Apache Web Server vs NGINX Plus comparison

Apache and F5 are both solutions in the Application Infrastructure category. Apache is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.8, while F5 is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.2. Apache holds a 10.9% mindshare in AIS, compared to F5’s 11.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of F5 users who would recommend it.

Apache Web Server

Read 22 Apache Web Server reviews

2,093 Views
1,809 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NGINX Plus

Read 31 NGINX Plus reviews

2,427 Views
1,999 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Apache Web Server

NGINX Plus

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Apache Web Server and NGINX Plus based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Application Infrastructure solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Apache Web Server vs. NGINX Plus Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Apache Web Server vs. NGINX Plus

January 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Apache Web Server

Ranking in Application Infrastructure

4th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

NGINX Plus

Ranking in Application Infrastructure

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (6th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Application Infrastructure category, the mindshare of Apache Web Server is 10.9%, up from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 11.8%, up from 11.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Infrastructure

Featured Reviews

Saurav Kumar

Senior security architecture at National Payment Corporation Of India

Offers security features that are reliable

When it comes to Apache Web Server, I don't have any suggestions for improvement because we use it in the UAT environment. For production, my company mainly uses NGINX. There is no direct package provided by the product if I want to use WAF. In NGINX, NGINX Plus has the signature update capability, but in Apache, the same feature is not available, making it an area where improvements are required. If WAF can be introduced in Apache Web Server, it would be a good improvement so that its users can implement either the WAF module or ModSecurity, as they choose. For NGINX, I think it has NGINX Management Suite, which is GUI-based and allows you to manage your configuration via the user interface, but Apache fails to offer such capabilities to users. Apache Web Server should provide users with the same capabilities offered under NGINX Management Suite with the help of a simple GUI so that our company doesn't have to do anything on the terminal while directly getting to use the user interface, which can help us with the configuration part.

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Ritesh-Bakhru

Major Account Manager at Check Point Software

Quick installation and very easy to manage while doing orchestration or automation

NGINX cannot be a replacement for your traditional load balancer with what we use in the network today. However, with applications going toward microservices, NGINX is definitely a way forward. F5 has many traditional load balancing features, so they still need to bring some of those features to NGINX. NGINX is a very basic load balancer and cannot do as many customizations as F5. I think F5 is trying to implement those features in NGINX so they can improve the balancing on NGINX, but I think that will take some time. With the traditional F5 set up, the same OS can do load balancing, firewalls, and even policy enforcement. If we are able to bring some of those capabilities to NGINX, I think it would become a versatile solution and usage would definitely increase.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Its community is its most valuable feature. Solving problems is easier on Apache because so many people know this product."

"The most significant advantage is the ability to swiftly enable HTTPS services when my DNS is configured correctly."

"Apache Web Server can be used as a proxy server"

"The control panel is very easy to navigate. It's similar to most hosting platforms, so it's user-friendly. Once you get used to it, managing your hosting becomes easy, too."

"The solution's most valuable feature is reporting."

"The product is very cheap and stable."

"Most of the features I liked were related to the performance during peak hours."

"It's very stable, and it hosts one of the biggest of many biggest web applications in the world."

More Apache Web Server pros

"I find the solution’s community support and documentation most valuable. Compared to HAProxy, have found a lot of documentation and community support on Quora. If you would be asking me as a developer whether to choose this product, I would recommend this since it has good community support, documentation, and signature updates. The configuration of HAProxy is also very tedious. However, NGINX’s configuration is very simple."

"-"

"When you use NGINX, you have more options and power."

"Nginx is simple to configure, very stable in a highly utilized environment and very modular, allowing DevOps to create it's own modules for interactive use with Nginx."

"It's lightweight software that can handle heavy loads efficiently."

"This solution has everything."

"Its most valuable features are load balancing and application delivery. This is the most efficient application for these features because of stability and its efficiency."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is simple to configure."

More NGINX Plus pros

Cons

"For NGINX, I think it has NGINX Management Suite, which is GUI-based and allows you to manage your configuration via the user interface, but Apache fails to offer such capabilities to users."

"Adding a reverse proxy to Apache Web Server would be a significant improvement."

"I want the user interface to be more user-friendly."

"The interface has room for improvement."

"There is a security-related problem that depends on the web server's configuration."

"Its stability could be better."

"The GUI for the less experienced users needs some improvement. For some companies, it is hard to configure it if they have not had any experience."

"In future releases, I would like to see better server optimization."

More Apache Web Server cons

"I would suggest adding GUI-based configuration panels to NGINX Plus to simplify setup and management tasks."

"Make modules easier to enable or disable. The beauty and ugly side of the NGINX modules is you have to know how to compile the module. For beginners or non-very technical aspirant(s) going for NGINX, they have to learn how to compile the modules."

