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Magic xpa Application Platform vs Tomcat comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 2, 2025

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

Magic xpa Application Platform
Ranking in Application Server
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (14th), Mobile Development Platforms (11th)
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 August 2026, in the Application Server category, the mindshare of Magic xpa Application Platform is 2.7%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tomcat is 12.6%, down from 18.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Server Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Tomcat12.6%
Magic xpa Application Platform2.7%
Other84.7%
Application Server
 

Featured Reviews

Mylsamy T. - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Associate - IT at Himalaya Wellness Company
Enables us to develop more than 90 applications in-house, which are used across our organization
It's a bit difficult to work with purely web-based applications to get the data and display it. There have been a few times when the connection was disconnected between the server and your browser. The connectivity on browser-built applications needs to be improved. The mobile application development could be easier. They could include different external applications, like finger sensors. I'm not sure whether it's in version 3.8 or not.
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

"The best feature of Magic is the development time. The time it takes to develop something is incredibly fast if you compare Magic with, for example, Java."
"Being able to make changes to existing programs to comply with last minute changes in requirements, and/or being able to fix, test, review, and deploy new code in a manner of hours instead of days, definitely gives us a huge advantage over our competitors and this is only possible thanks to Magic’s speed of programming."
"The speed of development is the quickest for any tool on the market."
"Typically an experienced Magic developer can do the work of two to three experienced C#/.NET developers. Customers are amazed at how quickly most new features can be added and bug fixes implemented. I have worked for four employers - including myself - using Magic, and in most instances, bug fixes are addressed and deployed in under six hours."
"The solution makes the managing and adapting of the software very easy."
"The ability to use the same development environment for both Windows and Android applications. Magic xpa also supports iOS applications."
"Speed of development and database connectivity (MS SQL, Oracle, DB2, Btrieve/Pervasive PSQL, ODBC, MySql, and SQLite)."
"Magic’s Database Gateway allows the logic of the program to be isolated from the underlying database. This provides the flexibility not only to move existing programs to different database environments without the need to change the logic in the program but also allows the programmer access to different databases without the need to know how to "talk" to them."
"The ease of use of Tomcat is its most valuable feature."
"I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten, where one is high price and ten is low price. The pricing is pretty low."
"The scalability overall is good."
"Apache Tomcat, maybe the easiest and simplest Java Web Server on the market, as you just configure your environment and start it."
"The most valuable feature is the free EE server."
"This solution is stable, it has a lot of support because it is a part of the Apache Foundation and open source, and I am a strong proponent of open source."
"No investment, and a huge return."
"Apache Tomcat has become almost the defacto server for serving Java-based applications on the internet."
 

Cons

"Support is very bad. The main focus is placed on their own customers, big banks and big insurance companies, so those, like us, who are independent software vendors, are ignored."
"It is missing basic charting tools for bar/pie/series charts. It is left to the developer to acquire and deploy charting tools or the customer to purchase a third-party reporting tool to produce charts."
"The company has now released version 4 for web development, but this new release is still pretty hard to use for mobile and web development because it was not improved as much as we expected in the areas of user-friendliness or development-friendliness."
"I would like to see a spell checker included with optional language support. Currently, this has to be purchased from a third-party."
"In the next version of the Magic xpa Application Platform, I want tables or small programs where I can directly add expressions. I can do it on SQL, but it would make life much easier if that specification were added to the platform."
"The ability to display page up, page down, top and bottom buttons along the scroll bar would make my mouse-reliant customers happy."
"There is room for improvement in Magic's marketing and licensing. I would like to see more integration of web functionality."
"Support is very bad."
"Out-of-Memory issues, which can be solved by increasing the heap space."
"The enterprise support: Tomcat is an open source project, but for IT concerns, the enterprise support is needed when we encounter problems on it."
"Deployment in Tomcat should be done through a GUI. We deploy applications from the backend using commands."
"The configuration needs work."
"This product needs an improvement to its centralized management console that can apply configurations and deployments for large scale clusters and groups of servers without the need of accessing each server to apply the changes."
"It would be great if they offered more integration of monitoring tools."
"The stability must be improved."
"The product needs to have more updates."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing cost varies because nowadays Magic has tailor-made offerings for clients. I think the solution is worth the money."
"The licensing is too costly."
"The main problem with the Magic xpa Application Platform is pricing. You have to pay a lot of money for development, and you also have to pay a lot for the deployments and runtime, while in most competitors, you have to pay a lot for one of the two and not both."
"It's not cheap. The licenses are not cheap. Not at all. They cost much money. There are other tools with free licenses but Magic asks for a lot of money."
"My clients have to purchase additional licenses in order to use what I built. It's not a fair approach."
"There are different licenses, we have the application and the online application. There are two different licenses for two different program sites for the Magic xpa Application Platform."
"The cost for developers is high because you have to pay for licenses as well as runtime."
"Magic is not the cheapest IDE out there. If you are considering Magic xpa, you should do a cost-benefit analysis to feel comfortable with your decision. The Magic sales staff is very helpful in providing pricing."
"It's open-source. We don't pay for the license."
"I rate the product's price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price."
"This is an open-source product and it's free to use."
"It is an open-source tool and is free of cost."
"Tomcat is an open source solution."
"I give the pricing an eight out of ten."
"If it is a community version of the solution, no payment is required. However, if it is a Linux version, we must buy the solution from JBoss."
"It is an expensive product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Government
10%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise1
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise28
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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...
 

Also Known As

uniPaaS
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ADD, Cape plc, Adecco, Kuno Kinzoku Industry Co., GE Capital, Dove Tree, CBS Outdoor, Paris-Nord Villepinte Exhibition Center, Allstate Life Insurance Company, Titan Software Systems
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 Magic xpa Application Platform vs. Tomcat and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.