How Slash compares.

Slash, Caddy, Nginx and Apache httpd

Slash, Caddy, Nginx and Apache httpd

	Slash	Caddy	Nginx	Apache httpd
Category	Web server, reverse proxy and Kubernetes Ingress controller	Web server and reverse proxy	Web server, reverse proxy, load balancer	Web server
Language	Rust	Go	C	C
Memory safe	Yes (no unsafe in its own code)	Yes	No	No
Automatic HTTPS	Built in: HTTP-01, TLS-ALPN-01, DNS-01 (Cloudflare), ARI	Built in; DNS-01 for many providers via plugins	certbot or an extra ACME module	mod_md
HTTP/3	Built in, on	Built in, on	Available, must be enabled	—
WebSocket, gRPC	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes (mod_proxy)
Load balancing	Round-robin with active and passive health checks	Many policies with health checks	Round-robin, least_conn, hash; active health checks only in NGINX Plus	mod_proxy_balancer
Static files	Index, SPA fallback, pre-compressed files, range requests; dotfiles and escaping symlinks refused	file_server	root, try_files	DocumentRoot, .htaccess
PHP / FastCGI	Yes (php-fpm); wordpress and laravel presets with safe rules built in	Yes (php_fastcgi)	Yes (fastcgi_pass with manual configuration)	Yes (mod_php, php-fpm)
TCP/UDP proxy	Yes: TCP, UDP, TLS passthrough (SNI), PROXY protocol	layer4 plugin	Yes (stream)	—
Kubernetes Ingress	Yes: slash-ingress (Ingress v1, Helm chart), reads ingress-nginx annotations	Community project	ingress-nginx, NGINX Ingress Controller	—
Rate limiting	Built in, per route	Plugin	Built in (limit_req)	Extra modules
Security headers	Per-host preset, on by default	Written in the Caddyfile	Written in the config	Written in the config
WAF	Built in: AssaultCuirass (OWASP CRS v4, Rust engine, linear-time regex)	Plugin (Coraza)	ModSecurity module	ModSecurity module
Configuration	Slashfile, or the SPMPlus web panel	Caddyfile / JSON with an admin API	nginx.conf	httpd.conf, .htaccess
Reload	Validated, swapped atomically	Graceful	nginx -s reload	graceful
Official web panel	Yes (SPMPlus)	Third party	Third party	Third party

Like Nginx and Caddy, Slash uses central configuration in place of .htaccess: the wordpress and laravel presets already carry the rewrite rules usually written there.

The same WordPress site in Caddy and in Slash:

blog.example.com {
    root * /var/www/blog
    php_fastcgi localhost:9000
    file_server
}

blog.example.com    wordpress /var/www/blog

SPMPlus and Nginx Proxy Manager

SPMPlus and Nginx Proxy Manager

	SPMPlus	Nginx Proxy Manager
Reverse proxy	Slash (Rust)	Nginx (OpenResty)
Panel backend	Rust (Axum) with SQLite	Node.js with SQLite or MySQL/MariaDB
Architecture	Proxy and panel separate; the proxy keeps running when the panel is down	Panel and Nginx in one container
Docker images	Two distroless images, read-only, non-root	One image, root by default
Native install	Yes (static binary with systemd)	Not official
Applying changes	Full validation, diff preview, atomic swap, version history	Writes Nginx config files, then reloads
Let’s Encrypt	HTTP-01, TLS-ALPN-01, DNS-01 (Cloudflare)	HTTP-01, DNS-01 for many providers
HTTP/3	Yes	—
Compression	zstd, Brotli, gzip	gzip
Access lists (IP and basic auth)	Yes	Yes
Rate limiting	Per route, from the panel	Manual Nginx config
Security headers	Per-host preset	HSTS and “Block common exploits”; the rest manual
TCP/UDP streams	Yes, plus TLS passthrough (SNI)	Yes
Accounts	Multiple admins, passkeys and TOTP	Multiple users with per-feature permissions
Metrics	Dashboard and Prometheus	—

SPMPlus is built for HTTP/3, secure defaults, configuration changes validated before they reach the proxy, and a small memory footprint.