"It would be great if there was even more automation to make it even easier to maintain."

"I would like the configuration process to be more simplified."

"The drawback is that you must obtain a license for everything."

"The solution must improve its performance."

"The KPI should be more focused on load balancing and the latency in application calling from the end system."

"I would like to see the Grafana integration in NGINX which is already present in HAProxy. Grafana integration will help the solution visualize all the data analytics on the dashboard which is currently not present."

More NGINX Plus cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The apache software is free, open-source."

"There is no licensing cost for the product."

"It is an open-source solution."

"It is a free-of-cost solution."

"HAProxy is cheaper than NGINX."

"The list price of NGINX Plus is close to $5,500."

"I am not so happy with their pricing policy, but this is not the worse thing in my life. I can tolerate it."

"NGINX is a free tool in Brazil. There are some companies which do support it."

"Nginx is free. I don't have experience with the Plus version."

"NGINX Plus is worth it, if you need it. If you do not need the features or support, the free and open source package is more than capable. "

"Compared to other similar solutions on the market, I think it's over-priced."

"The price is the cost to contract support with a specialized company, usually during consulting hours."

More NGINX Plus pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user240036

Senior IT Architect at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees

Apr 10, 2016

Apache vs. Nginx

Originally posted https://zitseng.com/archives/10435 Apache or Nginx. This is a question that many website administrators have considered. It’s a question that I’ve also considered several times, and again just the past week. Apache is the most popular web server on the Internet. Nginx, on the…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

16%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Apache Web Server?

The product's initial setup phase is straightforward.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Web Server?

The price of the product is an area handled by the procurement team in my company.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Apache Web Server?

There isn't a dedicated customer support available for Apache Web Server.

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Which is better - IIS or NGINX Plus?

IIS is a flexible, secure, and manageable web server to host anything on the web. IIS’s scalable and open architecture can handle the most demanding tasks. From media streaming to web applications,...

See all answers

What do you like most about NGINX Plus?

It performs very well. That's one of the primary reasons we use NGINX.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX Plus?

My use case involves using the free and open-source version of NGINX, making it cost-effective as I haven't incurred any costs.

See all answers

Comparisons

IIS vs Apache Web Server

Compared 41% of the time

Microsoft .NET Framework vs Apache Web Server

Compared 7% of the time

Zend PHP Engine vs Apache Web Server

Compared 7% of the time

IBM WebSphere Application Server vs Apache Web Server

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle SOA Suite vs Apache Web Server

Compared 5% of the time

More Apache Web Server Competitors

IIS vs NGINX Plus

Compared 19% of the time

HAProxy vs NGINX Plus

Compared 18% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs NGINX Plus

Compared 12% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs NGINX Plus

Compared 10% of the time

Radware Alteon vs NGINX Plus

Compared 4% of the time

More NGINX Plus Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Apache Web Server

February 2025

Download Apache Web Server product report

Buyer's Guide

NGINX Plus

February 2025

Download NGINX Plus product report

Also Known As

Apache HTTP Server

NGINX

Overview

The Apache HTTP Server Project was founded in 1995 by a group of webmasters, known as The Apache Group, with the aim of developing robust, richly-featured, freely-available and commercial-standard Web (HTTP) server source code. The result was Apache Web Server or Apache HTTP Server, which is an open-source public-domain web server.

This collaborative project has been enhanced ever since with contributions from the core development team and other volunteers situated all over the globe. Also, hundreds of users of this open-source web server have contributed code, ideas, and documentation. The project falls under The Apache Software Foundation, which manages many open-source projects.

Apache

NGINX Plus is a versatile solution that offers load balancing, caching, proxying, and API deployment capabilities. It can be deployed on private or public clouds and is ideal for building CDN solutions. The solution can also be used to secure web applications and replace web services like Apache.

NGINX has helped organizations improve functioning, reduce downtimes, and offer a DevOps-friendly solution. Its community support and documentation are highly regarded, and its configuration is more straightforward, making it a recommended choice over HAProxy.

Sample Customers

Cisco, Intuit, General Electric, Adobe, VMware, PayPal, HP, EMC, eBay, Apple, SAP, Qualcomm, SanDisk, Allstate, FedEx

Locaweb, AppNexus, Wix, Reliam, Montana Interactive, MuleSoft, Warpwire, Discovery Education, InkaBinka, WordPress.com, Gogo, GOV.UK, NASA

Buyer's Guide

Apache Web Server vs. NGINX Plus

January 2025

Free Report: Apache Web Server vs. NGINX Plus

Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Web Server vs. NGINX Plus and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

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