The best Web Hosting 2024 compared

The web server is one of the most important server services when it comes to delivering content to visitors of your website. Over the years, certain applications have established dominance here, with competitors slowly challenging their position. On Linux servers, the former leader Apache was first challenged by Nginx, and in recent years, the competitor LiteSpeed has also been gaining importance. Additionally, Microsoft's IIS continues to be used on Windows servers. The following article explores the best web servers and which solutions are the most popular.

What tasks does the web server perform?

Web servers handle the majority of communication on the internet and are essential for publishing a website. The tasks of a web server include exchanging data with a counterpart (client) and forwarding to additional programs like a PHP interpreter. When a client makes a request to a web server - for example, accessing a web page or downloading a file, the processing follows a strictly defined sequence:

• A client contacts the server and sends a request
• The web server and the client exchange keys for a secure connection
• The web server analyses the information, contacts the interpreter, and passes necessary data
• If necessary, the interpreter retrieves additional information from a database
• The interpreter creates a webpage in HTML code from scripts in programming languages such as PHP, Python, or Perl
• The interpreter passes the requested data to the web server
• The web server coordinates the connection to the client and sends the response in multiple packets

In summary, the tasks of a web server involve providing an interface between an internet address, internal software, stored information, and the client.

Therefore, the performance of a website, as well as the server speed, depend on its operation, including resource consumption such as memory and processing power. This raises the obvious question: Which web server is the best?

Which Web Server is the Best?

All web servers - whether Apache, LitesSpeed, NGINX, or Microsoft IIS - have specific strengths that provide a concrete advantage in certain situations. The decision for an ideal solution strongly depends on the basic requirements and should be made by weighing various factors.

For example, the Apache web server is an excellent choice for Linux operating systems when the server needs to handle a stable number of requests in the long term. For data-intensive purposes, NGINX is a suitable option, known for its excellent performance under high computational loads. On the other hand, LiteSpeed supports new standards and allows leveraging the benefits of current technologies. Microsoft IIS, on the other hand, is suitable for a homogeneous IT infrastructure focused on maximum user-friendliness through graphical interfaces.

Which Web Server is the Most Popular?

It is hardly possible to make a blanket statement about which web server is the best.

However, one can look at the distribution of market shares of individual solutions to get an impression of which web servers are most popular.

According to the monthly published Web Server Survey by netcraft.com, the current distribution in June 2024 is as follows:

The Nginx web server leads with 22%, closely followed by the Apache web server with a 20% market share.
The LiteSpeed web server holds 4%, while the Microsoft IIS web server manages a 2% share.
The remaining market shares are distributed among major cloud providers such as Google and Cloudflare, as well as OpenRetsy Web Applications.

So, Nginx and Apache continue to be by far the most popular and widely used web server variants on the web.

The Best Web Servers Compared

The following table provides an overview of the key features and characteristics of the web servers presented here:

Apache - the classic among web servers

The Apache HTTP Server alongside Linux and other software, forms the crucial foundation responsible for shaping the Internet in its current form. Since the mid-1990s, the combination of Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP interpreter (LAMP Server) has been widely preferred for hosting public websites. The version 2.x, available since the year 2000, is considered the standard for an efficient, versatile, and freely configurable web server. Its modular system and numerous continuously developed plugins allow for functionality expansion based on individual requirements. The features of Apache 2 include:

• Free private and commercial usage under its own Open Source license
• Very high stability, security, and flexibility with proper configuration
• Good performance even with a large number of simultaneous connections
• Compatible with Linux, Unix, and Microsoft Windows
• Excellent flexibility through a modular design allowing for extensions
• Support for all popular scripting languages including PHP, Python, Ruby, Perl, LUA, .NET, or JavaScript
• Excellent documentation and extensive community support
• Easy configuration of local directories through .htaccess files

At one point, the Apache 2 web server held a market share of over 90 percent. Since around 2010, this high popularity has decreased as increasingly powerful competitors like NGINX offer an attractive alternative.

