Before getting to the best properties looked for in a web server accelerator we first need to understand the concept of what is a server accelerator. Basically, a web server accelerator is a tool that is used to decrease the amount of time taken by the server-side for users to access any web application or website. Here, we should note a difference between web client accelerators which mainly focus on client-side connection speed up-gradation, and web server accelerators which on the other hand are more concerned with improving the connectivity at the web application or web server front.
In the list of the top tools, we have mentioned the Top 20 Web Server Accelerator tools along with their features and pricing for you to choose from.
1. F5 NGINX
F5 NGINX is the team behind the open-source project, NGNIX. It offers an array of technologies for the development and timely delivery of modern applications. Combined with F5, NGINX solutions mend the gap between NETOPS and DevOps with the help of multi-cloud application services, spanning from code to customer.
Key Features:
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The tool provides mission control for our apps and APIs.
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NGINX solutions can be managed by getting a modular solution at scale across a multi-cloud environment.
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The NGINX controller and NGINX plus feature can deploy and operate in any cloud, bare metal, virtual machine, or container-based environment.
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A 24/7 Enterprise support with a 30-minute SLA is also available
Cost:
The pricing may be based per instance for individual instances on hourly or annual subscriptions. Instances may be purchased on any public cloud marketplace. There is also a provision of enterprise pricing where annual subscription for application is based on business unit and other enterprise-class models.
2. Varnish Software
Varnish Software is a powerful, feature-rich web cache and HTTP accelerator, which has the ability to solve all kinds of challenges related to video streaming, CDN, and website acceleration. The web caching servers of Varnish can speed up the performance of any website and streaming services. This provides the best possible experience to the users.
Key Features:
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There is Plugin support available with Varnish Modules, called VMODs.
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The feature of Gzip compression and decompression
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Availability of varied directors such as DNS, Random, Hashing, and client IP-based directors.
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It has an HTTP streaming Pass and Fetches.
Cost:
The prices start from $15000 for any small and medium enterprises
3. AWS Global
AWS Global is mainly a networking service that utilizes Amazon Web Services’ global network infrastructure to improve the performance of users’ traffic by 60%. In case of congested internet, AWS Global Accelerator optimizes the path to our required application to keep packet loss, jitter, and latency levels low.
Key Features:
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AWS Global provides us with a set of two static IP Addresses which are usually anycast from the AWS edge network.
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The IP addresses serve as single fixed entry points for the clients. The IP addresses remain assigned to the accelerator for as long as they exist, even after disabling the accelerator.
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AWS has a fault isolating design that can increase the availability of our applications
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This tool has a global performance-based routing: In case of application failure, AWS Global Accelerator provides an instant failover to the next best endpoint.
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At AWS Global Accelerator there is a feature allowing us to bring our own IP addresses (BYOIP) to use as a fixed entry point to our application endpoints.
Cost:
There are two parts to its fee. The first is a fixed fee of $0.025 per unit for every full or partial hour the accelerator runs in our account and the second is the data transfer premium fee which varies.
4. Apache traffic server
Apache traffic server is a unique web structure software that ensures easy configuration of the web servers. The tool has a user-friendly and beautiful interface. it reduces the server load by caching and load balancing with a proxy layer.
Key Features:
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Scales well on modern SMP hardware, handling 10s of thousands of requests per second.
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Improves your response time
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Easily add a keep-alive, filter, or anonymize content requests
Cost:
You can talk to their sales team and request a quote.
5. W3 Total Cache
The main aim of the W3 Total Cache software is to increase website performance and reduce load times by leveraging features like content delivery network (CDN)integration. This in turn improves the SEO, Core Web Vitals, and overall user experience.
Key Features:
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It is compatible with shared hosting and virtual private servers.
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Provides Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)support
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Provides secure Socket Layer support.
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Caching feeds, database objects, search result pages in memory or on disk.
Cost:
Though the standard version is free, a pro subscription is available at $99 per year.
