Apigee vs Microsoft Azure API Management vs MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager comparison

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:

• Security: Protect APIs, messages, and backends with configurable policies such as OAuth, API key verification, XML/JSON threat protection, and access control.
  
  
• API gateway: Secure and mediate the traffic between clients and backends, and between a company’s APIs and the developers who use the APIs.
  
  
• Developer portal: Attract and engage application developers, enabling them to discover, explore, purchase, and test APIs and register to access and use the APIs.
  
  
• API console: The console helps developers learn and work with APIs.
  
  
• API lifecycle management: Manage the process of designing, developing, publishing, deploying, and versioning APIs.
  
  
• Automated documentation: Automate the development of API documentation and software development kits.
  
  
• Machine learning: Utilize machine learning and analytics to generate actionable insights and reports.
  

• API monitoring: Apigee offers monitoring tools for API troubleshooting, security, and optimization.

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.”

Microsoft Azure API Management is a reliable and scalable way to publish, consume, and manage APIs running on an Microsoft Azure platform. Azure API Management provides all essential tools required for end-to-end management of APIs. It ensures optimal performance of the APIs by tracking and enforcing usage and authentication.

Microsoft Azure API Management is primarily used to provide a central interface to create, provision, and manage APIs for web and cloud applications and services. Today's innovative enterprises are adopting API architectures to accelerate growth. With Microsoft Azure API Management, businesses can streamline their work across hybrid and multi cloud environments with a unified place to manage all their APIs.

Microsoft Azure API Management Features

Microsoft Azure API Management has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

• Manage APIs across clouds and on premises: Optimize API traffic flow by deploying API gateways side by side with the APIs hosted in Azure, other clouds, and on premises. Meet security and compliance requirements with a unified management experience and full visibility across all APIs.
  
• Customized usage limits: By applying authentication, authorization, and usage limits, you can protect your resources by controlling how data and services are exposed to employees, partners, and customers.
  
• API-first approaches: Accelerate your business by building apps faster and delivering immediate value to customers through API-first approaches. This helps you decouple front- and back-end teams through API mocking, API revisions and versioning, and automated API documentation.
  
• Customizable developer portal: Improve API discoverability by creating a customizable developer portal for all your APIs. This enables you to simply manage and share APIs with internal teams, external partners, and customers.
  
• Facades for back-end services: Transform your existing services and automatically turn legacy web services into modern REST-based APIs using facades.
• Security for your API’s: Keep all your APIs behind a single static IP or domain, and help protect them with tokens, keys, and IP filtering.

Microsoft Azure API Management Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Microsoft Azure API Management. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

• Monitor the health of APIs, configure throttling, identify errors, and rate limits.
  
• Enforce flexible and fine-grained quotas and rate limits. Modify the shape and behavior of your APIs using policies. Improve latency and scale your APIs with response caching.
  
• Connect on-premises APIs to cloud services by creating a façade that lets you safely integrate.
  
• Create and manage user roles and define end-to-end API usage policies.
  
• Consolidate and manage thousands of APIs across multiple platforms in a central interface.

Reviews from Real Users

Microsoft Azure API Management stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Some of these include its DevOps integration, its easy setup, and its dynamic pricing. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

Cecil S., a Software Engineer, writes of the solution, “The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure API Management is the developer portal because it's very quick and easy to get something published."

Dmitri E., an Integration Architect at MiBanco, notes, “In particular, in API Management, used as front-end APIs, it's easy to manage. We use Microsoft due to the stability of the company. It is easy to set up. The solution is scalable. It is stable as a product as well.”

Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager is the portion of the Anypoint Platform that is used for the designing, building, managing, and publishing of APIs. Anypoint Platform uses Mule as its core runtime engine.

Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager is an extremely versatile solution. It offers users the ability to deploy their APIs in a number of different settings. You can use API Manager on a public cloud, a private cloud, or a hybrid. Additionally, users can use the solution to manage their deployments with ease. A few clicks are all you need to alter your deployment.

Benefits of Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager

Some of the benefits of using Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager include:

• The ability to deploy APIs and integrations in the location of your choice. Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager enables users to deploy APIs on their own servers or on the cloud via Mulesoft’s cloud service. It also allows users to change the deployment location with only a few clicks.

• The ability to automatically protect your APIs with cutting-edge security software and protocols. Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager’s security software can automatically detect attacks against your APIs. This triggers an escalation of security protocols that push the attack to the perimeter of the system. The solution then proceeds to seal up any vulnerabilities. Mulesoft uses machine learning in order to adapt to any new threat that emerges.

Reviews from Real Users

Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager is a highly effective piece of software whose purpose is to enable users to design, build, manage, and publish APIs. It stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are the ease with which users can connect it to their applications and the high level of value that its support offers. It provides users with the ability to easily connect this solution with whatever program they need to join it with. Users can create connections without having to write code. It offers different types of support which ensure that users have a high level of understanding about the product and how to use it.

PeerSpot user Tolulope A., a technical lead specializing in integration and middleware at a financial services firm, notes the ease with which users can connect Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager to their applications. He writes, “One good thing about MuleSoft is that they have a lot of connectors to those back-end applications. We don't really need to write code to be able to connect to a database or to connect with SAP. You just need credentials and the connectivity details. Most of the development of what we do is just drag and drop. They're able to connect with applications using standard connectors that are provided by ESB, by MuleSoft.”

The CEO & Co-Founder at a computer retailer notes the value of Mulesoft’s supporting documentation. They write, “The documentation is great; it is always up-to-date and well-presented. If any details are missing, then there is a blog available that contains a lot of details. There are also channels on YouTube to help you better understand the solution and what some of the processes look like.”