A Web Server is a software installed on your server which is responsible for receiving HTTP requests, process it and send back the response. 

To process it, a web server may request additional programs like PHP to get the output.

LiteSpeed vs Nginx is a trending topic to discuss and decide which Web Server is better to use.

LiteSpeed server which is lately gaining popularity conserves resources without sacrificing performance, security, or compatibility.

NGINX is one of the most popular web server. It was initially made as a load balancer and reverse proxy. But because to its high performance, it became very popular and used by many sites.

Here at Ibmi Media, as part of our Server Management Services, we regularly help our Customers to resolve LiteSpeed and NGINX related issues.

In this context, we shall look into which is better,  LiteSpeed web server or NGINX web server?

More about LiteSpeed webserver?

LiteSpeed Web Server is a lightweight webserver which is lately getting more popularity. It provides better features like good performance, security, compatibility and so on.

It is capable of handling multiple clients with low memory consumption.

Also, it is the best alternative for the Apache server as it is compatible with the features available in Apache server.

More about Nginx web server?

NGINX is an open-source web server. It is now used as a reverse proxy, HTTP cache, and load balancer.

NGINX has gained more popularity in many countries and many high profile companies use NGINX as their web servers. 

Nginx can run on Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX and BSD variants.

LiteSpeed Cache vs FastCGI Caching with NGINX

A built-in cache module is available in LiteSpeed whereas a FastCGI Caching Module is available in NGINX

Our Support Experts conducted a test to check the website speed when the cache is enabled on both LiteSpeed and Nginx servers.

We tested the performance by installing Magento website on both the servers.

We accessed websites from both the server together.

Through this website performance test, we can tell that caching makes a huge difference in the website performance regardless of the webserver.

Our Support Experts provided the details that the NGINX server's website improved marginally but the Litespeed web server reduced its time by up to 90% of the transaction taken while using cache.

It is clear from the test that the LiteSpeed is a better performer than NGINX.

LiteSpeed PHP application vs NGINX

Our Support Experts created a PHP file outputting a hello world as below:

<?php
echo “Hello World!”;
?>

We created this file in both the LiteSpeed and NGINX servers and tested the load time of the website on both the servers.

On testing, we found that the LiteSpeed completed the requests within 25.76 seconds, while the NGINX server completed the requests in 105.05 seconds.

Here, we can conclude that LiteSpeed performed better than NGINX.

More about Website categories and geography

NGINX is quite popular than LiteSpeed. It has much more users in website categories. Including computers electronics and technology, Arts and entertainment, science and education and many more.

LiteSpeed web server still hasn't got any much lead over NGINX in any website category.

NGINX is leading many parts of countries like Russia, the United States, Japan, and many more.

LiteSpeed web server still hasn't got any lead over NGINX in any country.

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