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What is NGINX?

Powering half of the worlds busiest sites, NGINX is the heart of the modern web. We help you deploy and deliver your sites and apps with performance, reliability, security, and scale. We do this by providing a complete application delivery platform, NGINX Plus: combining load balancing, content caching, web serving, security controls, and monitoring in one easy to use software package. NGINX ensures top performance and flawless delivery for any application across all types of infrastructure.

Who Uses NGINX?

Designed for large enterprises looking to modernize application stack, or reduce reliance on legacy hardware solutions, or need a control plane that helps manage multiple load balancers & API traffic.

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Reviews of NGINX

Average score

Overall
4.5
Ease of Use
4.3
Customer Service
4.3
Features
4.6
Value for Money
4.1

Reviews by company size (employees)

  • <50
  • 51-200
  • 201-1,000
  • >1,001

Find reviews by score

5
58%
4
37%
3
5%
Gregory
Gregory
Developer in Venezuela
Verified LinkedIn User
Used the Software for: 1+ year
Reviewer Source

The best for web servers

5.0 7 years ago

Pros:

Excellent tool, to combine it with virtualized servers with virtual box. My team and I specialized in ubuntu server and nginx virtualized servers to create our development and testing environments. It is comfortable and easy to work with, its handling of clean URLs is very easy.

Cons:

It is a very complete and robust tool that from time to time is difficult to learn for those who have little experience in configuring web servers, but once learned a developer will not want to change it.

Senamela
Software Engineer in South Africa
Information Technology & Services, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 1+ year
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

A Great server for modern applications

5.0 2 years ago

Comments: A Great Server for Modern applications, I was surprised at what it could handle.

Pros:

I loved the fact that I could use with Node.js, React.js and other modern libraries/frameworks.

Cons:

The learning curve is a bit steep, but once you get going it's very user friendly.

Verified Reviewer
Verified LinkedIn User
Computer Software, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: Free Trial
Reviewer Source

Nginx (free) > Nginx PLUS

3.0 6 years ago

Pros:

The only pro I can pull out of PLUS is their stats dashboard and the fact you pay and get support.

Cons:

I find the free version of Nginx is much better and has all the same modules available, minus the support (which you can find most issues for free on the internet, probably)

Gaspar
Infrastructure Principal in Argentina
Media Production, 51–200 Employees
Used the Software for: 1+ year
Reviewer Source

Best in-class web server and proxy

5.0 2 years ago

Pros:

Nginx Plus stands out for its exceptional performance and scalability, efficient SSL offload capabilities, flexible content routing for optimized resource allocation, and support for a wide range of predefined protocols, making it a valuable choice for enhancing web application delivery, security, and flexibility.The dashboards and the API are great as wekk.

Cons:

Considering the nature of the product and the alternatives, I can't find any negative.

Verified Reviewer
Verified LinkedIn User
Program Development, Self Employed
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

NGINX Plus is A Versatile and Powerful Solution for Load Balancing and Traffic Management

5.0 2 years ago

Comments: NGINX Plus is a highly capable and reliable web server and reverses proxy that provides many benefits for web developers and system administrators. It's fast and highly performant.

Pros:

NGINX Plus provides a range of security features, such as SSL/TLS encryption and authentication, that can help organizations protect their web applications from attacks and vulnerabilities.

Cons:

There is little to dislike about NGINX, except for its platform latency.

Kyle
Web Developer in US
Education Management, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 1+ year
Reviewer Source

NGiNX

4.0 7 years ago

Comments: We benefit by using NGinX as our primary development web server that points traffic to the correct corresponding service base on hostname. This allows development to easily work on multiple projects with multiple languages and/or versions simultaneously.

Pros:

My team uses NGinX for configuring our development servers and locations, using variables, rewriting URIs to redirect to the appropriate service based on hostname. NGinX makes this process light and easy. We develop multiple different sites and services. NGinX is lightweight and you can be up and running quickly. It does everything I need as a web server and I really have no complaints so far.

Cons:

NGinX is really for high level server admins. I can be complex because all the configurations are text based files and if you do not understand what you are doing it will cause issues.

Paul
Developer / system admin in Canada
Computer Software, 2–10 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

I dunno, it just has that 'something'.

4.0 7 years ago

Comments: Something about Nginx feels qualitatively 'better' than Apache. I know that's subjective, but that sort of thing matters when you have to manage a flotilla of Nginx instances in your daily work. The configuration files just make sense to me in a way that Apache config files never did. The config language is very expressive and lean. It's a versatile server; you can use it as an application proxy, a reverse caching proxy, a forward proxy, and of course a plain ol' web server. (Disclaimer: I've only ever used the open source Nginx, but the commercial version has some very compelling features that I know I've wished I could use.)

Pros:

Simple configuration, lots of features, speed, and reverse proxying. Most important, it just 'feels better' than alternatives.

Cons:

Support for meta-config could be better: when sharing templates among vhosts, the limitations of how you can use variables are a surprise.

Mike
Programmer/Analyst in US
Paper & Forest Products, 1,001–5,000 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

NGINX Plus - Excellent LoadBalancer

5.0 4 years ago

Comments: The option to loadbalance processes of all different kinds makes NGINX+ a valuable tool for us.

Pros:

NGINX+ works great both if you want to loadbalance incoming Ecommerce orders across multiple Ecommerce server instances or want to load balance ERP user sessions for all your users scattered around the country.

Cons:

Disabling and enabling instances can get a bit tedious. Would be great to save disable or enable tasks fir repetitive uses.

