Hire Qualified NGINX Experts

Generally, NGINX is considered to be the better performer since that was the goal of the project when it was introduced almost a decade after Apache. However, it’s actually more complicated than that, and it all depends on what type of application you run, how you do it, and what your goals are that even define what performance is.

Starting with concurrency, NGINX uses an event-driven asynchronous model. It’s designed to handle thousands of simultaneous connections with minimal resource consumption. It’s commonly linked with the C10K problem, which was coined in 1999 about serving 10,000 users at the same time.

Apache has a process-driven architecture. Each connection requires a separate thread. This can scale well, but you generally end up with much higher memory usage than NGINX.

On pavement, the reality is that performance is really complicated. Is it worth it to spend more development time on one solution, or buy more compute power for the other? What are your targets for performance? Is it about concurrency, or is it about the way pages load under heavy usage? You’ll quickly get into the weeds no matter the web server solution you use, like with how each behaves with the order that content is fetched when you’re trying to optimize something for first contentful paint. It comes down to developer experience, preference, and application specific optimization.

When it comes to dynamic content, Apache handles it well out of the box. NGINX is better suited for static content and handles dynamic content by proxying requests to external processors.

Generally, Apache is more feature rich. It also allows the use of .htaccess files, which allow per-directory configuration easily, however this can have a performance impact. NGINX is more streamlined and kept simple on purpose. Changes that would normally be done in .htaccess on Apache are required to be done to the main configuration files, and the rewrite rules are more complex.

Which you use comes down to how you intend to use it. Are you going for dynamic content or something easy to customize? You might want Apache. Do you need static content, a high traffic webserver, or a reverse proxy? You might choose NGINX, and NGINX proxy manager is excellent. At the end of the day, both can serve most use cases, and the most important thing to remember is that if you need a project done right now, you probably want to stick with the thing you are most experienced with. Keep it simple.

Reverse Proxy

If you’re a novice developer that was looking for a reverse proxy solution that didn’t make you want to rip your hair out, you probably ended up on NGINX reverse proxy. It’s simple but powerful, suitable for anyone from novice to expert.

Load Balancing

NGINX can also function as an HTTP load balancer, distributing traffic across multiple web servers. You can distribute based on a round-robin approach, the server with the least active connections, or based on the user’s IP.

API Gateway

NGINX is often used as an API gateway. It can manage traffic efficiently, rate limit, and provide authentication. The traffic management, security, and performance optimizations of NGINX make it an easy solution to operate something at scale, and APIs are typically designed to do just that.

Caching Server

NGINX can be used as a caching edgeserver, reducing the load on the backend servers. When users request frequently served files, particularly static content, NGINX can deliver them without involving the proper application servers, reducing both load and bandwidth usage.

As a CDN

Combining three of the above mentioned use cases- NGINX for load balancing, as a reverse proxy, and caching, it’s a great choice to use to create a content delivery network (CDN).

Web Server

Of course, NGINX can just be used as a regular webserver to serve your regular website or web application.