6. Oracle Dyn Traffic
Oracle has taken over Dyn in 2016. Since then the engineers of both companies have been working to compile Dyn’s products and services with Oracle cloud and infrastructure. With this merger, the enterprises can now take advantage of the best DNS services and email services. This increases their scalability and reduces access to website time.
Key Features:
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With their fast cloud infrastructure, the setup and configuration time is less.
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Distribute different loads of data to different multiples when the scale of data increases and ensures reliable and corrupt-free data is presented to the user.
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It has worldwide geolocation thus reducing the chance of feedback of slow server from any country's users
Cost:
You can talk to their sales team and request a quote.
7. Riverbed
Riverbed web accelerator was formerly known as steelhead. It sends leading-edge application acceleration to mobile workers anywhere. They are always delivered in a software-only format to their clients.
Key Features:
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It is most efficient in performance, cost-effective and secure.
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It maximizes visibility and performance
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The tool can be accessed by any number of users and from anywhere
Cost:
You can call the riverbed steelhead team to get quotations for their pricing
8. Snapt
Snapt is one of the leading software accelerators. It helps to secure and improve your SSL. It tends to suddenly increase your website’s speed. The tool supports any application on any cloud and at any scale.
Key Features:
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It centrally manages your data and provides protection to your scale.
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The tool automatically optimizes and supports any range of scale.
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It ensures continuity by providing stress-free compliance and disaster mitigation
Cost:
Its starting price is $113 which is a basic plan’s price and goes up to any range based on the customized plans taken by the customer.
9. Webfast Solution
Webfast Solution is a leading company providing services of digital marketing, website design, delivery, and development. They have a team of professionals and experts that provides a new and unique scale to your digital products.
Key Features:
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They provide technical expertise in the service they provide
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They provide interactive web designs which increase the performance of any business
Cost:
You can get quotes for various services from their website by filling in a few details and a compulsory form.
10. Ziproxy
Ziproxy is a noncaching and compression HTTP-based server that helps to optimize traffic. It is supported by the UNIX software system. This is a lightweight system in terms of memory and processing power consumption.
Key Features:
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The tool does not require client software and provides acceleration for any web browser and any operating system.
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It provides HTML and other text-like data
Cost:
You can contact their sales support team to get the cost details of their products and services.
11. HAProxy Technologies
HAProxy Technologies is an industry-first end-to-end application conveyance stage outlined to streamline and secure advanced application architectures. It highlights a suite of items consisting of application conveyance programs, apparatuses, and turn key administrations overseen and watched through a bound together control plane. It gives stack adjusting, application increasing speed, CDN, DDoS security, bot administration, and WAF capabilities.
Key Features:
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They provide security and administration services for their product
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The tool has high performance lookup maps, device detection, and HTTP routing
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Stack adjust your administrations at any scale and in any environment with the feature-rich application conveyance controllers.
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Convey ideal client encounters in any case of volume of guests, number of hits, or complexity of ask.
Cost:
You can get the details related to the cost of the product by contacting their support team for the products and services
12. Traefik
Traefik is an open-source edge switch that creates distributing your administration a fun and simple involvement. It gets demands for the sake of your framework and finds out which components are capable of taking care of them. What sets Traefik apart, other than its numerous highlights, is that it consequently finds the correct setup for your administration. The enchantment happens when Traefik reviews your foundation, where it finds significant data and finds which benefit serves which request. Traefik is natively compliant with each major cluster innovation, such as Kubernetes, Docker, Docker Swarm, AWS, Mesos, Marathon, and the list goes on; and can handle numerous at the same time. (It indeed works for bequest computer programs running on uncovered metal.)
Key Features:
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Traefik has the ability to automate everything which includes automation of configuration too
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You can spend time creating and conveying unused highlights to your framework, not on arranging and keeping up its working state.
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Traefik is natively compliant with every major cluster technology, such as Kubernetes, Docker, Docker Swarm, AWS, Mesos, Marathon, and many more
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It can support any number of cluster technology at a given point of time
Cost:
You can get the details related to the cost of the product by contacting their support team for the products and services
13. WP rocket
WP Rocket is an open-source web execution premium plugin for WordPress. It offers a plugin for WordPress. The plugin ensures caching to quicken site stacking times. Propelled in July 2013, WP Rocket has over 1.6 million dynamic introductions.
