Microsoft IIS vs. NGINX

Microsoft IIS

88 Reviews and Ratings

NGINX

140 Reviews and Ratings

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
Microsoft IIS	Score8.5 out of 10	N/A	Microsoft IIS is an application server and infrastructure.	N/A
NGINX	Score9.2 out of 10	Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)	NGINX, a business unit of F5 Networks, powers over 65% of the world's busiest websites and web applications. NGINX started out as an open source web server and reverse proxy, built to be faster and more efficient than Apache. Over the years, NGINX has built a suite of infrastructure software products o tackle some of the biggest challenges in managing high-transaction applications. NGINX offers a suite of products to form the core of what organizations need to create…	N/A

Pricing

Microsoft IIS

NGINX

No answers on this topic

No answers on this topic

Pricing Offerings
Microsoft IIS	NGINX
Free Trial
No	Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No	Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	Yes

No setup fee

Optional

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Community Pulse
Key User Insights
	Microsoft IIS	NGINX
Considered Both Products	Microsoft Verified User Chose Microsoft IIS After using both Microsoft IIS and free Linux alternatives, like NGINX and Apache, I have to say I much prefer the Linux products in every way. Configuration is clearer (you have to edit config files deep in Linux somewhere, but once you've done it once, it's easy). Logging is … Incentivized Helpful? Rahul Dhangar Web Technologist in Information Technology at Left Right Mind (Information Technology and Services, 51-200 employees) Chose Microsoft IIS Nginx is hard to support for smaller multiple projects, which is one reason we use the Microsoft IIS server, which is best fit for a set-up once and forget scenario. The Apache server is more recommended for smaller sized projects due to its cost factor, as the Microsoft IIS … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Microsoft IIS Apache and Nginx are both lower overhead solutions compared to IIS, but require extensive configuration through files or command lines. For someone creating a website for the first time, these solutions are difficult to understand and implement. Incentivized Helpful? John Glenn Network Operations Manager in Information Technology at Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (Religious Institutions, 201-500 employees) Chose Microsoft IIS Apache and Nginx are what we use for our large websites and public data. When dealing with the type of traffic we see on our sites IIS just doesn't scale out well. For our staff levels, Apache and Nginx are very hard to support for all of our projects so we can't always use … Incentivized Helpful? Valery Mezentsau IT Department Manager in Information Technology at Acceptance Solutions Group (Financial Services, 51-200 employees) Chose Microsoft IIS IIS is easier to configure and manage. Doesn't require deep knowledge of the product to manage it. Doesn't require for IT team to learn Linux/Unix OS for basic web hosting. However, for advanced IT specialists, all three solutions could be useful and can work together. Incentivized Helpful? Alan Matson, CCNA:S, MCP Senior Security Engineer in Information Technology at Insight (Information Technology and Services, 5001-10,000 employees) Chose Microsoft IIS I feel each has their own strengths, when it came to developing the in house applications ASP gave us more features so we went with IIS to support those features. Incentivized Helpful? Peter Quale Vice President, Digital Strategy in Information Technology at Lynch Strategies \| A Marketing Agency (Internet, 1-10 employees) Chose Microsoft IIS IIS is a different animal than most webservers. I don't know that I'd compare IIS to other products. The differences and reasons to use each are so diverse. Incentivized Helpful? payton climer IT Specialist IV in Information Technology at University of North Texas (Higher Education, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Microsoft IIS Microsoft IIS is the only official way to run ASP.NET framework sites and for Microsoft System management tools (SCCM and WSUS). While open source options like Apache and NGINX are more commonly used in our department, to maintain the best compatibility we use IIS in certain … Incentivized Helpful?	F5 Rahul Dhangar Web Technologist in Information Technology at Left Right Mind (Information Technology and Services, 51-200 employees) Chose NGINX Microsoft IIS server is not open source and it comes with its own overhead in terms of cost which is not the case with Nginx as we do not need to purchase a handful of other products in order to get an HTTP server up and running. If I compare it to Apache Server, it … Incentivized Helpful? Craig Nash Sr. Network Engineer in Information Technology at GodAmongGeeks.Com (Information Technology and Services, 1-10 employees) Chose NGINX Nginx is one of the top three web servers and sits in the second position in terms of the amount of servers deployed. The main competition comes from Apache and Apache-based forks on Linux based servers, and less-so from Microsoft IIS on Windows based servers. As stated … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose NGINX The support and ability to provide near zero downtime for changes is a winner. The lightweight engine also helps reduce cost. