Nginx Hosting Provider for Small/Medium Business

Part of our website maintenance package is to provide website hosting for small and medium businesses. While there are many options for web servers, and I've used a number of them, we utilize Nginx.

I had a friend point out the other day, if nothing else, Nginx has a cool name.

Keypoints

• Nginx is great for a Business Website
• Nginx is a powerful Web Server
• Nginx is Flexible and Extendable
• We Customize for our Clients

Perfect for Business

I have used a bunch of different web server programs over the years, however I've settled back on Nginx because of it's ease of use and powerful features. These are important aspects for a business. Imagine a couple scenarios:

Don't Go Complex

Sometimes the torch must pass from one person to another. Your IT services are subject to that. If your specific configurations are overly complex, this can increase the cost of managing and updating things. Although our Nginx setup utilizes some of the great features of Nginx, the syntax in the configuration files is easy. So even if we need to pass the "torch" of an Nginx configuration on to another technician (in or out of our company), then the process should be a positive one.

For a time I enjoyed using OpenBSD's proxy server called relayd. This is a great tool, and also very flexible. However, in my view, the configuration is not as clear and simple. For this and another reason, I decided to go the Nginx route. Who knows, things can change in the future, but for now, Nginx is where we're at.

Needed Features

Next, imagine that as your business grows, you find that your needs on the web server level are needing some customization to route certain paths to certain servers, provide custom mime-types, restrict upload sizes, and load balance. Not all web server programs are going to do that, so over time you may need to actually change the base software in use. And, depending on what framework your website is built with, this could mean some serious renovations.

Fortunately, I have found that Nginx not only performs well, but it also has met all my needs. I think it'll meet your needs as well.

A Powerful Web Server

I wonder if saying "Web Server" is a misnomer. Nginx is a "reverse proxy" server. However, it operates on the web, and it's a server. So therefore, it's a web server, and a powerful one at that.

When I first started out my career, Apache's HTTP server was the server to use. However, that quickly changed when Nginx was introduced. Nginx solved the main problem (in my opinion) with Apache, which is that the configuration files were more complicated than necessary (at the time), and Nginx’s were dead simple in comparison. Aside from that, Nginx is legendary for being able to handle many connections at once. Plus, the server process is easy to handle. All these factors played a role in boosting Nginx into the spotlight very quick, and I think it has stayed there for many years.

Nginx has some legit competition with a new server on the block called Caddy. I’ve used caddy, and it’s not a bad setup. Caddy provides many of the same features as Nginx, plus it comes with Let's Encrypt functionality built-in (for obtaining SSL/TLS certificates). But for me, Nginx still beats out Caddy. Why? Well, I don't know what it is, but the documentation is much easier for me to read than the Caddy docs. Also, Nginx does streams, so I can proxy more than just HTTP servers, I can also proxy other important services.

Besides that, Nginx has lots of goodies: Gzip compression, caching, custom headers, http/2 and http/3, load balancing, pattern/path matching, etc. You can do some fun and also terrible things with it.

I know that Nginx isn't alone in these features, but I like how they are implemented and integrated together.

Flexible, Extendable

Another thing I like about Nginx, is that since we host our client sites, I can gracefully reload the services after configuration changes. Now, this is not unique to Nginx, but I love the simplicity of how it was integrated.

In the past I needed to proxy an RTMP stream (a protocol that carries video/audio). Interestingly, there was an extension that I was able to add to Nginx to proxy that protocol as well. And, it worked well. And, it was simple. Double win.

Customized for You

Every client website is different, and sometimes they have unique needs. It may be that you need certain HTTP headers, or certain locations of a site cached, or load balanced. Our setup handles all that, and more.

I look at these companies paying out the nose for public cloud services, when they really don't need to be. What a company really needs is a great technician who they can talk to, in order to find simple and affordable solutions. Those solutions are exactly what we're looking to offer.

Our Nginx hosting service includes IP blocking from a number of countries, along with WAF rules to help protect the backend application, caching and security headers, and other customizations as needed per site.

I hope you’ll reach out to see if our Nginx hosting solution is right for you!