Key Features:
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The tool will help your eCommerce to run quickly and easily
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WP Rocket avoids touchy pages from the cache.
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No impedances within the obtaining preparation.
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WP Rocket is consistent with the foremost prevalent subjects and plugins and it works with the best overseen WordPress hostings.
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WP Rocket consequently preloads the cache each time you make a few changes on your web pages.
Cost:
Its costs begin from $48 for a year along with full support services and the latest updates.
14. Azure SignalR Service
With the Azure SignalR Service, one can rapidly and effectively construct real-time communications into your web application. It offers a purplish-blue signalR benefit. Furthermore including real-time communications to your web application is as basic as provisioning a benefit with this.
Key Features:
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You do not have to arrange and keep up servers fair since you wish for real-time highlights in your solution.
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SignalR Benefit is completely overseen which makes it simple to include real-time communication usefulness to your application.
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No more stressing approximately facilitating, adaptability, or stack adjusting – it's all dealt with nature in this.
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IT counseling firm embraces Purplish blue SignalR Benefit to rapidly construct custom arrangements with real-time overhauls
Cost:
You can get the details related to the cost of the product by contacting their support team for the products and services
15. NCache
NCache is an amazingly quick and adaptable Open Source disseminated cache for .NET applications. You can utilize NCache for database caching, ASP.NET Session State capacity, ASP.NET See State Caching, and much more. NCache is utilized by hundreds of companies all over the world in mission basic applications
Key Features:
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It is easy to use
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It provides the facility to consolidate disparate load balancing, and proxying
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One can use NCache to remove performance bottlenecks related to your data storage and databases and scale your business.
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This tool allows you to implement multiple read-through handlers and register with the cache as "named providers”
Cost:
It provides a free-of-cost plan for single users, $40 is charged for a team and $210 is charged for an enterprise. These charges are annually based.
16. Cherokee
Cherokke is an open-source cross-platform web server that runs on Linux, BSD variations, Solaris, OS X, and Windows. It is a lightweight, high-performance web server/reverse intermediary authorized beneath the GNU Common Open Permit. Its objective is to be quick and completely useful, but still light. Major highlights of Cherokee incorporate a graphical organization interface named Cherokee-admin, and a secluded light-weight plan.
Key Features:
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It is an open-source platform
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This tool can run on various software
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It is lightweight in terms of power consumption and memory
Cost:
You can get the details related to the cost of the product by contacting their support team for the products and services
17. Squid-Cache
Squid-Cache is a caching and sending HTTP web intermediary. It includes a wide assortment of employments, counting speeding up a web server by caching rehashed demands, caching web, DNS, and other computer arrange lookups for a gathering of individuals sharing and arranging assets, and supporting security by sifting activity. The Squid was initially outlined to run as a daemon on Unix-like frameworks. A Windows harbor was kept up to adaptation 2.7. Unused forms accessible on Windows utilize the Cygwin environment. Squid is a free program discharged beneath the GNU Common Open Licence
Key Features:
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It supports a very number of operating systems making it for all-purpose use
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The tool provides users with an option of segmented downloading by issuing them partial requests
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A single Squid server can function both as a normal and a reverse proxy at the same time
Cost:
You can get the details related to the cost of the product by contacting their support team for the products and services
18. Lighttpd
Lighttpd (articulated "lighty") is an open-source web server optimized for speed-critical situations while remaining standards-compliant, secure, and flexible. It was initially composed by Jan Kneschke as a proof-of-concept of the c10k issue – how to handle 10,000 associations in parallel on one server but has picked up worldwide notoriety. Its title could be a portmanteau of "light" and "httpd".
Key Features:
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It has a low memory footprint, small CPU loads, and enables speed optimization
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The tool is suitable for servers that are suffering load problems, or for serving static media separately from dynamic content.
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The tool is free and is distributed under the BSD license.
