuration can be done through a convenient visual editor. But, sometimes, IIS can be tricky to use for serving other things than asp.net.

We had bad experiences working at scale with IIS7.5 while serving PHP websites. I know that more recent versions work a lot better, but if you want to serve PHP websites on IIS, while you can, it's better to not do it.

Key Insights

Do you think Apache HTTP Server delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Apache HTTP Server's feature set?

Yes

Did Apache HTTP Server live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Apache HTTP Server go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Apache HTTP Server again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Node.js, Microsoft Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio IDE

Likelihood to Recommend

We use dedicated AWS EC2 Instances for websites that don't server almost any static content, and each instance is behind an AWS Load balancer. On that scenario, Apache works great.

We came from serving several websites on one server using Apache, and that was not great, neither to administrate or scale. Please try to avoid using Apache to serve several Websites at once. It works, but you don’t want to do it. If you want to serve several websites from one server, use a server control app, like CloudPanel or Vesta.

Comments

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Apache still does his thing