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Is LiteSpeed still worth it?
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Is LiteSpeed still worth it?

GBIGBI Member, Host Rep

So I'd like to carry out a survey to find out what you all think about LiteSpeed. There was a time when LiteSpeed was seen as a premium product which we couldn't do without - every customer was asking about LiteSpeed, however more recently I'm starting to notice that customers don't really care about the web server. There was a time when customers used to always ask questions about LiteSpeed but now all questions regarding the web server type seems to be directed towards whether it's Nginx or Apache.

So what do you guys still think LiteSpeed? Is it still worth the extra cost? As an industry are we moving away from paid web servers like LiteSpeed?

Poll not found

    Comments

    • Remind us of the advantages. There's a bug that's been in it for years that is a pain in the arse.

      Wasn't this created at a time when the only worker Apache had was prefork? Apache is a lot more efficient nowadays and if performance is a big deal, it seems NGINX with its newer codebase and proven performance is a way to go.

      Thanked by 1GBI
    • The whole "no adult content" condition on LiteSpeed, when I looked at it so not sure if its current or not, was a turn off especially for web hosting

      Thanked by 3GBI sin Lunar
    • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith Member, Patron Provider

      My opinion is, if it was 'worth it' financially speaking, you would know it was worth it as you would have research and metrics sitting in front of you showing how many extra pages you could serve up and what that means to you financially.

      For those that don't want to or need to care or pay for what may or may not be a small % increase in performance that could be impacted by 50 other variables anyway, lighttpd or nginx is fine.

      Thanked by 1GBI
    • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

      Apache is more than capable of handling high loads these days if you're willing to put in the work. My honest feeling is that the work is justified against the price of that alternative. Nginx is best but not always the right choice, Nginx reverse proxy for Apache is almost never a bad choice.

      I just don't see a need for it anymore.

      Thanked by 2GBI elflord
    • https://www.litespeedtech.com/solutions/benchmarks/wordpress-cpanel

      It's a decent product, but I cannot justify the extra costs or them telling me I can't host adult content. Even though I don't, I don't like such arbitrary rules.

      Hell, if you want the 8CPU license to run on a beefy server, its an extra 92$ a month.

      Thanked by 2GBI doughmanes
    • gleertgleert Member, Host Rep

      I have tested it lately... I did a test on a WP site and compared the following setups:

      1. KVM VPS, 2GB, 2CPU (E5-2660v3)
        Ubuntu 16.04
        EasyEngine
        PHP 7
        Redis full page cache

      2. KVM VPS, 2GB, 2CPU (E5-2660v3)
        CentOS 7
        Plesk 12.5 & LiteSpeed
        PHP 7
        LSCache

      TTFB (Time to first byte)
      The WP site running on LS (LiteSpeed) had an average TTFB of 0.08 seconds and on EE (EasyEngine) of 0.32 seconds (Meaured with NixStats)

      Total load time
      The WP site running on LS had an average load time of 0.12 seconds and on EE of 0.41 seconds (Meaured with NixStats)

      Load Test
      When doing a load test using loader.io with 1000 concurrent users during 5 minutes the load on the LS server was almost half of the EE server and the memory usahe was one third on the LS server (compared with EE). Also the response times where much better on the LS server. I have lost the exact numbers, but this was the general result.

      I think it's a very good product, if they just had a more sensible pricing they would be selling like hot cakes...

      Thanked by 3GBI coreflux Four20
    • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

      jarland said: Apache is more than capable of handling high loads these days if you're willing to put in the work. My honest feeling is that the work is justified against the price of that alternative. Nginx is best but not always the right choice, Nginx reverse proxy for Apache is almost never a bad choice.

      I think the LiteSpeed trajectory has been:

      • "we're faster than Apache and there's no faster alternative"

      • "ok, we're not faster than nginx but we are Apache-compatible so if you use cpanel you're stuck with us"

      • "ok, cpanel supports nginx but still, there's a lot of .htaccess files out there that only us and Apache understand and we're faster"

      • "well, maybe we're not faster."

      Thanked by 2GBI joepie91
    • jarland said: Apache is more than capable of handling high loads these days if you're willing to put in the work.

      This. I haven't seen a setup that a properly-configured Apache setup couldn't handle. "properly configured" being key, since the default configuration is fantastic for 1998.

      Thanked by 3raindog308 GBI elflord
    • NeoonNeoon Community Contributor, Veteran

    • hostdarehostdare Member, Patron Provider

      We use apache+nginx combinations in our shared servers and we do not have a single complaints so far

      Thanked by 1GBI
    • Nope not worth it at all imo.

      Thanked by 1GBI
    • Been testing the open source version of it along with PHP 7 and I must say it's performing much better than basic Apache 2 + PHP 7, even with mpm_event.

      Thanked by 1GBI
    • smansman Member
      edited September 2016

      @Damian said:

      jarland said: Apache is more than capable of handling high loads these days if you're willing to put in the work.

      This. I haven't seen a setup that a properly-configured Apache setup couldn't handle. "properly configured" being key, since the default configuration is fantastic for 1998.

      Apache defaults are better on v2.4. At least on CentOS 7. Keepalive is enabled by default now which usually makes a big difference.

      Thanked by 1GBI
    • LiteSpeed has never been worth it. Use Apache with event worker / Fastcgi for PHP, and there's little practical difference.

      Thanked by 1GBI
    • I ran it on a production cPanel/WHM server for two years and at the time I thought it was 100% worth it. But now? No, financially it's not worth it...but if they lowered the costs, I'd be happy to become their customer once again.

      Their staff is very friend, too.

      Thanked by 1GBI
    • @Malin said:
      Been testing the open source version of it along with PHP 7 and I must say it's performing much better than basic Apache 2 + PHP 7, even with mpm_event.

      Yeah, OpenLiteSpeed deserves way more recognition than it gets. Better PHP performance than Nginx + PHP-FPM and similar if not better static file performance too. Plus Apache rewrite compatibility makes migration much easier.

    • WilliamWilliam Member
      edited September 2016

      jarland said: Apache is more than capable of handling high loads these days if you're willing to put in the work

      Does not mean in any way that it makes sense though unless you have 100% non-nginx compatible rewrites. Nginx will beat Apache2 in literally any metric you want to measure.

      OT: Litespeed is dead. Nginx. Openresty.

    • Used it in the past. I must it was a great product but seems like Apache or NginX can almost top its performance and pricing is bit out for everyday-joe budget.

    • HarambeHarambe Member, Host Rep

      For clients: Toss Nginx in front of Apache, so I don't need to deal with their front end dev bitching about his .htaccess not working properly (getting them to use SFTP instead of FTP is already hard enough).

      Personally: Nginx for production, Lighttpd for fucking around, Apache only when it's absolutely necessary (too lazy to build an Nginx conf and they supply an htaccess).

      Litespeed may be worthwhile in cPanel setups? I don't have any cPanel boxes I manage though and it seems there's enough Nginx support now that the license costs probably aren't worth any performance improvements.

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