Caddy

Caddy made automatic HTTPS a default rather than a feature: give it a domain and it obtains and renews certificates on its own. The Caddyfile config format expresses a typical reverse-proxy setup in a handful of readable lines.

It is a single Go binary with sensible defaults, extensible through compiled-in plugins (DNS providers being the common one). For exotic edge cases you may miss nginx's decades of Stack Overflow answers, but the config you write is a fraction of the size.

Arguably the best default web server for self-hosters in 2026: secure out of the box and pleasant to maintain.