[bklyn11201]

I'm more impressed these days with the pace, activity, and helpful support from the Caddy development team: https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy/

[Eikon]

Not sure of the appeal of caddy.

Sure, the 1 liner config file looks fine at first glance but anywhere more complex than a basic reverse proxy setup and it becomes a nightmare to configure with a crazy configuration format.

[imiric]

Nginx also has its own custom configuration format, which looks alien to anyone who isn't used to it. Many engineers are at this point, but think about the amount of documentation and books written about it. It's full of quirks and gotchas, where misconfiguration is very easy, and configuring complex behavior very difficult.

The appeal of Caddy is that it has sane modern defaults so that it doesn't need a lot of configuration. Things like HTTPS by default, automated cert management, Tailscale integration, etc., are all very convenient to have OOB. It's also much easier to extend than Nginx with tools like xcaddy. The configuration format itself is arguably less quirky than Nginx's. Someone below mentioned replacing a 10k Nginx setup with a 1k Caddy one, and while this is always going to be painful, it speaks for itself.

[heavensteeth]

I tried messing with Caddy a little while ago and this was my experience.

I'm sure being able to configure it in a million different languages conveniences someone, but [un]official docs documenting things in a format I don't use, and having to figure out what the option is in the format I do use, was immediately annoying.

[mgrandl]

Complete opposite of my experience. Caddy is by far the most sane reverse proxy configuration out of the ones I tried (Nginx, Traefik, Caddy).

[whalesalad]

I use it in dev to proxy to multiple backend services but I don’t think I’d ever run with it in prod.

[francislavoie]

Caddy maintainer here; could you be more specific about the usecases you think look like a nightmare? We're always looking to improve config ergonomics, but we need specific feedback.

[andrewstuart]

Not true.

Caddy has always allowed even the most sophisticated configuration for me.

Sure I’ve needed to talk to ChatGPT about it and sometimes ask in the forums which the maintainers are active in.

And I find the config to be much more sensible than nginx which I really came to not be a fan of.

[aborsy]

How about the level of security of Caddy and Nginx?

Maybe there is a difference there too.

[adrianvincent]

Caddy is great. But it has some of the worst documentation I’ve ever seen. It’s so messy and unstructured.

One example: it was almost impossible to find instructions on where to actually put the damn Caddyfile. After reading the docs 10 minutes, I gave up and resorted to Google site search.

[francislavoie]

This page explains all that: https://caddyserver.com/docs/running. Ultimately it depends how you installed Caddy and how you're running it (Docker vs Systemd vs directly via CLI, etc).

[andrewstuart]

ChatGPT is invaluable when configuring caddy.