I’m surprised Varnish is not mentioned much either. For a while there it had a reputation as the fastest reverse proxy. I think its popularity was harmed by complex config and refusal to handle TLS.
It's always been blisteringly fast when we've used it, and I like the power of the configuration (it has its quirks but so do most powerful systems). But the overhead of setting it up and maintaining it due to having to handle TLS termination separately puts me off using it when other software is 'good enough'. If Varnish Enterprise was cheaper I would have bought it, but at their enterprise prices no way.
I'm keeping a watching brief on https://github.com/darkweak/souin and its Caddy integration to see if that can step up and replace Varnish for short-lived dynamic caching of web applications. Though I've lost track of its current status.
Amazing that you're talking about Souin and it's possible usage to replace Varnish. Let me know if you have question about the configuration or implementation. ATM I'm working on the stabilization branch to have a more stable version and merge the improvements into the caddy's cache-handler module.
Varnish is a must for my production apps. The grace period ability to serve stale cache while passing a request through to get the latest is just huge and I can’t live without it.
