Caddy is an open-source and multi-platform web server designed and developed by Karl Drechel in 2015 to provide an easy-to-use, portable, efficient, and secure environment. This software is hosted by GitHub. Caddy Web Server supports HTTP/2 and HTTP languages by default, as well as issuing and renewing HTTPS certificates (via Let’s Encrypt).
Caddy’s support for HTTPS means users can access websites provided by Caddy on a secure platform. Caddy is coded in the Go environment and uses the default Go library. Because of this, it can be installed on any platform where Go is compiled, such as Windows, Linux, Solaris, BSD, and macOS. The difference between Caddy and the other two web servers we’ve covered in this article is the features it provides out of the box. Caddy has managed to attract a lot of fans for his excellent features along with his young age. So far, this web server has been downloaded and installed more than 20,000 times while users have registered 4,500 stars on GitHub.
A helpful feature is Caddy’s implementation of the latest standard for transport security (TLS 1.3). Caddy can be expanded and customized based on your needs. Caddy supports a web-based management interface to easily control and manage multiple websites on one server.
It should be noted that Cady Web Server offers licenses in three different modes: 1. Personal 2. Small-scale Commercial 3. Large-scale Commercial. Caddy is not complicated to use, install and configure, just download the appropriate static binaries for your system on GitHub and configure easily. Any website that started serving on Caddy will use HTTPS by default and get a free security certificate like the Cloudflare service.
Caddy performance
Caddy web server, like other web servers, in addition to serving and its main functions, will also have the ability to serve as a reverse proxy and load balancer mode, most of the features of this web server work as middleware and means that are only directly related to the Caddy settings file. This web server generally provides good security and has eliminated the security holes present in most web servers like Apache, Nginx, etc.
In terms of competition, this web server has gained many fans even though it has been in the market for only 2 years, but it has yet to become a strong competitor in front of Nginx. Caddy is improving and trying to fix the mistakes and errors of other competitors. It may not be significantly different in terms of performance compared to Nginx, and now it may not be recognized as an alternative to Nginx in the market, but we hope that it will increase the difference gap with other competitors in the future.
Caddy web server configuration
Caddy supports JSON and several adapters in its configuration. Caddy’s main configuration includes the following:
- The caddy configuration can be set using the standard caddy file.
- An example of a “hello world” configuration on Caddy with a connection to port 3000 would be in the following format:
:3000 {
respond "Hello, world!"
}- To restart the server and register the changes, first shut down the server by pressing the Ctrl+C key and then start the web server by running the caddy run command. (Entering caddy run on the command line starts the caddy server daemon)
- To apply the new settings, you can reload Caddy in a separate terminal environment by executing the Caddy reload command.
- To access the message “Hello, world!” You can run curl command or search http://localhost:3000 in your browser:
$ curl http://localhost:3000
Hello, world!
- Run thefile_servercommand to implement a static file server.
- Enter thephp_fastcgicommand to redirect proxy requests to PHP Fastcgi.
Caddy web server benefits
- Automatic receipt and management of TLS certificates from Let’s Encrypt to enable HTTPS
- Serving static files
- Assign security certificates to sites
- Support for HTTP/1.1 and default support for HTTP/2
- Reverse proxy support
- Ease of use and installation
- high speed
- Load balancing and continuous health checks
- FastCGI proxy support
- Gzip support
- Virtual hosting on a port
Disadvantages of Caddy
- Not much training and troubleshooting documentation are available.
- It does not support some functional features.
- May not provide ideal performance for large websites with heavy traffic.
- ]It has a small market share.
