What are Web Servers?

Web servers, also known as HTTP servers, are servers that host websites and web applications. Web servers are the backbone of all sites and web apps on the internet. Many popular web servers are open source. Different web servers have advantages and disadvantages when compared to one another, and selecting the right one depends on use case, deployment, operating system, and more. Compare and read user reviews of the best Web Servers currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.

  • 1
    NGINX
    NGINX Open Source: The open source web server that powers more than 400 million websites. NGINX Plus is a software load balancer, web server, and content cache built on top of open source NGINX. Use NGINX Plus instead of your hardware load balancer and get the freedom to innovate without being constrained by infrastructure. Save more than 80% compared to hardware ADCs, without sacrificing performance or functionality. Deploy anywhere: public cloud, private cloud, bare metal, virtual machines, and containers. Save time by performing common tasks through the built‑in NGINX Plus API. From NetOps to DevOps, modern app teams need a self‑service, API‑driven platform that integrates easily into CI/CD workflows to accelerate app deployment – whether your app has a hybrid or microservices architecture – and makes app lifecycle management easier.
  • 2
    Microsoft IIS

    Microsoft IIS

    Microsoft

    Internet Information Services (IIS) for Windows® Server is a flexible, secure and manageable Web server for hosting anything on the Web. From media streaming to web applications, IIS's scalable and open architecture is ready to handle the most demanding tasks.
  • 3
    Tornado Web Server
    Tornado is a Python web framework and asynchronous networking library, originally developed at FriendFeed. By using non-blocking network I/O, Tornado can scale to tens of thousands of open connections, making it ideal for long polling, WebSockets, and other applications that require a long-lived connection to each user. Tornado is different from most Python web frameworks. It is not based on WSGI, and it is typically run with only one thread per process. While some support of WSGI is available in the tornado.wsgi module, it is not a focus of development and most applications should be written to use Tornado’s own interfaces (such as tornado.web) directly instead of using WSGI. In general, Tornado code is not thread-safe. Tornado is integrated with the standard library asyncio module and shares the same event loop (by default since Tornado 5.0). In general, libraries designed for use with asyncio can be mixed freely with Tornado.
  • 4
    Traefik

    Traefik

    Traefik Labs

    What is Traefik Enterprise Edition? TraefikEE is a cloud-native load balancer and Kubernetes ingress controller that eases networking complexity for application teams. Built on top of open source Traefik, TraefikEE brings exclusive distributed and high-availability features combined with premium bundled support for production grade deployments. Split into proxies and controllers, TraefikEE supports clustered deployments to increase security, scalability and high availability. Deploy applications anywhere, on-premises or in the cloud, and natively integrate with top-notch infrastructure tooling. Save time and give better consistency while deploying, managing, and scaling applications by leveraging dynamic and automatic TraefikEE features. Improve the application development and delivery cycle by giving developers the visibility and ownership of their services.
  • 5
    Caddy

    Caddy

    Caddy

    Caddy simplifies your infrastructure. It takes care of TLS certificate renewals, OCSP stapling, static file serving, reverse proxying, Kubernetes ingress, and more. Its modular architecture means you can do more with a single, static binary that compiles for any platform. Caddy runs great in containers because it has no dependencies—not even libc. Run Caddy practically anywhere. Caddy obtains and renews TLS certificates for your sites automatically. It even staples OCSP responses. Its novel certificate management features are the most mature and reliable in its class. Written in go, Caddy offers greater memory safety than servers written in C. A hardened TLS stack powered by the go standard library serves a significant portion of all Internet traffic. Caddy is both a flexible, efficient static file server and a powerful, scalable reverse proxy.
  • 6
    AIOHTTP

    AIOHTTP

    AIOHTTP

    Supports both client and server side of HTTP protocol, both client and server web-sockets out-of-the-box, and avoids callback hell and web-server with middlewares and pluggable routing.
  • 7
    LiteSpeed Web Server

    LiteSpeed Web Server

    LiteSpeed Technologies

    Our lightweight Apache alternative conserves resources without sacrificing performance, security, compatibility, or convenience. Double the maximum capacity of your current Apache servers with LiteSpeed Web Server's streamlined event-driven architecture, capable of handling thousands of concurrent clients with minimal memory consumption and CPU usage. Protect your servers with already familiar ModSecurity rules while also taking advantage of a host of built-in anti-DDoS features, such as bandwidth and connection throttling. Conserve capital by reducing the number of servers needed to support your growing hosting business or online application. Reduce complexity by eliminating the need for an HTTPS reverse proxy or additional 3rd party caching layers. LiteSpeed Web Server is compatible with all popular Apache features including its Rewrite Engine and ModSecurity, and can load Apache configuration files directly.
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