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LAMP Stack CentOS vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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

LAMP Stack CentOS
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
29th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
3.5
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
434
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of LAMP Stack CentOS is 0.2%. The mindshare of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is 6.9%, down from 9.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Operating Systems (OS) for Business Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)6.9%
LAMP Stack CentOS0.2%
Other92.9%
Operating Systems (OS) for Business
 

Featured Reviews

MK
Senior System Specialist at a transportation company with 51-200 employees
Bundled web stack has simplified secure payment workflows but still needs smoother upgrades
Regarding how LAMP Stack CentOS can be improved, I would add a few points. Over the two decades of optimizations, the relational integrity that MariaDB and MySQL handle for complex data relationships and transactional integrity is perfect. The cost efficiency is also excellent. LAMP Stack CentOS's scalability is good so far, but there are some challenges as well. As we enter the agentic AI, achieving stability in LAMP Stack CentOS depends entirely on managing traditional web infrastructure. I manage the web infrastructure easily via LAMP Stack CentOS. However, when I try agentic AI, instability does not mean server uptime. I mean execution predictability and preventing logical failure. Therefore, AI in LAMP Stack CentOS becomes unstable and exhibits special behavior. LAMP Stack CentOS is stable in my experience; however, sometimes when more traffic comes and hits, it fluctuates. When we need to upgrade, there are some difficulties in LAMP Stack CentOS. Suppose I need to use MySQL 8 in my production environment but my LAMP Stack CentOS is outdated. At that time I need to upgrade the full stack to maintain it. If I use Apache, MySQL, and PHP separately, my DBA can normally upgrade MySQL, and my developer can upgrade PHP. However, when I use LAMP Stack CentOS, the whole team combination is needed, and then we can upgrade the full stack. This is the challenge so far.
CC
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Automation has transformed daily operations and supports secure, continuous infrastructure
When considering improvements to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I see one primary area. Within your portal, if you provided more study material along with demonstrations similar to the sessions we are attending, which feature a user-friendly guide, you could incorporate this into your Red Hat console. When I want to install an agent or something else, typing in the console should provide me with clear step-by-step instructions. Throughout the years, installation steps have been available, but regarding AI agents or Ansible automation, I need to verify whether clear information exists. Including this information would be beneficial. Additionally, if you add the sessions that have occurred to your portal or another location, this would help us review them multiple times to gain better understanding. Time is limited, and many sessions occur simultaneously, making it impossible to attend everything. Making these sessions available on your website would be very helpful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best features LAMP Stack CentOS offers in my experience are its better supportability compared to Debian, Ubuntu Mint, and Oracle support is much better."
"LAMP Stack CentOS has positively impacted my organization by allowing me to better serve clients with PHP in a smooth way, so I don't need to request anything else from my clients to run their applications."
"LAMP Stack CentOS has impacted my organization positively as it was the main stack for the development and hosting of the developed solutions for some of the companies."
"LAMP Stack CentOS has positively impacted us by giving us a stable, low-cost, and predictable platform for PHP-based applications."
"LAMP Stack CentOS has positively impacted my organization by providing a standard, zero-license, licensing-free gateway into the Red Hat enterprise ecosystem."
"LAMP Stack CentOS builds client trust that we can get our projects live in no time and builds credibility for the organization."
"The best feature that LAMP Stack CentOS offers in my experience is that I am getting the bundle where Apache, MySQL, and PHP come together, it is easy to maintain, easy to provide support, and when I am using LAMP Stack CentOS, I need minimum resources."
"LAMP Stack CentOS has positively impacted my organization in multiple ways, making life easier, particularly in terms of cost because all of this is open source and free, so the cost is very minimized."
"Red Hat provides a more complete integration between the operating system and platforms, and what stood out to me in my evaluation process was how easy it is to integrate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) into the existing IT processes of our clients, which is the main driver for us as cost concerns are not my focus."
"The Red Hat Linux comes with Anaconda, a fascinating tool that is useful if I need to connect multiple systems. I also like role-based access."
"I find the most valuable feature to be stability, as it is important for me, and we have all the functionality that we need because we are using mainly the KVM for running the virtual machines, along with other packages that are part of the operating system, such as HAProxy, Nginx, or other modules."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"Red Hat Insights helps in monitoring Linux servers, providing CVEs that need updating in the operating system, and giving information about server security."
"A concrete result I have observed after the migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is that deployments are now much easier, going from about six to ten days down to three days for delivering a complete environment across development, testing, and production, while incidents caused by antivirus issues, library blocks, and application blocks that prevented installation or access to the operating system were completely eliminated."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped to mitigate downtime and lower risk through our ability to patch quickly, with relatively fast reboot times, and the amount of changes applied that don't affect systems much, especially with patching, so everything works as designed with very little incompatibility issues."
"Because most databases run on Linux, that's what makes this solution so important. If you install a Unix system and want to use a database, you won't have to say, 'I can't find any database to run on this.'"
 

