We compared Apigee and Kong Enterprise based on our users reviews in five parameters. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
The setup process for Apigee can be either straightforward or complex, while Kong Enterprise generally has a smooth and easy installation process, although some users needed additional support.
Apigee is notable for its robust capabilities, analytics functionality, developer portal, and pre-configured policies. It also offers sandboxing, scalability, and extensive customization options. In contrast, Kong Enterprise excels in plugin-driven network services, authentication and authorization features, and Lua script customization for observability. It also delivers strong performance and a route limiting feature.
Kong Enterprise has room for improvement in various areas such as pricing, automatic data API creation, customization for integration, solutions for east-west communications and Zero Trust architecture, scaling up process, and developer portal with isolated data plans for federated teams.
Apigee is known for its costly setup, including high licensing fees that may discourage certain users. On the other hand, Kong Enterprise's setup cost is influenced by factors like scale, licenses, and usage, but its licensing expenses are deemed reasonable when compared to other products.
Apigee is praised for its exceptional customer service, particularly in terms of technical support during the initial design phase. They go above and beyond by providing an architect to define the architecture. Similarly, Kong Enterprise also offers commendable customer service, with a responsive and helpful technical team.
Comparison Results
Based on user feedback, Apigee and Kong Enterprise have distinct strengths and weaknesses. Apigee is highly regarded for its robust features, analytics function, developer portal, and security measures. However, it requires enhancements in terms of user-friendliness, iPaaS capabilities, pricing, customization options, and documentation. Conversely, Kong Enterprise receives praise for its seamless installation process, plugin-based network services, authentication and authorization features, and customization through Lua script. It could benefit from improvements in pricing, automatic data API creation, customization for integration, scaling up process, and developer portal. Overall, Apigee offers a broader range of capabilities and features, while Kong Enterprise excels in providing a straightforward installation process and plugin support.
"The flexibility allows you to quickly run a cloud-native application architecture."
"The ability to convert from language to language using a single tool."
"I think the most valuable features are the security features. Of course, the user access control is the same as the security. The other very important issue is the sandboxing capability of Apigee."
"The most important feature is the security capabilities and the way it integrates very quickly with other security providers. We have integrated it with Azure and it integrates quite seamlessly."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"Apigee is a great product with good feedback and recommendations from clients."
"The initial setup isn't too complex."
"Apigee is a strong-featured solution. It leads in Gartner Quadrant ratings and it is a full-slated API solution that has the features that an API gateway requires."
"There are a few features that I like about Kong when it comes to authentication and authorization. Specifically, being able to use Kong for role-based access control (RBAC), and then further being able to integrate the RBAC mechanism with our enterprise directory, was very useful."
"The tool's scalability is good...The solution's technical support is good."
"The most valuable features of Kong Enterprise are the out-of-the-box open source easy functionality."
"Protocol transformation is the most valuable feature of Kong Enterprise."
"The route limiting feature is very valuable."
"In our buying companies' perspective, it was easier to use compared to other platforms. The markets were pretty familiar with the solutions."
"It boasts remarkable speed and stability, and these qualities, particularly the gateway's resilience, are standout features for me."
"This is a solid intrusion prevention system that combines a firewall and antivirus in a single solution."
"I would like to see the monitoring, dashboards, and reports improve."
"In terms of the functionalities of a typical API gateway, Apigee is actually doing its job, but when it involves integration with backend applications, which some gateways have, I don't believe it has this functionality. You have to do Java or do some other low-level coding before you are able to do the integration. Apigee has a lot of components, which means that management will be a bit difficult. It probably has ten different components, and all of these components leverage open-source utilities, such as NGINX. When those open-source vendors upgrade their utility, Apigee usually lags behind because they need to do a lot of tests and any required development in their own platform. They need to do rigorous testing to make sure that nothing breaks. Because of that, it takes them a while to upgrade whatever components have been upgraded by the open-source vendor that owns the utility. We've been chasing them for a particular upgrade for well over a year and a half, and they have not done that upgrade. It is creating a security risk for us as an enterprise, but that upgrade has not been done, even though the open-source vendor, the owner of the utility, has upgraded it a long time ago."
"The number one area this solution could be improved is by implementing support. Support is not a part of this solution."
"We are experiencing issues with automation; the production in Apigee is quite time-consuming."
"Google isn't enthusiastic about supporting older versions. Google is now trying to move all of its clients to X within the cloud."
"There should be an integrated continuous integration and continuous deployment approach with Apigee. Currently, for development at a more integrated level, you have set it up yourself."
"The pricing for the product was a bit higher. I also found it challenging to manage sometimes."
"I would like them to add features, such as caching and mediation policies."
"Kong Enterprise fails to provide live tracing of the APIs, which is possible nowadays."
"They could focus more on pricing."
"We are facing issues with the solution's features like reports and traffic analysis."
"The OS upgrades are not as frequent as they should be and they are bulky."
"Kong is meant for north-south communications, so it will be interesting to see what solutions they can come up with in the realms of east-west communications, service-to-service communications, and Zero Trust architecture. I believe that if they can provide for these areas, then they will be able to solve the overall integration and security concerns for microservices architecture in general."
"The developer portal needs to be improved."
"Kong Enterprise can improve the customization to be able to do the integration properly."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
Apigee is ranked 2nd in API Management with 82 reviews while Kong Gateway Enterprise is ranked 6th in API Management with 18 reviews. Apigee is rated 8.2, while Kong Gateway Enterprise is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Apigee writes "Has a robust community and outstanding performance". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Kong Gateway Enterprise writes "Provides role-based access control and can be easily customized with Lua script". Apigee is most compared with Microsoft Azure API Management, IBM API Connect, Amazon API Gateway, WSO2 API Manager and Axway AMPLIFY API Management, whereas Kong Gateway Enterprise is most compared with Microsoft Azure API Management, WSO2 API Manager, MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager, Apache APISIX and Amazon API Gateway. See our Apigee vs. Kong Gateway Enterprise report.
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