What should I use Litespeed or NginX?

bknights

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Hi everyone, I am always looking for ways to improve my hosting server, and I have had a number of friends and collegues state that Apache is outdated and slow, it is shouldn't be used any more. As such I decided to look for an alternative out of curiosity, I researched on articles and Google and I came across two: NginX and litespeed, Which one would you recommend? Should I replace Apache and stick with the more modern one, up to date and faster? or keep on using Apache?
 

nitaish

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I am using Litespeed on a couple of servers and found it to be extremely useful. With Apache, the servers were continuously doing a load average of over 12-20 and after switching to Litespeed, the load average is normally around 2-3. If you enable the LSCache, you can speed up the server more. It can be easily integrated with cPanel. There is also an open source version available for servers without control panel.
 

RDO Servers

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We also use Litespeed on our shared hosting servers and have been very happy with it.
 

VirtuBox

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Apache is an old web server, and depending on the working mode, it was using a lot of resources because there was no multi-threaded processing. That's no fixed with Apache 2.4 and you can have very good performances with Apache.

Nginx is famous because it was build to handle high-traffic with a low footprint on the server. Reboot Nginx was never need on my servers, and it use around 25MB memory. But it require sometimes to adapt the rewrite rules, because Nginx doesn't read any .htaccess.

Litespeed is a paid solution, and I have no doubt about the performances, but for me only Shared Hosting Providers really need a web server like litespeed.
 

Laurence Flynn

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Laurence Flynn
This is a myth. We use Nginx as standard on all shared hosting standards. You can get all the benefits of Nginx (multi-threading, caching etc, scalability etc) by sitting it in front of Apache and running it a proxy. Then .htaccess works as normal.
 

Nixtree

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Nginx as a reverse proxy will work fine and nginxadmincp plugin is a great plugin which comes free. If you can afford Litespeed then I will suggest Litespeed as well as that is a having a greater impact for speed and main thing is you can accomadate more customers than which you could have accomadate using apache keeping the resources like cpu and memory same.

I have managed a lot of litespeed servers and still have many using and no one complains about the performance.
 

Laurence Flynn

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We used LiteSpeed for a bit but our expertise has always been Nginx. We could never get our LS server as fast as our Nginx server. Plus LS came with all these weird PHP dependencies. We have 50 Plesk servers and I'll tell you Nginx and Plesk is tough to get right. But on cPanel it couldn't be easier with the CPNGINX plugin. Only $5/mo and works out the box. I encourage anyone using LiteSpeed to give it a try and do some benchmarks against their LS servers.
 

Nixtree

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nginx + fpm can produce better result and I have that done in many non control panels servers and some free control panel ones. Nginx + PHPFPM is the best combination to get best results for speed and load accomadation. I always recommended litespeed for those who needs a front end to manage everything and easier to integrate with cpanel interface and those who are ok with the extra license cost. Those who needs free ones I suggest nginxadmincp plugin as well for nginx reverse proxy setup.
 

Laurence Flynn

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You are right on the money - Nginx + PHPFPM is what I always recommend. But like most hosts we offer many types of PHP and there are more in Plesk than in cPanel. We disabled CloudLinux's PHP Selector on Plesk servers due to this. FastCGI used to be great but this web hosting technology moves fast. FPM is by far the best now. It's FCGI on steroids.
 

therohost

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nginx is good and cheap i used earlier. but have some problems. now i used litespeed it is best
 

eva2000

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FYI, Litespeed Enterprise server has a open source free sibling called OpenLiteSpeed http://open.litespeedtech.com/mediawiki/ - performance is pretty much the same just OLS doesn't support cpanel/WHM drop in ability or native on the fly reading of .htaccess files like LiteSpeed Enterpise. OLS has a admin console field to add .htaccess rules instead. Think of it like moving .htaccess rules up into Apache httpd.conf instead.

LiteSpeed/OpenLiteSpeed static file serving performance matches and depending on how it is configured can surpass Nginx server. LiteSpeed/OpenLiteSpeed's LASPI PHP handler https://www.litespeedtech.com/products/litespeed-sapi/php also performs and scales much better than Nginx's pairing with PHP-FPM especially for non-cached PHP requests in high concurrency environments.

With that said, it's not about what you use but how you use it too. So if you are more comfortable and familiar with Nginx, you'd use Nginx or LiteSpeed if that is more your cup of tea. Both for high concurrency work loads will need to be further tuned anyway so just switching to either without tuning won't be beneficial for high traffic sites. High traffic I am talking about 500,000 unique ip visitors/day like loads :)

If you use WHM/Cpanel, then easier to go from native Apache to LiteSpeed Enterprise as it has cpanel plugin support.

With that said I currently develop my own LEMP stack installer, Centmin Mod with Nginx 1.11 + PHP-FPM but I also plan to integrate Apache 2.4 + PHP-FPM and LiteSpeed/OpenLiteSpeed + LSAPI PHP combos too.:D
 
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