faster alternative than php-S in command line?

I have a web app that I'm running locally on my network. It's using socket.io and node.js to handle client/server requests. The only way I can figure out how to accomplish this is by going into a command window, typing "node server.js" to activate the node portion, then opening a second command window and typing "php -S 0.0.0.0:8080" to activate a server on port 8080. This allows me to type in the device IP address:8080 and connect to my app from chrome on another device. I'm accomplishing all this with a .bat file on boot. My question is that I feel that my app should run faster. Sometimes there's a noticeable delay in the socket action and I've leaned out my code as much as much as I can to streamline it. The socket message maximum size is a 6 character string. So I'm not sending crazy amounts of data. Does anyone have any suggestion on how I can optimize this? Perhaps a tool or something that can setup and handle the node and server stuff better than running php-S in the command line? Thanks in advance.