Item: Microsoft IIS
Rating: 10
Author: Verified User

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 and Cons

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.

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.

Return on Investment

We have been able to quickly setup and deploy applications using IIS which has allowed the business to engage customers more quickly.
IIS has failed us at times when an issue occurs and the default error messaging has not been clear which caused us to look for issues in the wrong place.
Creating a separate app pool for each web site, which is default in IIS, saved us from causing the entire server to crash when memory leaks occurred.

Alternatives Considered

We have always been a IIS company so we haven't used any other products like it.

Support Rating

IIS has a really good user community which has helped us out in the past. When we were setting up our initial reverse proxy server using IIS, we found help from the community that pointed us in the right direction. We also have had good help from third-party vendors who are experts in IIS which have been a huge support for us.

Usability

IIS is highly usable and can be quickly configured to host a web site or web service. If you want to get more into the intricate configurations, you're able to do that if you have more complex requirements. IIS is usable by administrators who are new as well as experienced admins. We have used it on both ends of that spectrum and IIS has performed very well.

Key Insights

Do you think Microsoft IIS delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Microsoft IIS's feature set?

Yes

Did Microsoft IIS live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Microsoft IIS go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Microsoft IIS again?

Yes

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.

Microsoft IIS can handle simple to complex hosting requirements

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft IIS