Continue with NGINX or switch to Apache ?

Hi everyone,

I’ve read many opinions about NGINX with dynamic content versus Apache with dynamic content. I must say that most people feel Apache is a little bit faster than NGINX.

On the other hand NGINX is very often used in the context of static content delivery …

I have both a LAMP as well as a LEMP stack ready and all I have to do is choose between one of them in order deploy my sites.

I will be hosting :

• a pretty simple Wordpress blog,
• a few hundred static pages, which will be updated maybe daily as well (not through WP, but for instance through dreamweaver).
• I will will also be installing a PHP script application which uses MySQL heaily on the same server (or maybe a different one if necessary).
• This is supposed to happen on a 4G server, which I might upgrade later on.

I have dabbled in both Apache and NGINX and I must say that I found NGINX to be easier to configure. It just made more sense to me. However that is secondary. On the other hand, Apache is … well Apache. Using NGINX as a proxy for Apache seems like a ‘complicated’ solution and adds another layer to the setup. Again, some people say it works, some say it doesn’t do much. I guess it all depends.

Now for my question … I would like to get some opinions on what would be a good choice to use. NGINX or Apache ? I can imagine that NGINX with php-fpm is a little slower than apache on the dynamic things, but if there is a traffic spike, maybe NGINX will handle better ? If so, this might be an important thing to consider for me (loosing visitors to time-outs or long request times will cost me). Also … would NGINX be so much slower with dynamic content / php , that it would be noticeable ?

I know that it’s a difficult question to answer, however I would really like to heart, at least some opinions … they might help me with making my choice.

Thanks, Lex