Cons

"LAMP Stack CentOS could be improved in terms of configuration being a little easier."
"The performance of LAMP Stack CentOS when handling high-traffic websites or demanding workloads might require us to set up some load balancing."
"I would like to see new functionalities or improvements in LAMP Stack CentOS because the packets are older than in other distros."
"LAMP Stack CentOS can be improved by tracking the CVEs and releasing fixes as fast as possible."
"The bigger area for improvement for LAMP Stack CentOS is overall ecosystem lifecycle predictability."
"LAMP Stack CentOS has not really impacted my organization positively."
"For chat or live streaming, when we are using LAMP Stack CentOS, it does not provide us the full feature."
"The biggest challenge is that the stack is very stable, but it can feel traditional compared to containerized or cloud-native platforms."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 discontinued support for X11 and started support for Wayland. All of our machines run on X11 window manager, which creates a huge issue in our transition."
"The area of improvement is patch management, specifically isolating kernel and operating system patching to prevent downtime for enterprise applications."
"Additionally, it seems to only save a few minutes of typing in the terminal."
"The challenges that we've had with different servers that don't have access to the internet require an installation, and keeping track of all the different versions on the different deployments is a challenge."
"There's room for improvement with some Linux tools."
"When we tried it last week, we found it challenging to automate things using Ansible."
"The numerous links to different pages disrupt the flow of information and make it difficult to maintain focus."
"The package compatibility between different releases is a little confusing sometimes."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"We are an educational institution and as such, what we pay is less than the average company."
"The licensing is tricky to understand. Enterprises want to be beyond reproach when it comes to licensing. We would rather over-license than under-license. However, that can be complicated with a high-performance development team who may need multiple operating system instances or want to experiment with spinning up many machines to see if something works or sticks."
"The tool is getting expensive."
"The cost is based on each organization's budget and infrastructure."
"The licensing for Red Hat Enterprise Linux in Peru is very expensive."
"We still have a few with one-to-one standard server licensing, but we are utilizing the virtualization host licensing. We license it based on the host, not based on VMs, which is cool. I was very happy that there was certain licensing with SAP to have access to SAP repos. Its cost was the same as the regular one, so I was happy about that."
"In terms of the solution’s single subscription and install repository for all types of systems, we can have as many RHEL installations as we want because we have a specific subscription that entitles us to have as many RHEL services as we want. We pay for a subscription and with that we get RHEL and Satellite as well."
"We transferred our license to the cloud because we were originally a VMware on-prem shop. So we're just transitioning some of our workloads to cloud licensing. Also, I have opted for a subscription."
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Comparison Review

it_user281973 - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage and VMware Expert at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Aug 24, 2017
It's improved our company's system environments that run Oracle databases.
Red Hat is mission critical to our environment Red Hat has improved the mission critical environments running Oracle databases, while CentOS has improved our web environment and MySQL. Oracle and SAP Environment and all HPC environments. 10 years No issues Very stable i don´t find any problem…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
41%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Transportation Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business93
Midsize Enterprise49
Large Enterprise312
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with LAMP Stack CentOS?
LAMP Stack CentOS could be improved in terms of configuration being a little easier. For new developers or new users, configuring and deploying production servers is a little complex compared to ea...
What is your primary use case for LAMP Stack CentOS?
My main use case for LAMP Stack CentOS is deploying the server on Linux Apache machines, centralizing the repositories, and executing cron jobs. I utilize all of these capabilities.
What advice do you have for others considering LAMP Stack CentOS?
My advice for others looking into using LAMP Stack CentOS is that everything is acceptable as of now. For new organizations using it, everything is fine. Implementation is related to the ease of de...
Which would you choose - RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) or CentOS?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is fantastic. It is an inexpensive solution that has excellent security, performance, and stability, and also lots of features. I specifically like that the solution has fe...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?
I would rate the price for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) quite high because in my part of the world, payments are made in dollars, and buying Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) comes at a significan...
What needs improvement with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can improve the pricing a little bit, but nothing else comes to mind.
 

Also Known As

LAMP Stack on CentOS
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for AWS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Travel Channel, Mohawk Industries, Hilti, Molecular Health, Exolgan, Hotelplan Group, Emory University, BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina, HCA Healthcare, Paychex, UPS, Intermountain Healthcare, Brinker International, TransUnion, Union Bank, CA Technologies
Find out what your peers are saying about LAMP Stack CentOS vs. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,153 professionals have used our research since 2012.