StackShareStackShare
Follow on
StackShare

Discover and share technology stacks from companies around the world.

Follow on

© 2025 StackShare. All rights reserved.

Product

  • Stacks
  • Tools
  • Feed

Company

  • About
  • Contact

Legal

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Platform as a Service
  4. Web Servers
  5. Apache HTTP Server vs GlassFish

Apache HTTP Server vs GlassFish

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Apache HTTP Server
Apache HTTP Server
Stacks64.5K
Followers22.8K
Votes1.4K
GitHub Stars3.8K
Forks1.2K
GlassFish
GlassFish
Stacks581
Followers112
Votes0

Apache HTTP Server vs GlassFish: What are the differences?

Introduction

Apache HTTP Server and GlassFish are both popular web server software used to host websites. While both serve similar purposes, there are several key differences between the two.

  1. Architecture: Apache HTTP Server is based on a modular architecture, allowing users to select and configure only the required modules for their specific needs. On the other hand, GlassFish is a full-featured Java EE application server that provides a complete platform for developing, deploying, and running Java applications.

  2. Supported Technologies: Apache HTTP Server primarily supports static content (HTML, CSS, images) and can be extended with various scripting languages like PHP, Python, and Perl. GlassFish, being a Java EE application server, supports a wide range of Java technologies and specifications, making it suitable for hosting Java-based web applications.

  3. Administration and Configuration: Apache HTTP Server typically requires manual configuration and administration through editing configuration files. In contrast, GlassFish provides a graphical administration console that simplifies the management tasks and allows for easier configuration and deployment of applications.

  4. Community and Support: Apache HTTP Server has a large and active community, with a wealth of documentation, forums, and resources available. GlassFish also has a community, but it is relatively smaller compared to Apache HTTP Server. As a result, finding support and resources for Apache HTTP Server is generally easier.

  5. Performance and Scalability: Apache HTTP Server is known for its high-performance and scalability, especially in handling static content and low-demand scenarios. GlassFish, on the other hand, is optimized for Java-based web applications and can handle higher loads and dynamic content more efficiently.

  6. Licensing: Apache HTTP Server is licensed under the Apache License 2.0, which allows for free use and modification of the software. GlassFish, however, is dual-licensed under both the CDDL (Common Development and Distribution License) and GPL (GNU General Public License), which may have implications for commercial usage and distribution.

In summary, Apache HTTP Server is a lightweight, modular web server suitable for hosting static content and supporting various scripting languages, while GlassFish is a full-featured Java EE application server optimized for hosting Java-based web applications. Apache HTTP Server has a larger community and easier administration, while GlassFish offers better support for Java technologies and higher scalability.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs
CLI (Node.js)
or
Manual

Advice on Apache HTTP Server, GlassFish

Hari
Hari

Mar 3, 2020

Needs advice

I was in a situation where I have to configure 40 RHEL servers 20 each for Apache HTTP Server and Tomcat server. My task was to

  1. configure LVM with required logical volumes, format and mount for HTTP and Tomcat servers accordingly.
  2. Install apache and tomcat.
  3. Generate and apply selfsigned certs to http server.
  4. Modify default ports on Tomcat to different ports.
  5. Create users on RHEL for application support team.
  6. other administrative tasks like, start, stop and restart HTTP and Tomcat services.

I have utilized the power of ansible for all these tasks, which made it easy and manageable.

419k views419k
Comments
greg00m
greg00m

Mar 9, 2020

Needs advice

I am diving into web development, both front and back end. I feel comfortable with administration, scripting and moderate coding in bash, Python and C++, but I am also a Windows fan (i love inner conflict). What are the votes on web servers? IIS is expensive and restrictive (has Windows adoption of open source changed this?) Apache has the history but seems to be at the root of most of my Infosec issues, and I know nothing about nginx (is it too new to rely on?). And no, I don't know what I want to do on the web explicitly, but hosting and data storage (both cloud and tape) are possibilities.
Ready, aim fire!

766k views766k
Comments
StackShare
StackShare

May 29, 2019

Needs advice

From a StackShare Community member: "We are a LAMP shop currently focused on improving web performance for our customers. We have made many front-end optimizations and now we are considering replacing Apache with nginx. I was wondering if others saw a noticeable performance gain or any other benefits by switching."

725k views725k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Apache HTTP Server
Apache HTTP Server
GlassFish
GlassFish

The Apache HTTP Server is a powerful and flexible HTTP/1.1 compliant web server. Originally designed as a replacement for the NCSA HTTP Server, it has grown to be the most popular web server on the Internet.

An Application Server means, It can manage Java EE applications You should use GlassFish for Java EE enterprise applications. The need for a seperate Web server is mostly needed in a production environment.

Statistics
GitHub Stars
3.8K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
1.2K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
64.5K
Stacks
581
Followers
22.8K
Followers
112
Votes
1.4K
Votes
0
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 479
    Web server
  • 305
    Most widely-used web server
  • 217
    Virtual hosting
  • 148
    Fast
  • 138
    Ssl support
Cons
  • 4
    Hard to set up
No community feedback yet

What are some alternatives to Apache HTTP Server, GlassFish?

NGINX

NGINX

nginx [engine x] is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, as well as a mail proxy server, written by Igor Sysoev. According to Netcraft nginx served or proxied 30.46% of the top million busiest sites in Jan 2018.

Unicorn

Unicorn

Unicorn is an HTTP server for Rack applications designed to only serve fast clients on low-latency, high-bandwidth connections and take advantage of features in Unix/Unix-like kernels. Slow clients should only be served by placing a reverse proxy capable of fully buffering both the the request and response in between Unicorn and slow clients.

Microsoft IIS

Microsoft IIS

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.

Apache Tomcat

Apache Tomcat

Apache Tomcat powers numerous large-scale, mission-critical web applications across a diverse range of industries and organizations.

Passenger

Passenger

Phusion Passenger is a web server and application server, designed to be fast, robust and lightweight. It takes a lot of complexity out of deploying web apps, adds powerful enterprise-grade features that are useful in production, and makes administration much easier and less complex.

Gunicorn

Gunicorn

Gunicorn is a pre-fork worker model ported from Ruby's Unicorn project. The Gunicorn server is broadly compatible with various web frameworks, simply implemented, light on server resources, and fairly speedy.

Jetty

Jetty

Jetty is used in a wide variety of projects and products, both in development and production. Jetty can be easily embedded in devices, tools, frameworks, application servers, and clusters. See the Jetty Powered page for more uses of Jetty.

lighttpd

lighttpd

lighttpd has a very low memory footprint compared to other webservers and takes care of cpu-load. Its advanced feature-set (FastCGI, CGI, Auth, Output-Compression, URL-Rewriting and many more) make lighttpd the perfect webserver-software for every server that suffers load problems.

Swoole

Swoole

It is an open source high-performance network framework using an event-driven, asynchronous, non-blocking I/O model which makes it scalable and efficient.

Puma

Puma

Unlike other Ruby Webservers, Puma was built for speed and parallelism. Puma is a small library that provides a very fast and concurrent HTTP 1.1 server for Ruby web applications.

Related Comparisons

Bootstrap
Materialize

Bootstrap vs Materialize

Laravel
Django

Django vs Laravel vs Node.js

Bootstrap
Foundation

Bootstrap vs Foundation vs Material UI

Node.js
Spring Boot

Node.js vs Spring-Boot

Liquibase
Flyway

Flyway vs Liquibase