OpenLiteSpeed Web Server Review

LiteSpeed Web Server

LiteSpeed Web Server(LSWS) is a drop-in Apache alternative from LiteSpeed Technologies.

LiteSpeed securely handles concurrent users with minimal memory and CPU footprint even under heavy load.

LiteSpeed became the fastest growing web server in 2019, and dethroned Nginx which held this position since a very long time.

LiteSpeed is also the 5th most popular web server in the market.

LiteSpeed Server Options

• OpenLiteSpeed – free and open source.
• LiteSpeed Enterprise – paid product.

LiteSpeed provides cache plugins for various Content Management Systems which give you lot of freedom on how and when things are cached.

LiteSpeed Cache Plugin is Available for

• WordPress
• Joomla
• OpenCart
• Drupal
• XenForo
• Laravel
• MediaWiki

Control Panels Supported by OpenLiteSpeed

• cPanel
• CyberPanel
• DirectAdmin
• Plesk
• OPENLitePanel ( no GUI but super optimized server configration script created by Web professionals/ Web Server admin/ IT experts )

OpenLiteSpeed Web Server Features

• Event driven means less overhead and enormous scalalbility.
• Handles thousands of concurrent connections without load spike.
• Supports Apache mod_rewrite and mod_security rules.
• Come with user friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) for WebAdmin.
• Apache drop-in replacement.
• Support pipelined requests.
• Supports HTTP/2 server push.
• GZIP, brotli compression.
• Zero downtime and maintenance with graceful restarts.
• Runs on Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OSX, and Solaris.
• Unlimited IP and name-based virtual hosting.
• Unlimited concurrent connections.
• Supports advanced server level cache with LSCache Engine and ESI.
• OCSP stapling.
• WebSocket proxying.
• Built-in DDoS protection with bandwidth and connection throttling.
• IP based access control.
• Strict HTTP request validation.
• Referer limiting.
• Response rate limiting.
• Buffer overrun guards.
• Fault tolerance.
• Chunked transfer encoding.
• Entity tags.
• Set Cache-Control headers.
• Supports both IPv4 and IPv6.
• Asynchronous I/O support.
• Built-in page caching.
• HTTPS/QUIC fast handshake and offload.
• Just-in-time configuration reduces restart time.
• Lookup for GEO IP.
• Stream logs to external logger.
• Custom log formatting.
• Backend load balancing.
• Auto recover from service failures.
• Supports multiple PHP versions.
• Supports video streaming.
• Virtual host templates for easy configuration.

OpenLiteSpeed Pros

• Free and open source.
• No need to learn new things.
• Consumes very less CPU and RAM.
• In-built feature to detect heavy load on Server.
• Replace Apache in 15 minutes with zero downtime.
• Eliminates 3rd party caching layers.
• Saves money by using less number of servers to power your websites and applications.
• No need for reverse proxy.
• Delivers Static content up to 5x faster than Apache.
• HTTPS is upto 3x faster than Apache.

OpenLiteSpeed Cons

.htaccess is fully supported only by LiteSpeed Enterprise.

Very few hosts provide OpenLiteSpeed Web Server with Managed WordPress Hosting.