We compared Microsoft Azure API Management and Kong Enterprise based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
Microsoft Azure API Management stands out for its customer service and variety of pricing options, providing flexibility and value for money. Meanwhile, Kong Enterprise excels in API management capabilities and advanced security features, with praised scalability and reliability. Users highlight the need for improvements in Azure's user interface and Kong's scaling capabilities.
Features: Microsoft Azure API Management is valued for its user-friendly interface, seamless integration, and excellent security measures. On the other hand, Kong Enterprise is praised for its exceptional API management capabilities, advanced security features, and comprehensive documentation.
Pricing and ROI: When comparing the setup cost of Microsoft Azure API Management and Kong Enterprise, user feedback shows that Azure API Management offers reasonable setup costs with a streamlined onboarding process. On the other hand, Kong Enterprise users have provided insights into the costs and ease of setup but no specific information on the setup cost itself., Microsoft Azure API Management has been praised for its positive ROI, with increased efficiency, scalability, cost savings, and improved API performance. Kong Enterprise also delivers favorable ROI, enhancing business outcomes, revenue growth, efficiency, scalability, cost savings, and customer experiences.
Room for Improvement: The Microsoft Azure API Management product could benefit from improvements in user experience, documentation, support, and performance. In contrast, Kong Enterprise could enhance its scaling capabilities, user interface, documentation, error handling, and performance optimization.
Deployment and customer support: The reviews of Microsoft Azure API Management indicate varying durations for deployment and setup, ranging from one week to three months. In contrast, the reviews for Kong Enterprise also show varied durations, with some users taking a week for deployment and setup, while others taking three months. The context in which these terms are used needs to be carefully evaluated for accurate evaluation., Microsoft Azure API Management has received positive feedback for its exceptional customer service, praised for its prompt and effective assistance. Users appreciate the knowledgeable and friendly support team. Kong Enterprise's customer service is highly praised too, with prompt and effective assistance and a friendly and knowledgeable support team.
The summary above is based on 50 interviews we conducted recently with Microsoft Azure API Management and Kong Enterprise users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"The most valuable features of Kong Enterprise are the out-of-the-box open source easy functionality."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it seamlessly supports a vast number of tools."
"It boasts remarkable speed and stability, and these qualities, particularly the gateway's resilience, are standout features for me."
"I like everything about it. It provides the security we need."
"In our buying companies' perspective, it was easier to use compared to other platforms. The markets were pretty familiar with the solutions."
"We use the solution for load-balancing, caching, and rate-limiting APIs."
"This is a solid intrusion prevention system that combines a firewall and antivirus in a single solution."
"Protocol transformation is the most valuable feature of Kong Enterprise."
"The product gives API gateway-related features, like throttling, which are easy to use and low-code/no-code."
"Without a doubt, it has a very robust, strong marketplace where we can directly integrate with existing APIs and begin working on those."
"Easy to integrate API management platform. It is a stable and scalable solution."
"The solution has overall high performance."
"API Management does not take long to deploy."
"It’s easy to set up."
"The mediation and translation from SOAP to REST technology makes it possible to open up legacy systems that couldn't be opened before."
"The tool's most valuable feature is the integration of CI/CD with the API gateway."
"The OS upgrades are not as frequent as they should be and they are bulky."
"Because it is open-source, it should be less expensive than others."
"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 technical support team's response time needs to be improved."
"Kong Enterprise needs to improve its pricing, which starts at hundreds of thousands of dollars. Pricing should be based on API usage rather than monthly. It should improve its documentation as well."
"We are facing issues with the solution's features like reports and traffic analysis."
"Kong Enterprise can improve the customization to be able to do the integration properly."
"It becomes difficult if you try to scale it up to multiple clusters."
"The API gateway can be very complex."
"API Management's price could be lower."
"They're trying to implement versioning and trying to be able to manage different versions of your API all at the same time, but they're not doing that just quite right yet."
"If I compare this solution to others I have used in other phases of my life, having APIM being an Azure resource, it is easy to configure and deploy. However, this conversely reduced the flexibility. The difficulty is how do we configure it in a manner that a larger enterprise would probably want it to be. This creates a bit more complexity, working around the constraints of the resource itself. If comparing it to other solutions, it is more of a legacy design with an older approach. The various level components are still around resembling an on-premise type of design similar to other solutions, such as Apigee or Mulesoft. They are still predominantly carrying some legacy design. Which might be suited for organizations where they have a more complex network layout. APIM is easy to deploy, but on the other side of that, it is constrained to how Azure has designed it to be."
"Support for GraphQL could be better."
"Maybe the customization could be a bit better."
"The integration with other API gateways is where they might try to improve."
"In the API you need to delete the suffix. It is annoying that you need to have a suffix. We can add a suffix at the API level, not at the operation level, and that could be improved on."
More Microsoft Azure API Management Pricing and Cost Advice →
Kong Gateway Enterprise is ranked 6th in API Management with 18 reviews while Microsoft Azure API Management is ranked 1st in API Management with 68 reviews. Kong Gateway Enterprise is rated 7.8, while Microsoft Azure API Management is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Kong Gateway Enterprise writes "Provides role-based access control and can be easily customized with Lua script". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Azure API Management writes "Efficiently manages and monetizes API ". Kong Gateway Enterprise is most compared with WSO2 API Manager, Apigee, MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager, Apache APISIX and Amazon API Gateway, whereas Microsoft Azure API Management is most compared with Amazon API Gateway, Apigee, MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager, IBM API Connect and WSO2 API Manager. See our Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. Microsoft Azure API Management report.
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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.
