Runcloud’s Nginx or OpenLiteSpeed
Which one to choose?
It’s a difficult choice right?
Which one will be better for my website?
Recently, one of my favourite Cloud control panel company launched the OpenLiteSpeed stack and everyone is going crazy.
I so wanted to do the benchmark to see which one performs well.
I wanted to understand which web server is better?
There are chances that you might not be understanding what exactly is a web server and what exactly is Nginx, OpenLiteSpeed or Apache?
Let’s try to understand the very basic first and that is what is a server?
What is a Server?
The server is basically a place where all the files are stored.
Just the way you need a place to stay?
Even your files like code, images, videos and text also need a place to stay and all of these things gets stored in a server.
You might have seen the server everywhere like your Google drive it’s basically a server that you’re using.
Servers are like your computers and they also need an operating system just like Windows, Android, ChromeOS or macOS.
The server uses an operating system called Linux and there are different Linux distribution like Ubuntu, CentOS, etc.
What is a Web Server?
A web server is basically a software in the server which helps to receive the HTTP request and it helps us to process those request and send it back to the user.
Let me give you an example.
You open a website, example.com the request will go to the server and the webserver will process the request and sends the response back to you.
This web server is also called Apache, Nginx or LiteSpeed. These are the three famous companies which take care of your request.
What is Apache?
Apache was first released in the year 1995. It became one of the most popular webserver company in the early days and a lot of people started adopting and using this web server for their website.
A lot of people are still using Apache for the support of older apps. When I started WebVerge at that time we were also using Apache and then we shifted to LiteSpeed.
What is Nginx?
Nginx was first introduced in 2004, by a Russian developer Igor Sysoev.
Nginx is a high-performance web server. Initially, it was a load balancer and a reverse proxy that can handle websites with the highest traffic.
The performance of Nginx is so good that a lot of people started adopting Nginx and they left Apache.
Nowadays a lot of people are using Nginx because of it’s great performance.
What is LiteSpeed?
LiteSpeed was was released in 2004. When it was released it was only for enterprise customers. That means you have to pay to get this webserver.
Recently in the year 2013, LiteSpeed started the free version also called as OpenLiteSpeed.
If you’re someone who wants to try Apache but doesn’t want to lose performance then you can try LiteSpeed because it comes with .htaccess just like Apache.
LiteSpeed and Nginx are best when it comes to performance compared to Apache. Both the tech uses less CPU and RAM.
Now, we know everything about web servers.
Let’s run the test and understand which web server is better.
Testing Environment
- Hetzner Helsinki Server
- 1 Core CPU with 2GB RAM
- Runcloud’s OpenLiteSpeed and Nginx
- Loader.io to perform test analysis.
- Test Location: Amazon’s US-East
Load Test Website
This test is done with the help of Google Page Speed insight and using the tool called Loader.io which is used by a lot of people to stress test their website.
When I was load testing my website I found interesting results and I think you’re going to love it.
Load Test / Stress Test
I was inspired by an article by WPSpeedMatters and Gijo who is the developer of FlyingPress showed how to do a load test of your website.
Load / Stress test is basically a test where you send a lot of users to your website to see the results on how your website is performing.
The CPU and the RAM go up and you get to know what is the response time and also how many errors were there while running the test.
This test was done at 500 clients in one min time.
Nginx
OpenLiteSpeed
| Title | Nginx | OpenLiteSpeed |
|---|---|---|
| Average Response Time | 6867 ms | 4938 ms |
| Min & Max Response Time | 154 / 10209 ms | 476 / 10208 ms |
| Success | 1322 | 2463 |
| Timeout | 509 | 106 |
| Error Rate | 27.8 % | 4.1 % |
Now, you know who is the winner. I wanted to do one more test to understand and to see which one is better.
That is Google Page Speed Insights test and to see how they both perform.
Google Page Speed Insight
Everyone is focussing on the PageSpeed insight score because of the Google’s recent algorithm update. I also wanted to understand how it works.
That’s why I ran some test and found amazing results.
Again, if you will see then OpenLiteSpeed wins the race.
When I was running these test I realised that OpenLiteSpeed is better but there are some issues when we use it with WP-Rocket.
Sometimes the page gets downloaded whenever you click on the link. It’s not just me but it’s a pending issue for a very long time.
If you’re someone who uses WP-Rocket I will suggest you to keep an eye on this Github issue.
Conclusion:
After doing these test one thing is for sure that OpenLiteSpeed is better than Nginx.
If you’re someone who loves htaccess then I will suggest you close your eyes and choose Runcloud’s OpenLiteSpeed stack.
If you’re someone who uses WP-Rocket I will suggest you to go with Nginx till the issue is not fixed.
This is my first time I did a test on a stack like Nginx and OpenLiteSpeed. Do you want to see more of these tests in the future? Let me know in the comments section.
Do you have any questions? Feel free to drop your questions in the comments section below.
