Supported runtimes
Shlink supports a number of ways to serve it. Each one of them has pros and cons, and depending on your technical knowledge and needs, you may prefer to choose one or another.
This document offers a comparison of all of them, to help you make the best decision.
RoadRunner
RoadRunner is a PHP application server written in go, that can be installed directly with Shlink.
It lets you load Shlink in memory, and serve requests without reloading the service, which makes it very fast.
It also supports running heavy tasks in background (like updating the GeoLite2 database file or notifying real-time updates).
This makes it the current officially recommended runtime.
Follow the documentation in order to know how to get it up and running.
FrankenPHP
Similarly to RoadRunner, FrankenPHP is also a PHP application server written in go, with support for worker mode.
It also has a very good performance, but as opposed to RoadRunner, background tasks are not supported with this runtime.
Follow the documentation in order to know how to install it and serve Shlink with it.
Classic web server
This is the way traditionally PHP apps have been served.
It requires a web server (Nginx, Apache, etc.) and a FastCGI, like php-fpm.
It is the least performant option, as Shlink needs to be bootstrapped on every request, but at the same time it is the more predictable option and the one you may prefer if you have experience hosting other PHP apps.
Follow the documentation in order to know how to get it working.
Comparison
Now that you know the options, follow this table in order to decide what’s the best one for you and how to install it.
 RoadRunner | FrankenPHP | Classic web server | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Performance | 90 | 80 | 30 |
| Stability under heavy load | 100 | 100 | 70 |
| Hard to install | Easy | Easy | Medium |
| Reverse proxy | Recommended | Not needed | Not needed |
| HTTPS support | Via reverse proxy | Built-in | Yes |
| Real-time updates | |||
| GeoLite2 updates | Via long-running tasks | Via long-running tasks |