Nginx is on fire

Nginx pronounced engine X, is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, as well as a mail proxy server, written by Igor Sysoev.
Looking at Netcraft December 2013 web survey study, I was amazed at nginx market share.

Nginx is very good at handling high load. Compared to Apache it’s more flexible, lightweight and performs better than Apache.

Nginx popularity is growing rapidly, especially with high traffic websites.

Some high traffic website examples: Netflix, Hulu, Pinterest, Airbnb, WordPress.com, GitHub, SoundCloud, Zynga, Eventbrite, Zappos, Media Temple, Heroku, RightScale, NetDNA Mail.Ru and Yandex.

Marketshare of all sites according to Netcraft:

Here, Apache is leading with 41.26 percent, followed by Microsoft IIS with 28.08 percent. Nginx is on third spot with 14.69 percent. You should note that all sites market share include websites that are parked at hosting companies and are not in active use.

Active site market share is another matter.

Apache leads with 53.96%, nginx is second with 13.32% and IIS third with 13.32%

The most interesting graph is Market share of the top million busiest sites

 

Apache is leading with 55.75%, nginx is second with 15.53% and Microsoft IIS is third with 12.72 %. If you look at the graph, you can see how nginx is slowly but steadily rising.

In 2014, Ubuntu will release  LTS 14.04. nginx will be included in main repository. That means that it will become first class citizen just like Apache.

Ubuntu along with Debian, are now the most popular choice for hosting according to Matthias Gelbmann from w3techs.com.

Ubuntu and Debian have switched positions with Red hat and clones and have majority share in web servers category. In October 2013 Ubuntu / Debian share was 58.5% (in 2010 only 37.1%) while Redhat and clones have 37.3% market share (53.2% in 2010).

Given nginx and Ubuntu popularity, nginx is set for explosive growth in 2014.

Sadly, Netcraft does not give Web Server market share for remaining Other group, I would love to see that. Cherokee Web Server seems like a nice Web Server but unfortunately it’s in Other group which has all remaining Web Servers grouped.

Nginx is on fire, that is for sure.