I have an old-school sysadmin background, and was responsible for some seriously large Apache installations in the 2000s. I stuck with it during the dark days of the introduction of mpm_worker, and could probably still churn out mod_rewrite rules in my sleep.
Would I use it for a new service today? No.
Not because the configuration itself is complex (as I say, I've been working with it for decades), but because managing the config is complex.
You end up using custom templating systems, testing the new config oob, and then sending signals to the daemon. There's a huge pile of scripting needed to manage all of this in even the most basic way, let alone integrate it with a service mesh or orchestration system.
Even the ASF will push you towards ATS or Dubbo or APISIX rather than old-school Apache Server.
Caddy will get you up and running in seconds, whereas forcing Apache's square peg into the modern environment's round hole is going eat weeks for very little benefit.
I could've written much the same. I used Apache from the late nineties until around 2010, and I can manage it. I just don't want to anymore. It's not worth the pain.
Ok, that's fair: it is always quite disappointing when a project lies about its status (and if I ever get a chance to complain directly about that, I probably will)... but, at least it used to be accurate (and likely was until very recently)? A lot of projects (I see this often with terminal apps) say stuff like "the fastest X", only, when you do a benchmark, they aren't even fast in an absolute sense, much less in a relative sense to other projects (and I believe I remember this being the case for nginx for a while vs. Apache with mpm_event).
Would I use it for a new service today? No.
Not because the configuration itself is complex (as I say, I've been working with it for decades), but because managing the config is complex.
You end up using custom templating systems, testing the new config oob, and then sending signals to the daemon. There's a huge pile of scripting needed to manage all of this in even the most basic way, let alone integrate it with a service mesh or orchestration system.
Even the ASF will push you towards ATS or Dubbo or APISIX rather than old-school Apache Server.
Caddy will get you up and running in seconds, whereas forcing Apache's square peg into the modern environment's round hole is going eat weeks for very little benefit.