Verified Reviewer
Verified LinkedIn User
E-Learning, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

NGINX Plus gets the job done

5.0 3 years ago

Pros:

Nginx is one of the fastest web servers out there, easy to configure and manage. Nginx Plus REST API plus healthcheck APIs makes everything easier

Cons:

Nothing so far in my opinion. I love it

Henry
Henry
IT Manager in Venezuela
Verified LinkedIn User
, 51–200 Employees
Used the Software for: 1+ year
Reviewer Source

great web engine for multiples purposes.

4.0 6 years ago

Comments: Great stability and security.

Pros:

The easy install and the flexibility of the configuration styles, is one of the most secure engine at the marked.

Cons:

it would be nice to have a more optional modules already integrate at the default installer,for example like another flavor of installer, at least with the most used modules.

Jeffrey
Software security analyst in South Africa
Information Technology & Services, 10,000+ Employees
Used the Software for: 1+ year
Reviewer Source

mobile API gateways done right

5.0 6 years ago

Pros:

ease of use of Api implemented in Restful service. From c# code to exposed services i can use android studio (java) and make use of the endpoints. Load balancing is also sorted via nginx. Nginx is an already with security as well as api cannot be sniffed over the network. Theyre excrypted. deploying an app to our UAT/Beta environment replicates a real world scenario.

Cons:

There is a huge learning curve when you have to intregrate into another layer but once set up it is easy to re-use. Every new person that has come onto the team has struggled to set up but internal documentation has been created to set up internally for Android SDK.

Gianni
Gianni
CEO and Principal IT Security Consultant in Switzerland
Verified LinkedIn User
Computer & Network Security, Self Employed
Used the Software for: 1-5 months
Reviewer Source

A great option to create scalable applications

4.0 6 years ago

Pros:

The fact that it is build on top of Nginx is already a big plus, however even better is the fact that Nginx Plus supports session persistent and can help you to improve the user experience.

Cons:

At first, it may be quite challenging to understand how all the pieces fit together.

Verified Reviewer
Verified LinkedIn User
Logistics & Supply Chain, 201–500 Employees
Used the Software for: 1+ year
Reviewer Source

Reliable web server and reverse proxy

4.0 3 years ago

Comments: We use Nginx Plus as a reverse proxy for lots of internal tools we deploy, among other use cases. It's been very reliable. Overall, we've had a very productive experience using it.

Pros:

I like how reliable Nginx Plus is. We use it mostly as a reverse proxy. It's very fast and efficient.

Cons:

I don't have anything I dislike about Nginx Plus.

Verified Reviewer
Verified LinkedIn User
Research, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Great LB/WAF stack for Nginx

5.0 6 years ago

Pros:

It has a lot of great features built in, and made to work with existing Nginx installations

Cons:

While Nginx is free, Nginx plus is not. There are other FOSS alternatives available.

Andrew
Programmer in US
Computer Software, Self Employed
Used the Software for: 6-12 months
Reviewer Source

Better than Nginx

5.0 5 years ago

Comments: NGINX Plus has been an overall pleasant experience. The feature I use most is the healthchecks for services.

Pros:

I really enjoy that NGINX Plus improves upon already existing open-source solution NGINX. It's all the features of the open-source version, plus more. It acts as a very good load balancer, caching solution, and as a monitor.

Cons:

Unfortunately, the NGINX Plus can be extremely expensive, ranging in the thousands of dollars. If this sounds too expensive for you, using simply NGINX is probably a better plan.

Vinicius
Software Engineer in Brazil
Information Technology & Services, 2–10 Employees
Used the Software for: 1-5 months
Reviewer Source

Review for NGINX Plus

4.0 3 years ago

Comments: The software have a great customer support.

Pros:

Cloud native, easy to use reverse proxy.

Cons:

Time to deploy the server is relatively short, but some settings are confused for starters.

RJ
Co-Founder in US
Computer & Network Security, 2–10 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Reliable and secure web server

5.0 7 years ago

Comments: Great performance, reliability, and security at a great price.

Pros:

nginx has been rock solid and a stellar performer. I moved to nginx from apache (which worked fine) and prefer the configuration syntax as well.

Cons:

It can have a learning curve and there's less support available as compared to other industry leaders likes Apache and IIS.

Nigel Masimba
Nigel Masimba
WordPress Developer in Zimbabwe
Verified LinkedIn User
Information Technology & Services, 2–10 Employees
Used the Software for: 1-5 months
Reviewer Source

Best feature is load balancing

4.0 4 years ago

Pros:

The load balancing is easy for non-technical users to understand and set up.

Cons:

Depending on the server setup, the premium Nginx plus features like load balancing may not be necessary. For example, if you have online one site on a server.

Oskar Adrian
Oskar Adrian
Líder Técnico in Mexico
Verified LinkedIn User
Information Technology & Services, 2–10 Employees
Used the Software for: 1+ year
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

Balanceo de carga con NGINX Plus

5.0 2 years ago

Comments: Estoy trabajando con NGINX Plus para balancear varias aplicaciones, cada una de ellas con distintos protocolos, desde HTTP, hasta SNMP, y al conocer como configurar un protocolo, hacerlo con los demás es más sencillo, pues el procedimiento es similar.

Pros:

La forma de implementar es muy sencilla, con configurar un par de archivos, ya puedes estar balanceando el protocolo HTTP, con distintos esquemas de balanceo, dependiendo de las necesidades que se tienen, además que esta versión ya te permite tener en esquema de alta disponibilidad al NGINX Plus, y se sincroniza en automático.

Cons:

En el caso de usar como proxy el NGINX, se requiere de más ejemplos de cómo configurar el protocolo HTTPS, como usar los certificados y también los tokens, hay muchos escenarios que requieren de parámetros específicos y considero que los ejemplos es la mejor forma de aprender cómo hacerlo.