[devwastaken]

FPM isn't just popular because of speed. Its popular because of pools and the fact that its not a giant security risk by having it installed. mod_php shares permissions across everything it executes. If you have any site on the same Apache stack as another, they're accessible to each other as far as PHP is concerned. This makes the attack surface of a website significantly larger unless you're hosting exactly one site you have locked down to one directory.

I also really doubt that php7.1 mod and apache without .htaccess is faster than nginx and php7.1-fpm under 'ondemand' mode. Even a 5$ DO server can handle hundreds of requests a second to big frameworks like Drupal or Mediawiki, and they're securely seperated. Locking down permissions on a group level to the executing php-pool, so you can then make only specific users belong to that pool and bind a directory in their home to the actual website location.