LiteSpeed Web Server (LSWS), is a proprietary web server software. It is the 5th most popular web server, estimated to be used by 6.5% of websites as of April 2020. LSWS is developed by privately held LiteSpeed Technologies. The software uses the same configuration format as Apache HTTP Server and is compatible with most Apache features. An open source variant is also available.
LSWS was released in 2003, and in August 2008 it became the 16th most popular web server. In November 2016, LiteSpeed's market share grew from 0.39% to 3.29%, increasing its position from 10th to 4th most popular web server according to Netcraft. In 2017, a team from Hong Kong Polytechnic University found it to be one of the six most popular web servers, and it was estimated by a team at RWTH Aachen University to be running 9.4% of all HTTP/2-enabled websites. As of April 2020, LSWS was used by 69.7% of websites using QUIC and 48.2% of websites using HTTP/3.
Features
LSWS is compatible with commonly-used Apache features, including mod_rewrite, .htaccess, and mod_security. LSWS can load Apache configuration files directly and works as a drop-in replacement for Apache while fully integrating with popular control panels. LSWS replaces all Apache functions, but uses an event driven approach to handle requests.
