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IIS PHP Windows vs Tomcat comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IIS PHP Windows
Ranking in Application Server
8th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tomcat
Ranking in Application Server
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Application Server category, the mindshare of IIS PHP Windows is 0.9%. The mindshare of Tomcat is 13.1%, down from 16.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Server Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Tomcat13.1%
IIS PHP Windows0.9%
Other86.0%
Application Server
 

Featured Reviews

Gaurav-Bansal - PeerSpot reviewer
Support Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Hosting client blogs has become straightforward but resource usage still needs improvement
IIS PHP Windows has positively impacted my organization by helping to deploy customer websites that have very small budgets, allowing the organization to assist those clients, which builds trust with them. It enables the organization to help them run their small websites, and while some clients had bigger projects, they also wanted their small websites to run, such as a personal blog. Client satisfaction was high because a Windows server can be monitored, and the customer's websites could remain up and running all the time. If something happens and the application crashes, we could simply grab the logs from the event viewer to check memory limits and investigate what is happening. Additionally, the client could perform some of the management using the GUI management interface in IIS.
Sanjay Sahu - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Manager at Capgemini
Customization and flexibility enhance web applications while support effectively resolves queries
Regarding improvements in Tomcat, I personally haven't used it very extensively, but all Apache products are very useful for our web applications. Although the web server setup is a little different, it has everything we have been using, and as of now, everything is good with no deficiencies that need improvement. I think that Tomcat needs a more robust logging error details feature; the current logging feature is available, but it should be more user-friendly. This improvement would make error handling more user-friendly.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"IIS PHP Windows has positively impacted my organization by helping to deploy customer websites that have very small budgets, allowing the organization to assist those clients, which builds trust with them."
"IIS PHP Windows impacts my organization positively because my applications perform very well here when compared with XAMPP."
"If you want to host your PHP or Laravel-based application in Windows, you can definitely use this extension, and using this extension you can host your PHP or Laravel application in IIS and it will have super speed."
"In my experience, the best features IIS PHP Windows offers include allowing us to host the PHP application with better performance compared to XAMPP, which we were previously using because XAMPP was giving slow performance."
"The ease of use of Tomcat is its most valuable feature."
"The product's most valuable feature is the ability to host applications."
"It is very easy to use for development as well as in a production environment."
"Apache Tomcat has become almost the defacto server for serving Java-based applications on the internet."
"We chose to use Tomcat because it's perfect compared to other containers that we have tested."
"I recommend using Apache Tomcat due to its open-source nature, lightweight design, and ease of installation and configuration."
"Lightweight Configurable High-performance Cross-platform Open source It has sufficient documentation for application development"
"Tomcat is a lightweight application server, which makes it easy to deploy and install small applications."
 

Cons

"I chose a rating of seven out of ten because IIS PHP Windows is good for small enterprises with manageable aspects, but it has very high resource usage and requires a Windows server license, contributing to the overall cost."
"The server needs to be bounced every three months."
"Scalability is a major problem with Tomcat."
"In the solution, we are using the terminal to enter command line codes for operations and management, this is difficult for me. It would be better if we had some administrator UI tools for this."
"I would also like to see a dashboard with some integrations in order to see the logs and trace performance easier."
"Security integration in Tomcat is complicated. We need to use another tool to solve the security issues."
"Sometimes we face issues with the private and public networks and ensuring that once Tomcat is installed, that it is secure."
"The main gripe that I have with Tomcat is its speed and size."
"From that security perspective, Tomcat requires improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Tomcat's pricing is very cheap."
"Tomcat is an open-source server."
"Tomcat is open-source and free to use."
"This is an open-source product and it's free to use."
"The tool is free."
"We are currently using the open-source version."
"The solution is free."
"It is an open-source tool and is free of cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
44%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Government
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise28
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with IIS PHP Windows?
IIS PHP Windows can be improved regarding its higher resource usage. Unlike a Linux web server that is very lightweight, the resource usage is higher on Windows. I chose a rating of seven out of te...
What is your primary use case for IIS PHP Windows?
My main use case for IIS PHP Windows is to deploy it for WordPress websites and Laravel custom applications so they can run on IIS using the PHP provider and PHP version. I used IIS PHP Windows for...
What advice do you have for others considering IIS PHP Windows?
Regarding IIS PHP Windows' security, I think its governance and security are solid as long as you configure Windows Active Directory correctly and all Windows authentication so that no other users ...
What needs improvement with Tomcat?
Tomcat lacks a visual tool for configuring. Everything is from the command line. I would like a visual tool for configuration to be added to Tomcat, as I see this feature missing.
What is your primary use case for Tomcat?
I work with Tomcat as a programmer, but not as an administrator. My major use case involves using Tomcat, mostly enclosed in any Java image for a Java application for REST API. I do not work with t...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tomcat?
I am familiar with pricing for Tomcat. For me, it is open source. Since it is open source, I don't see any fee for that regarding whether the license for Tomcat is usually expensive or quite afford...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
1. Adobe Systems 2. Amazon 3. Apple 4. AT&T 5. Bank of America 6. Boeing 7. Cisco Systems 8. Citigroup 9. Dell 10. eBay 11. Facebook 12. General Electric 13. Google 14. Hewlett-Packard 15. IBM 16. Intel 17. JPMorgan Chase 18. Microsoft 19. Netflix 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Salesforce 23. Samsung 24. Sony 25. Target 26. Twitter 27. Uber 28. Verizon 29. Visa 30. Volkswagen 31. Walmart 32. Yahoo
Find out what your peers are saying about IIS PHP Windows vs. Tomcat and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.