When you are in production, it’s hard to maintain your app, so in order to maintain our application more effectively, we use things like docker, PM2, and supervisor but have you ever think which one is better and when? Let’s talk about it!
Before get into data and stats, let talk about it.
What is Supervisord?
The supervisor is a client/server system that allows its users to monitor and control a number of processes on UNIX-like operating systems.
It shares some of the same goals of programs like launched, daemontools, and run it. Unlike some of these programs, it is not meant to be run as a substitute for init as “process id 1”. Instead it is meant to be used to control processes related to a project or a customer, and is meant to start like any other program at boot time.
What are the features of Supervisor?
- Simple
- Centralized
- Efficient
- Extensible
- Compatible
- Proven
All these features are also listed on Supervisor docs.
What is PM2?
PM2 is a daemon process manager that will help you manage and keep your application online. Getting started with PM2 is straightforward, it is offered as a simple and intuitive CLI, installable via NPM or Yarn.
What are the features of PM2?
- BEHAVIOR CONFIGURATION
- SOURCE MAP SUPPORT
- CONTAINER INTEGRATION
- WATCH & RELOAD
- LOG MANAGEMENT
- MONITORING
- MODULE SYSTEM
- MAX MEMORY RELOAD
- CLUSTER MODE
- HOT RELOAD
- DEVELOPMENT WORKFLOW
- STARTUP SCRIPTS
- DEPLOYMENT WORKFLOW
- PAAS COMPATIBLE
- KEY METRICS MONITORING (web-monitoring)
- API
PM2 vs Supervisord
PM2 is a well know production process manager that is used to run your application processes on a production server with some additional facilities like, Auto-restart on error, load balancer, better-logging, etc. Supervisord is a Process Control System that is used to monitor and control a number of processes on UNIX-like operating systems on production.
| PM2 | Supervisord | |
| Github stare | 35,131 | 3,712 |
| License | GPL | GPL |
| Last commit | Jun 10, 2021 | Jun 4, 2021 |
| npm downloads | 758018/week | 39672/week |
| Language | JavaScript | JavaScript |
PM2 vs Supervisord npm popularity
PM2 vs Supervisord Google Trends
Conclusion
PM2 and Supervisord both are awesome utility when it comes to production, mostly it depends on your use case, for most of the (*even all) node js applications PM2 is the best choice.
If you have any questions let me know in the comments.