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Caddy vs nginx: What are the differences?
Caddy and nginx are both popular web servers that offer various features and capabilities. Here are the key differences that set them apart.
Easy Configuration: Caddy focuses on simplicity and ease of use, providing a user-friendly approach to configuration. It automatically generates SSL certificates and supports HTTPS by default. On the other hand, nginx requires manual configuration for SSL certificates and HTTPS setup.
Automatic HTTPS: Caddy has built-in support for automatic HTTPS through its ACME-based integration. This means that it can automatically obtain and renew SSL certificates without any extra configuration. In contrast, nginx requires additional plugins or modules to enable automatic HTTPS.
Web Server vs. Reverse Proxy: Caddy is primarily designed as a full-featured web server, capable of handling static content, dynamic content, and reverse proxying. It can serve and proxy HTTP and HTTPS requests. Nginx, on the other hand, is primarily known as a high-performance reverse proxy server. It excels at forwarding and load balancing requests to backend servers.
Configuration Languages: Caddy uses a simple, human-readable configuration format inspired by the Caddyfile, which makes it easier for users to understand and modify. In contrast, nginx uses a more complex configuration language that requires a steeper learning curve for beginners.
Extensibility: Nginx has been around for a longer time and has a vast ecosystem of modules and plugins developed by the community. It offers more flexibility and extensibility options, allowing advanced customization and integration with other systems. Caddy, although it supports plugins, has a more limited selection compared to nginx.
Resource Usage: Caddy is aimed at being resource-friendly, designed to use fewer system resources such as CPU and memory compared to nginx. This can be advantageous in scenarios where efficiency and performance are crucial, particularly in low-resource environments.
In summary, Caddy emphasizes simplicity, automatic HTTPS, and ease of configuration, while nginx offers a more comprehensive set of features, extensibility options, and is well-suited for reverse proxying.
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!
I would pick nginx over both IIS and Apace HTTP Server any day. Combine it with docker, and as you grow maybe even traefik, and you'll have a really flexible solution for serving http content where you can take sites and projects up and down without effort, easily move it between systems and dont have to handle any dependencies on your actual local machine.
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."
I use nginx because it is very light weight. Where Apache tries to include everything in the web server, nginx opts to have external programs/facilities take care of that so the web server can focus on efficiently serving web pages. While this can seem inefficient, it limits the number of new bugs found in the web server, which is the element that faces the client most directly.
I use nginx because its more flexible and easy to configure
I use Apache HTTP Server because it's intuitive, comprehensive, well-documented, and just works
- Server rendered HTML output from PHP is being migrated to the client as Vue.js components, future plans to provide additional content, and other new miscellaneous features all result in a substantial increase of static files needing to be served from the server. NGINX has better performance than Apache for serving static content.
- The change to NGINX will require switching from PHP to PHP-FPM resulting in a distributed architecture with a higher complexity configuration, but this is outweighed by PHP-FPM being faster than PHP for processing requests.
- The NGINX + PHP-FPM setup now allows for horizontally scaling of resources rather vertically scaling the previously combined Apache + PHP resources.
- PHP shell tasks can now efficiently be decoupled from the application reducing main application footprint and allow for scaling of tasks on an individual basis.
Pros of Caddy
- Easy HTTP/2 Server Push6
- Sane config file syntax6
- Builtin HTTPS4
- Letsencrypt support2
- Runtime config API2
Pros of NGINX
- High-performance http server1.4K
- Performance894
- Easy to configure730
- Open source607
- Load balancer530
- Free289
- Scalability288
- Web server226
- Simplicity175
- Easy setup136
- Content caching30
- Web Accelerator21
- Capability15
- Fast14
- High-latency12
- Predictability12
- Reverse Proxy8
- The best of them7
- Supports http/27
- Great Community5
- Lots of Modules5
- Enterprise version5
- High perfomance proxy server4
- Embedded Lua scripting3
- Streaming media delivery3
- Streaming media3
- Reversy Proxy3
- Blash2
- GRPC-Web2
- Lightweight2
- Fast and easy to set up2
- Slim2
- saltstack2
- Virtual hosting1
- Narrow focus. Easy to configure. Fast1
- Along with Redis Cache its the Most superior1
- Ingress controller1
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Cons of Caddy
- New kid3
Cons of NGINX
- Advanced features require subscription10
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