NGINX - a modern web server with outstanding performance

The reason for the emergence of NGINX - a phonetic abbreviation for the English term Engine X - lay in one of the then biggest weaknesses of Apache (before version 2.4): In websites with very high traffic and numerous parallel connections, their performance decreased because each client started its own process on the operating system. Originally, NGINX was programmed for the Russian search engine Rambler according to their requirements for a powerful web server, to be able to quickly and resource-efficiently respond to many search queries. The key features include:

• Free private and commercial use under the Simplified BSD License
• Very high security and stability with clear, user-friendly configuration
• Optimised for low resource consumption with many parallel clients
• Compatible with Linux, Unix, and Microsoft Windows
• Modular design, but offers fewer extensions than Apache
• Indirect support for languages via the fastCGI interface
• Widely used in Eastern Europe and on websites with high traffic and users
• Detailed documentation and large community

Due to its advantages - especially the excellent performance with numerous parallel client requests - many major platforms such as WordPress.com, GitHub, Netflix, SourceForge, or Wikimedia prefer NGINX as a web server.

LiteSpeed - a web server with rapidly growing popularity

The first version of the LiteSpeed Web Servers (LSWS) was released in 2003, but in the following decade, it received limited attention due to the dominance of Apache and held a market share of less than 1 percent for a long time. However, since around 2015, its popularity has been steadily increasing. A study by the Technical University of Aachen (RWTH Aachen) reported a reach of 9.2 percent for websites using HTTP/2 in 2020. This growth can be attributed to several reasons, primarily the rapid and consistent support for new standards such as HTTP or QUIC. Some features of LiteSpeed include:

• Released in two versions under GPL and a proprietary license
• Rapid support for new standards shortly after their official release
• Good performance at both low and high user numbers
• Compatible with various Linux distributions like Debian or CloudLinux OS and FreeBSD
• Can be used as a direct replacement for Apache without changing the configuration
• Native support for various Apache modules and .htaccess
• No integration with Certbot procedures for SSL certificates like Let's Encrypt
• Number of CPU cores used depends on the license

Due to its good performance and early integration of new standards like HTTP/3, the LiteSpeed Web Server has secured a niche market, mainly utilised by innovative start-ups, young IT companies, and small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). One significant advantage of LiteSpeed is its compatibility with Apache and its configuration files.

Microsoft IIS - the web server for Windows Server

The Internet Information Services (IIS) allow the publication of documents over the network and represent Microsoft's standard solution for web servers on various versions of Windows. It is included by default in all versions of Windows Server, but can also be optionally installed on Windows 10 or 11. In contrast to a traditional web server, Microsoft IIS offers more services, such as document publication within internal networks or data transfer via FTP. Its core elements include:

• Proprietary license with one-time or ongoing costs
• Seamless integration into servers and VPS hosting with Microsoft operating systems
• Multiple services under a unified graphical interface
• Long-term support for Microsoft IIS and operating system upgrades
• Moderate performance for small to large visitor numbers
• Increased risk of cyber attacks due to closed source and undiscovered security vulnerabilities
• High resource consumption due to the integrated graphical interface
• Support for scripting languages via the FastCGI interface or native .NET

For operating systems like Windows Server, Microsoft IIS is considered an essential function of the software and is automatically installed on corresponding servers. However, compared to other web servers, it has weaknesses that include technical aspects in addition to higher costs. While Microsoft Windows plays an important role in the industry and especially on personal PCs, it is an exception when it comes to a pure web server.

When choosing the right web server, specific requirements and the type of content to be hosted are crucial. Factors such as performance, scalability, security, and compatibility with existing systems and technologies play a vital role. Additionally, license costs and available support are important considerations, especially for commercial applications and large enterprise environments.

Our article is based on our own experiences and research, as well as information from external sources.

Article update:
Update 06.06.24: Statistics and content updated, and a new overview table inserted.

Sources & further links on the topic:
https://www.netcraft.com/blog/may-2024-web-server-survey/ (Web Server Distribution Statistics)
https://httpd.apache.org/ (Official website of the Apache Web Server)
https://nginx.org/ (Official website of the NGINX Web Server)
https://www.litespeedtech.com/ (Official website of the LiteSpeed Web Server)
https://www.iis.net/ (Official website of the Microsoft IIS Web Server)

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