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose NGINX Easy to Install and configure. Pick the configuration dynamically without restarting All the configurations at one place Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose NGINX MS IIS and Apache HTTP Server both provide many similar services. However the configuration simplicity, and performance characteristics helped us choose NGINX above the other 2 products. Incentivized Helpful? Tom Erdman Network Systems Administrator in Information Technology at Johnson County Library (Libraries, 201-500 employees) Chose NGINX Nginx is way easier to configure and runs better than Microsoft’s offering, in my opinion, and I’ll take it over Apache for its simplicity. Incentivized Helpful? Leonel Quinteros Director of Technology in Information Technology at Global Brigades, Inc. (Philanthropy, 51-200 employees) Chose NGINX Other Web servers are either not performant enough or locked to a platform. The main competitor in my opinion is the Apache Web Server, that can be extended in functionality through a diverse set of modules to perform almost any task related to a network server. But at scale, I … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose NGINX I selected Nginx because it is easy to learn, use, and maintain. I almost never have to troubleshoot it ever since I deploy it. It just meets my need for a personal learning experience. It works well with PHP and MySQL on Linux. That is why I chose it at first. Incentivized Helpful? Ilya Popovich QA Test Lead in Quality Assurance at Action-MCFR Mediagroup (Information Services, 1001-5000 employees) Chose NGINX Configuration options are easier on Nginx. It's better suited for our cases. It's easier to find specialists for Nginx in our area. Incentivized Helpful? Jhonattan Smith Peláez Nimisica Líder de gestión de la configuración e infraestructura in Engineering at CODALTEC- Corporación de Alta Tecnología para la Defensa (Information Technology and Services, 51-200 employees) Chose NGINX When we did load and performance testing we got better results with Nginx Incentivized Helpful? Rene Enriquez Technical Lead in Information Technology at ioet ltd (Information Technology and Services, 11-50 employees) Chose NGINX It's lightweight and it does not require complex configurations for simple scenarios. If you want you can accomplish some other complicated tasks like reverse proxies which are well supported by the product. Incentivized Helpful? Ben McClure Head of Development Technologies in Research & Development at Top Floor Technologies (Internet, 11-50 employees) Chose NGINX Nginx struck the right balance for us of raw speed, power, convenience, and simplicity. I don't like the idea of hosting all of our open source PHP-based websites on Microsoft Windows servers with IIS, so that option was out first. Incentivized Helpful? Anatoly Geyfman Founder & CEO in Information Technology at Carevoyance (Health, Wellness and Fitness, 1-10 employees) Chose NGINX Nnginx is more light-weight than many other web servers, has a very expressive configuration language, easier to configure than tools like IIS and Apache, easy to install certificates for SSL, much easier to model complex routing scenarios than IIS, easier to configure than … Incentivized Helpful?
	Would buy again
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Delivers good value for the price
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Happy with the feature set
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Lived up to sales and marketing promises
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Implementation went as expected
No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic

Features

Microsoft IIS

NGINX

Comparison of Application Servers features of Microsoft IIS and NGINX
Feature	Microsoft IIS 7.5 28 Ratings	NGINX 7.8 21 Ratings
IDE support	8.020 Ratings	7.210 Ratings
Security management	7.028 Ratings	8.018 Ratings
Administration and management	8.028 Ratings	7.018 Ratings
Application server performance	8.028 Ratings	8.018 Ratings
Installation	9.028 Ratings	9.718 Ratings
Open-source standards compliance	5.017 Ratings	7.016 Ratings

User Ratings
	Microsoft IIS	NGINX
Likelihood to Recommend	9.0 (28 ratings)	8.8 (48 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	10.0 (1 ratings)	9.1 (1 ratings)
Usability	10.0 (9 ratings)	9.0 (1 ratings)
Availability	8.0 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Performance	7.8 (2 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Support Rating	9.4 (6 ratings)	8.1 (4 ratings)
Ease of integration	8.2 (2 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Product Scalability	8.0 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)