Nginx - Best Web Server for High-Traffic Websites
February 04, 2019
Nginx - Best Web Server for High-Traffic Websites
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Nginx
We use Nginx to serve static content for a few of our applications. Nginx is very effective for us because it's free, scales very well, and can handle millions of requests a second. It has made several of our websites noticeably faster. In addition, its ability to act as a Proxy/Reverse Proxy has been instrumental in fulfilling our specific web hosting needs.
Pros
- Very low memory usage. Can handle many more connections than alternatives (like Apache HTTPD) due to low overhead. (event-based architecture).
- Great at serving static content.
- Scales very well. Easy to host multiple Nginx servers to promote high availability.
- Open-Source (no cost)!
Cons
- Less community support compared to Apache
- Less extensive list of modules compared to Apache
- Our websites are noticeably faster, causing an increase in customer satisfaction.
- Nginx has such a low memory/resource footprint that we save money from not needing multiple large, expensive servers.
- Ability to load balance traffic, have server-redundancy, and have high-availability allows for 100% uptime and provides cost-effective solutions to alternatives that can cost a lot.
Apache is still widely used by the software community and can accomplish many of the same things Nginx can. Nginx is a better solution when you are serving static content (vs. dynamic content), are on a Unix-system, and have a high-traffic website. In addition, certain things like Load Balancing and Reverse Proxies are easier to setup in Nginx.
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