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It can run natively on Microsoft Windows and Unix-like operating systems.
Cost:
You can get the details related to the cost of the product by contacting their support team for the products and services
19. Fastly Edge
Fastly’s edge cloud was outlined from the ground up to be profoundly performant and secure whereas consistently scaling to back your development. Their single organization is completely programmable, with real-time permeability, so you'll make changes rapidly. Strategically situated all over the world, Fastly POPs (points-of-presence) is built utilizing capable advanced equipment. Their protected software-defined organizing stack permits you to course clients to the foremost ideal Fastly POP while guaranteeing tall accessibility, unwavering quality, and versatility.
Key Features:
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With built-in steering and stack adjusting, we've made a profoundly proficient network.
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They peer with cloud benefit suppliers and private information centers to supply committed transmission capacity and minimize idleness.
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Their exceedingly performant and secure organization makes a difference and guarantees that your development won’t exceed the unwavering quality you’ve come to anticipate.
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Right away available Change is at your fingertips — without having to yield a ticket to proficient administrations.
Cost:
You can get the details related to the cost of the product by contacting their support team for the products and services
20. Amazon DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX)
Amazon DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) is a fully managed, highly available, web server accelerator that delivers up to a 10 times performance improvement—from milliseconds to microseconds—even at millions of requests per second.
Key Features:
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It is highly scalable where you do not have to compromise on performance and scale.
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DAX fully integrates with AWS services to enhance security.
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You no longer need to worry about management tasks such as hardware or software provisioning with this tool
Cost:
You can get the details related to the cost of the product by contacting their support team for the products and services
Things To Consider While Selecting Web Server Accelerator Tools
Whether it is cost-effective
Identifying an accelerator that is suitable for our course of business as well as not so expensive that it puts a hole in our pockets. If the accelerator is suitable but not affordable it defeats the whole purpose of getting a server accelerator.
Easy to use
Simplicity is a key factor that any client looks for in a web server accelerator. Since most of the clients do not have in-depth knowledge of the software they look for accelerators that are easy to handle and do not require complex procedures.
Identification
Identifying whether it is both a local and global accelerator, that is, whether the accelerator can offer offices in different parts of the world for expansion or client outreach. It helps in diversifying the list of clientele and can offer larger profits.
Pros and Cons
The pros and cons of private and corporate accelerators should be compared to choose the best possible option. Both of them have their own advantages and disadvantages so one should not be rash to choose one over the other.
Conclusion
A web server accelerator refers to a server that is a proxy which thus reduces the time of access to the website. They can be software that can be installed or inbuilt hardware. The main task of a web server accelerator is to enhance user experience and speed up access to web applications or websites. Hence, it is essential to choose a web server application that completely fulfills our requirements and is affordable.
FAQs
What are web accelerators?
A web accelerator is a proxy server that reduces the website access time. They can be self-contained hardware appliances or installable software. The main idea behind accelerating web traffic is to utilize a load balancer or reverse proxy server to optimize HTTP traffic as it flows between clients and backend servers.
How do accelerators reduce the waste of server sources?
The feature of web acceleration servers is to cache/store locally, some information that is commonly requested rather than fetching it again and again from backend servers. This prevents server resource waste and the slow down of content delivery. Accelerators compress large files like images or video files to reduce transfer times.
Who usually uses the Web server accelerators?
Web server accelerators are more common among network teams that require quick and easy access to various web applications. It is also used by server analysts and engineers as their jobs demand swift response which can become difficult without the help of accelerators. Generally, web server accelerators are used in combination with the load.
What is a secure web accelerator?
Secure Web Accelerator (SWA) is used to provide automatic DDoS protection and website acceleration. A study of previous cases has shown 30% faster page loading after the use of SWA. While on the other hand SWA PLUS provide full access to the Cloudflare control panel or dashboard, Web Application Firewall (WAF)along with additional security features.
Where can the web accelerators be installed on?
Web accelerators can be installed on:
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Client PC(that is personal computer)
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Mobile device
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ISP servers
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Combination of all