A Comparison between Apache and Microsoft IIS servers
One of the two most common web servers on the internet are the Apache HTTP server by the Apache Software Foundation and Microsoft’s Internet Information Server. In this blog post I will go through the differences between these popular web servers which host millions of websites across the globe.
- Apache is a more flexible open source web server application which runs on a majority of operating systems, whereas closed source IIS only runs on Windows.
- Apache has lower running costs than IIS due to its open source license and also because linux hosting is cheaper than Windows hosting.
- IIS tends to be more stable because it only runs on Windows there is only one operating system it has to work with, however, apache, despite being more flexible can suffer with stability due to the sheer number of operating systems it can run on, more can go wrong.
- Security is a concern for all websites and IIS suffers on this front
as shown by some interesting statistics where in 2007, when IIS market share was 23%, IIS servers hosted 49% of the world’s malware, at the same time Apache’s market share was 66%.
- A common issue when carrying out SEO for various websites is being able to implement URL rewrites and redirects. The way this is handled in apache compared to IIS differs quite substantially; Apache uses the .htaccess
file where rules are defined, and IIS uses the IIS manager interface.
So to conclude, Apache is probably the better option if you are looking for a cheaper and more flexible application, but IIS would be beneficial for those looking for support and stability.
