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The Nginx web server, which has been adopted by a growing cadre of web sites in its open-source form, is now going commercial with a new NGINX Plus release.

The commercial version wraps new features including advanced monitoring, application health checks and dynamic configuration and management around a service level agreement (SLA), said Nginx Inc. CEO Gus Robertson. The price is $1,350 per instance per year.

Robertson said the company, with development in Moscow and commercial operations out of San Francisco, will continue to enhance the open-source version, but it was time for to take the next step. Nginx Inc. was founded 2 years ago and raised $3 million in funding in a Series A round in 2011. Robertson, a former Red Hat(s rhat) executive, joined the company in April with an eye towards getting a commercial release out the door.

Nginx definitely has its devoted fan base who laud it for being lightweight and speedy. Over the last few years, it claims to have gone from powering 20 million sites to 100 million. One user, David Mytton, CEO of London-based Server Density, is bullish. Nginx, he said, is “much simpler to deploy than Apache, which is saying something since there’s so much knowledge about Apache that it’s not all that difficult itself.”

While Nginx is on an upward trajectory, challenging Microsoft IIS for the number two spot in market share, according to Netcraft data, it still has a way to go to beat out Apache.