LiteSpeed Enterprise vs Apache: Benchmarking WordPress Performance

The Legacy of Apache

Apache has powered the internet since the 1990s. It is incredibly stable and highly compatible. But it relies on a process-based architecture—meaning for every new visitor connecting to your site, Apache spins up a new process or thread.

When you get hit with a traffic spike, Apache exhausts your server's RAM rapidly, causing crashes.

The LiteSpeed Revolution

LiteSpeed Enterprise was engineered specifically to solve high-concurrency architectures. It uses an event-driven architecture (similar to Nginx) but is 100% drop-in compatible with Apache’s .htaccess files.

This is critical. You get the speed of Nginx without breaking any of your WordPress rewriting plugins.

Real-World Benchmarks

In our internal stress tests of a standard WooCommerce store on a 4-core VPS:

• Apache + Mod_PHP: ~40 Requests per Second before crashing.
• Nginx + PHP-FPM: ~1,100 Requests per Second.
• LiteSpeed + LSAPI + LSCache: ~4,800 Requests per Second.

The Secret Weapon: LSCache

LiteSpeed isn't just a web server; it's a server-level caching engine.

Most WordPress caching plugins (like WP Rocket) execute at the PHP application level. This means PHP still has to load to serve the cached page. LiteSpeed Cache (LSCache) executes at the server level. It bypasses PHP entirely. To the server, your dynamic WordPress site suddenly behaves like lightweight static HTML files.

Migration is Painless

Because LiteSpeed reads existing .htaccess configurations, migrating an Apache-hosted WordPress site to AmanaFlow requires absolutely no code changes on your end.

FAQs

Q: Does LiteSpeed support HTTP/3 & QUIC?
A: Yes, LiteSpeed pioneered HTTP/3 implementation long before Apache or Nginx. It is fully enabled across the AmanaFlow global network.