Why should you try Openlitespeed or Litespeed Enterprise? What’s the difference over NGINX?

Last Updated on November 7, 2023 EST by Jordan

Introduction

Quite often, I get asked why I suggest or run Openlitespeed or Litespeed Enterprise. Specifically, what’s the difference between Openlitespeed/Litespeed over Nginx? This article aims to answer both questions.

What’s the difference between Openlitespeed and Litespeed

The Openlitespeed product is the open-source version of Litespeed Enterprise by Litespeed Technologies. The following are the main differences between Openlitespeed and Litespeed Enterprise.

OpenLiteSpeed vs. LiteSpeed Enterprise – LiteSpeed Technologies

OpenLiteSpeed vs. LiteSpeed Enterprise. What’s the difference? Which LiteSpeed Web Server should you use? Compare features of the enterprise and open source editions of our powerful web server.

www.litespeedtech.com

Typically, the open-source version of software licensed for a fee will include all features but requires much more involvement to operate and install. Other times, specific features are not available in the open-source version of the software but are available in the paid version.

The latter is how Openlitespeed and Litespeed Enterprise have been provided; litespeed technologies have limited or removed specific features from Openlitespeed that are only available in Litespeed Enterprise.

Openlitespeed Limitations

The following are the features that aren’t available within Openlitespeed.

• The Optimized commercial mod_security engine is only available in Litespeed Enterprise.
• Unable to Read Apache’s configuration files directly, a reload/restart of Openlitespeed is required for .htaccess changes to be processed.
• It is not possible to use Openlitespeed as a full Apache Hosting control panel drop-in replacement; this is only available with Litespeed Enterprise.
• It doesn’t provide full .htaccess support, and some Apache .htaccess configuration is unavailable with Openlitespeed.
• There is no .htaccess caching; this is only available in Litespeed Enterprise.
• No SSL Offloading; this is only available in Litespeed Enterprise.
• The WordPress Brute Force Attacks Protection is only available in Litespeed Enterprise; options are still available for Openlitespeed.
• There is no chroot; this is only available in Litespeed Enterprise.
• There are no zero downtime server upgrades; this is only available in Litespeed Enterprise. Openlitespeed needs to be upgraded and restarted manually.
• There is no version management, allowing rollbacks to previous versions. Openlitespeed version rollbacks have to be done manually.
• There is no cPanel/WHM plugin / Plesk plugin; this is only available in Litespeed Enterprise.
• There is no caching plugin/helper for Magento 1.x and 2.x, PrestaShop, or Shopware; this is only available in Litespeed Enterprise.
• There is no ESI support in Openlitespeed; this is only available in Litespeed Enterprise.
• There are no MS FrontPage Server Extensions, Rails Shared Hosting or Redis Shared hosting in Openlitespeed, this is only available in Litespeed Enterprise.

This is very long list, however Openlitespeed is still very much functional if you’re aware of it’s limitations that related to WordPress.

Control Panels That Support Openlitespeed and Litespeed Enterprise

The following is a list of providers, and control panels that support Openlitespeed and Litespeed Enterprise.

Openlitespeed

• GridPane – SaaS Control Panel
• Runcloud – SaaS Control Panel
• CyberPanel – Self Hosted Control Panel

Litespeed Enterprise

• CyberPanel – Self Hosted Conrol Panel

Conclusion

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