Traefik

Traefik (pronounced "traffic") is a modern, cloud-native reverse proxy and load balancer designed for microservices and container-based architectures. It automatically discovers services running in Docker, Kubernetes, Consul, and other orchestration platforms and configures routing rules dynamically without manual configuration.

The key differentiator from Nginx or HAProxy is Traefik's automatic service discovery. When a new Docker container starts with the right labels, Traefik automatically creates routing rules, obtains an SSL certificate via Let's Encrypt, and starts directing traffic to the container. When the container stops, the route is removed. No configuration files need to be edited or reloaded.

Traefik supports multiple providers (Docker, Kubernetes, file-based, Consul, etcd, etc.) simultaneously. This means it can route traffic to Docker containers, Kubernetes services, and traditional servers all from a single Traefik instance. The middleware system provides request modification capabilities: rate limiting, authentication, header manipulation, circuit breaking, and more.

Automatic HTTPS works similarly to Caddy. Traefik obtains and renews certificates from Let's Encrypt for every routed domain automatically. Certificate storage supports file-based, Consul, etcd, and other backends for distributed deployments.

For hosting providers running container-based platforms, Traefik is often the ingress layer that routes customer traffic to the correct containers. Its ability to handle dynamic routing without restarts makes it ideal for platforms where customer services are constantly being created, updated, and removed.

The dashboard provides real-time visibility into routers, services, middlewares, and their health status. Metrics integration with Prometheus, Datadog, and other monitoring systems enables comprehensive traffic observability.

Traefik Proxy (open source) covers most use cases. Traefik Enterprise adds distributed tracing, advanced dashboard features, high availability, and commercial support.