Layer7 API Management and Apigee compete in the API management tools category. Both products excel in different areas, with Layer7 offering superior security features and protocol conversion, while Apigee provides robust analytics and integration capabilities.
Features: Layer7 API Management prioritizes security with advanced features like OAuth and access control and offers proficient REST-to-SOAP conversions and protocol translation, catering to enterprises with varied backend systems. Apigee, integrated with Google, shines with its analytics feature and developer portal, enhancing insights and engagement for developers. Apigee's strong integration abilities are bolstered by Google's ecosystem, providing advanced analytics via accessible APIs.
Room for Improvement: Layer7 needs enhancements in its developer portal's flexibility and the user interface for API documentation. It also requires improved integration and better protocol support. Apigee, while rich in features, faces challenges with its complex setup and higher pricing. Its user interface could be made more intuitive, and technical documentation requires refinement.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Layer7 provides deployment flexibility with options for on-premises, public cloud, and hybrid cloud models, catering to varied enterprise needs. Customer service is generally responsive, though some inconsistencies exist. Apigee's deployment effectiveness varies, with cloud models benefiting from Google's infrastructure. However, its support service is noted as expensive, despite Google's backing.
Pricing and ROI: Layer7 API Management is deemed a high-value option with competitive pricing relative to Apigee, although costs might be prohibitive for smaller enterprises. Apigee is generally costlier and presents pricing complexities for large operations. While Layer7's ROI is linked with its security features, Apigee's ROI is driven by scalability and comprehensive integration capabilities that meet large-scale business demands.
They are responsive and provide assistance even during production issues.
In the past two years, I have been experiencing less assistance.
The customer service and support are cooperative and effective in providing insights and solutions during challenges.
Technical support is excellent, and I would rate them as ten.
Adding extra Cassandra databases is complex.
All nodes communicate with one primary database, affecting connections and causing crashes under high load.
Apigee is stable, and we have had the system running on Apigee servers for more than four years without any stability issues.
Without rebooting for ninety to one hundred eighty days, cache builds up in Linux boxes, causing memory utilization issues.
Analytics is one of the areas needing enhancement, specifically more visibility and control over traffic to improve capacity management and high availability.
Apigee only allows validation of transactions up to a four-hour period, which requires manual hovering over the date and time.
Apigee should also incorporate these capabilities, especially in the on-premises version.
Broadcom's push for upgrades from version nine to ten, ten to 10.3, and onwards to twelve needs improvement in migration processes, especially with service dependencies.
Apigee's product cost is quite high compared to other products.
Apigee is high-priced, suitable for large enterprises where the benefit aligns with the cost.
Apigee is perceived as slightly costly compared to other tools in the market.
Seeing other products makes the tool's pricing seem high.
It provides all the necessary capabilities for current technologies, enabling communication and translation between protocols, along with supporting stringent security features.
Apigee's analytics capabilities aid in monitoring and optimizing APIs, which are also beneficial for our operations.
We rely on Elasticsearch to monitor traffic, which provides high visibility and control and surpasses Apigee in certain features.
The flexibility to develop APIs for various platforms, from front-end applications to ATM machines, is valuable.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Apigee | 8.3% |
| Layer7 API Management | 2.2% |
| Other | 89.5% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 20 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 9 |
| Large Enterprise | 65 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 23 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 13 |
| Large Enterprise | 84 |
Apigee is a platform for developing and managing APIs. Apigee offers an interface for your core services by wrapping them with a proxy layer which is then accessed by other developers. With Apigee, you can design and build APIs and then securely share their services and data without exposing any code.
Because app developers make HTTP requests to an API proxy rather than directly to your services, your services are separated from the developers. All the developer needs to know is the URL of the API proxy endpoint, necessary query parameters, authorization credentials (if they exist), and the response data format.
The API proxy isolates the app developer from your backend service. Therefore, you are free to change the service implementation if the public API remains consistent. By maintaining a consistent frontend API, existing client apps will continue to work regardless of changes on the backend.
Key capabilities of the Apigee API management platform include:
Reviews from Real Users:
Apigee stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its rich developer portal, its advanced analytics, and its central monitoring system.
Carlos R., a software architect at Caja Los Andes writes, “The central monitoring feature is the most valuable. It also provides security for the APIs and high availability for our use cases. Apigee is the best product in the industry in comparison to other API management solutions. It helps in fast development, which is a top point. It also supports a lot of industry standards and has excellent documentation.”
An associate vice president at a tech services company notes, “The analytics function and the developer portal are the two valuable features of Apigee. The analytics part is very good, and the developer portal is quite rich in features. The authentication mechanisms are quite easily built into Apigee, which is something that most of the other products have also now started supporting.”
Layer7 API Management is a comprehensive solution that enables organizations to securely expose, manage, and monetize their APIs.
It provides features such as API gateway, developer portal, analytics, and security to ensure seamless integration and control over API traffic.
With Layer7 API Management, businesses can streamline their API operations and drive innovation.
We monitor all API Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
