Apache is a popular open-source, cross-platform web server that is, by the numbers, the most popular web server in existence. It’s actively maintained by the Apache Software Foundation.
Jan 15, 2020 The Apache HTTP Server Project was founded in 1995 by a group of webmasters, known as The Apache Group, with the aim of developing robust, richly-featured, freely-available and commercial-standard Web (HTTP) server source code. The result was Apache Web Server or Apache HTTP Server, which is an open-source public-domain web server.
Some high-profile companies using Apache include Cisco, IBM, Salesforce, General Electric, Adobe, VMware, Xerox, LinkedIn, Facebook, Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, Siemens, eBay, and many more (source).
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- Apache Web Server is used by approximately 47% of all internet websites, iii and of the top one million websites, Apache is used on nearly 69% of them. Iv Linux is the most popular operating system to use with Apache.
- Apache Tomcat (or simply Tomcat, formerly also Jakarta Tomcat) is an open source web server and servlet container developed by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). Tomcat implements the Java Servlet and the JavaServer Pages (JSP) specifications from Oracle Corporation, and provides a pure JavaHTTP web server environment for Java code to run.
- Apache software is always available for download free of charge from the ASF and our Apache projects. As a non-profit corporation whose mission is to provide open source software for the public good at no cost, the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) ensures that all Apache projects provide both source and (when available) binary releases free of charge on our official Apache project download pages.
In addition to its popularity, it’s also one of the oldest web servers, with its first release all the way back in 1995. Many cPanel hosts utilize Apache today. Like other web servers, Apache powers the behind-the-scenes aspects of serving your website’s files to visitors.
Because Apache doesn’t perform as well in some benchmarks, especially for static websites or websites with high traffic, Kinsta uses the NGINX web server instead of Apache. Though NGINX hasn’t been around for as long as Apache, it’s quickly grown in popularity and market share since its launch in 2004.
How Does Apache Work? Web Server Basics Explained
While there’s a lot of complexity underpinning how a web server functions, the basic job of all web servers is to accept requests from clients (e.g. a visitor’s web browser) and then send the response to that request (e.g. the components of the page that a visitor wants to see).
Apache Web Server Prices
The Apache web server has modules which add more functions to its software, such as MPM (for handling multi-processing modes) or mod_ssl for enabling SSL v3 and TLS support (suggested reading: TLS vs SSL). Some common features seen in Apache include:
- IPv6
- FTP
- Perl, Lua, and PHP
- Bandwidth throttling
- WebDAV
- Load balancing
- URL rewriting
- Session tracking
- Geolocation based on IP address
While a web server is an essential part of any website, it’s important to note that casual WordPress users are unlikely to interact with their web server directly most of the time.
Apache vs Nginx Usage Stats
When you look at every single website on the Internet, Apache is the most popular web server. It powers 47% of the websites with a known web server, according to W3Techs.
Apache Web Server Windows 10
However, Apache’s usage greatly drops when you start looking at the web’s most highly trafficked sites. Apache only powers:
- 27.1% of the 100,000 most popular sites
- 21.5% of the 10,000 most popular sites
- 16.2% of the 1,000 most popular sites
Apache Web Server Price List
This drop-off likely stems, at least in part, from Apache’s lower benchmarks for high traffic websites.
Conversely, NGINX, the web server that Kinsta uses, is used by a majority of high-traffic sites, powering:
- 56.1% of the 100,000 most popular sites
- 63.2% of the 10,000 most popular sites
- 57% of the 1,000 most popular sites
If you check the Google Search trends since 2004, you can see this trend play out where Apache’s popularity (as a search term) is decreasing while NGINX’s is creeping up.
How To Check Which Web Server You’re Using
If you want to see whether you’re using Apache or NGINX, you can often (but not always) look at your site’s HTTP header.
To view your site’s HTTP header, you can:
- Use the Network tab of Chrome Developer Tools
- Use a tool like Pingdom or GTmetrix
Apache HTTP header
This method may not work if you’re using a service like Cloudflare, though.
Apache and the Apache feather logo are trademarks of The Apache Software Foundation.
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