Convince me: OLS (or Litespeed) vs Apache

Derek

When I was hosting on DirectAdmin I was very impressed with (paid) LiteSpeed, but as I'm testing my migration to Enhance I'm not so sure. I wanted your more experienced opinions before I do things like install CPGuard, as I'm not sure how well changing a web server will propagate to third-party security tools.

In my basic testing on a reasonably complex Elementor/WooCommerce site with some large images, and when running webpagetest's tests against that site I saw the following results. Note that I tested OLS/Apache and Cached (lscache or WPFastestCache) so there were 4 runs. Of those, the summary is this:

Page load times: OLS was 1% to 4% faster
TTFB: OLS was 5% to 14% faster, but even with the cached Apache this was still 0.2745 seconds, which seems like a minor change compared to the 0.2365s results OLS was giving.

These numbers weren't as compelling as I thought they would be. Especially since I can affordably install WP Rocket on each client site tied to BunnyCDN instead of using LSCache and QUIC.cloud.

Server load may be its own argument, but in general I tend to maintain servers that are fairly underpopulated compared to what most are doing so I'm not sure there's a whole lot of downside here.

What did y'all decide? What drove the decision? Is the performance impact greater than I think it is?

DracoBlue

I'm using OLS and I can't say a bad word about it. It definitely has a better TTFB than Apache. I've never used the paid LiteSpeed, so I can't compare. Overall, I wanted to use NGINX, but for now, Enhance is quite limited when it comes to NGINX configuration. When it comes to performance, OLS is the better choice, whereas Apache offers greater versatility.

8Dweb

I agree with DracoBlue though, we utilize Apache (currently) on all our servers, and have found page / site loading to be excellent. There was some tuning (see other older forum posts - search "server tuning") that helped, though our out-of-box performance with Enhance was not terrible. Our load times even on our somewhat older Epyc Cloud cluster for WP and J! are very good.

We are testing an OLS server with one of our resellers, but so far, the type of sites they build simply do not require the extra performance.

I will never say that a well-tuned Apache server can out-do OLS or paid LS, but it is no slouch and fits the bill for our customer-base.

8Dweb

One additional thing I will say, we did move our billing and help desk to a much faster Ryzen 9 server (4.8Ghz) and found that for the first time in a very long time, our WHMCS billing system was actually snappy... So as you read about various cpu and configs in the forums, it is still true that raw cpu can make a difference.

Zoinkies

Between paid Enterprise, and OLS I still prefer NGINX. Compatible TTFB when setup correctly and NGINX can still perform really, really well. LSWS is more for really packed cheap web hosting. So if you’re keeping to less than 300 clients per server, and you have a good clock speed and plentiful ram NGINX is fine.

DracoBlue

Zoinkies That's correct, currently with the Enhance panel, OLS is a better choice than NGINX, unless you're hosting only WordPress sites and can't fully configure NGINX yet.

Rich

I've been using OLS within Enhance for about a year now. Enterprise version for past 6 years.

The advantage of OLS/LSWS isn't just performance, NginX is very comparable there. It's the drop in replacement for Apache, support for .htaccess and LSCache plugin, which itself is awesome for WordPress websites.

LSCache, supports DB cleanup, code optimisation and minifcation, above fold processing of CSS, image optimisation + webp (all free on OLS)

The ENT version gives a better experience, support for a ton more sites on a server, ESi processing and more.

NginX can totally be tuned + other cache/optimisation plugins to get top end delivery. I prefer the simplicity of using LSCache and not having to worry about 3+ other plugins for an NginX install.

I use CF for a CDN if a site needs it, sometimes for a local business with a server in that area, using a CDN can hurt TTFB.

twest

Honestly I love Apache and prefer running it for my webservers and have done so for +10 years. I've always been able to achieve comparable performance scores with Apache vs LS/NGINX, and I've loved the stability and compatibility that it affords.

That being said, the last 4 years I ran Apache with LSPHP and WOW what a difference in makes in wp-admin/backend processing speeds, love love love that I can run Apache with LSPHP in WHM/cPanel under Cloudlinux.

Unfortunately, Enhance does not yet have a better/faster php processor than php-fpm for Apache, thus Apache is really crippled... Not only is php-fpm slower, but it requires fine-tuning config for each individual website, whereas LSPHP configs itself.

So I started using Lightspeed (enterprise), just so I could get access to LSPHP. I might have gone OLS, except there's no persistent config available for it, so its unsuitable for my huge servers 50CPU/250GB RAM. I need the enterprise version so I can tune the Litespeed config, opening up its settings to allow for more workers and more everything else so I can take advantage of all my CPU/RAM, where OLS would be too limited.

If I ran smaller servers, I'd def go OLS.

JohnB

Enhance limits asside (ie php-fpm limitations)

OLS + LScache will make a average coded site much faster without much or any tweaking. Much better TTFB and load times.

The same site with Apache will need a paid plugin or a few free performance related plugins each with the correct config to be as fast.

This is why Litespeed/OLS wins in benchmarks and users like it. You can make even a crappy drag and drop builder site fast without even knowing about TTFB means.

If you take a properly developed website and put it on a properly configured apache server the performance will be equal. Same site on Nginx will be faster in the real world and handle more load than OLS and probably paid litespeed as well.

If your customers are average people who struggle to add a google analytics tag, OLS/Litespeed is best because they will think "wow xyz hosting so fast" instead of "My site was professionally built by a $300 developer so xyz host must be slow"

I run Apache on one server and OLS on another. Completely custom sites run on apache. OLS is for quick sites with plugins that always seem to be designed to kill performance first and add features second.

I would use Nginx instead of Apache but the Enhance config is too limiting.

DracoBlue

It should also be mentioned that OLS has HTTP3 + Quic.

mah1952

Ols is fast and simple... Highly recommend.

DracoBlue

Sorry, OLS 1.8.1 use HTTP3 with the latest QUICv2 support.