Microsoft Azure API Management alternatives and competitors

We are a multivendor solution provider and this is one of the products that we implement for our clients. We also use it internally.

The main reason we use this solution is to centralize APIs.

The most valuable features for us are security and centralization.

Before gaining experience with the product, I found that it was not simple to use and things took longer to do than I had anticipated.

The price of this solution should be lowered.

The first time that we implemented a project using Oracle API Management was about three years ago.

This is a stable solution and I don't have any complaints. While we do have problems, what we have found is that the issues are with the APIs themselves. It might be the structure or the connections, but the problem is not with the manager.

I think that as a cloud-based solution, it is easily scalable. I would not say that it is vertically scalable, adding CPUs or memory, but parallelization and horizontal scaling should not be a problem.

Our company has more than 1,000 employees but this solution serves many external users as well. There are probably many thousands of users, in total. There are millions of requests that are made.

The technical support from Oracle is very good. We have had many problems but we have good attention from support in Portugal.

In the past, when we have had very serious problems that could not be solved by the support team in Portugal, we have had to go to other countries. It took a while to resolve but I can't say that the support was not good. It may not have been fast enough, but in the end, the problem was solved and things get done.

We do use other API Management solutions for specific projects but our main solution, which is also used internally, is Oracle.

In the past, when I was a software architect, I gained some experience with Microsoft Azure API Management and other products.

The initial setup was easy. We did have some questions with respect to handing all of the demand, but it was not hard. With the right people, everything is easy.

We have a team of three people who maintain this solution. They handle other products and there is some development, as well. If their only task was support then I think that a team of two people would suffice.

Oracle is not a cheap solution and it is not affordable for all of our clients in Portugal.

We are currently searching for other, more affordable options for future projects.

Oracle can be somewhat complex at times, not with respect to the interface but the mechanisms. However, if you have the right people with the right knowledge then it won't be a problem.

Many people, including engineers, don't know what API management is or what it can be. I think that if Oracle can make this solution simple to set up and simple to use, with many examples of how people can set it up and get things done, then it will be helpful for companies who don't have this type of solution.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We use it along with IdentityServer, as our main API management tool for API exposure to the internet. It's not for internal usage, it's for external use.

We have two main roles regarding WSO2 API Manager. There are the admins, who publish guides and user updates, etc — we employ around four people who perform this role. In terms of users, we have around five to six million users going through it on a monthly basis.

The main feature — the publication of the API, the management section — is great in general.

I think it would be very unfair for me to answer this question because we are running a very outdated system (they might have improved it a lot with their newer versions), but I'm going to try it anyway. I think they could greatly improve the general UX with their solutions because when you manage different components that are meant to work together, it's very difficult. You have to deal with two completely unrelated interfaces.

Perhaps they should include a tool to assist with migrating to Azure.

I have been using WSO2 API Manager for the past four to five years.

Stability-wise, it's actually pretty nice — it's good. I wouldn't say it's very good or excellent, but it's good. It fits the bill.

Scalability-wise, I'd give it a three-star rating out of five — good, but not very good or perfect.

The provisioning has to be done manually. In terms of system-wise configurations, these settings involve a lot of big Java components, so it's not natural. It's not very easy to handle. Again, this is an older version. Perhaps they have already worked on this.

We don't have a contract for dedicated support. We have to deal with internet forums, etc. Officially speaking, there's no support outside of community forums.

The documentation and community support are pretty helpful. There are a lot of questions answered about WSO2 on several forums and message boards, etc. Although it's not dedicated, it's quite relevant.

We're actually in the process of switching to Microsoft Azure API management.

For us, the main benefit of Azure is that it's a managed solution. We have a very restricted theme and not having to deal with the actual configuration of the platform or the underlying operating system and other intrinsic administration tasks is a big win for us. The feature that we use the most and that is most licensed is perhaps the online portal. The certified online portal is the biggest win for us because we can deal with the associated integrations within this new portal, which we can't in the current stack, the on-premises stack.

I wasn't a part of the original project, but I know that the initial setup wasn't easy.

We use the open-source version — the free version.

I wouldn't actually recommend this to anyone. I think that there are paid solutions, such as Azure API Management, which will relieve you from the administrative burden. Personally, I wouldn't recommend this solution at all.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give WSO2 a rating of seven. It's a good tool, but dealing with the on-premises infrastructure is a big headache.

We have hundreds of backend services, APIs, that are running. We want to protect and do analysis with calling externally, internally, and all the statistics we want to track using Apigee. That is the reason we're using the API gateway.

We have seen product improvement. Initially, we didn't use much of the analytics part. Later on, we saw that as an improvement. The rate-limiting quotas are improved as well.

The analytics feature is quite good. We can look at all the statistics, how many requests coming in, how many requests going out, what type of failures are happening, what is the performance of the APIs on those features. The solution helps us to track whenever there is an issue that comes in.

The only concern overall, with the organization, is cost-wise. I believe there is already a plan, within our organization, for moving to Azure API Management. The main reason is one of the features is a cloud-based, pay-per-use. And then, because a lot of our services are moving towards Azure, why have another network of API gateway.

The testing feature is one additional feature that I see is in APIM and it is not here. We can build our own demo web service and test your proxy. That feature has been provided in APIM, not in Apigee.

I've been using the solution almost three years now.

Overall, the solution is good.

The scalability is good. Our load has improved drastically in the last three years. The traffic has been increased, and we still see a good performance overall.

Mostly developers from different teams use it. And there are administrative teams maintaining the overall solution within the organization.

The technical support is good. As a user, we report to the admin team and they work with the consultants if they are not able to resolve the issue.

I was not involved in the initial setup, but I've been told that the onsite setup was a little complex and there were a few restrictions as well.

We see a return on investment. As of now, it's good. But overall, cost wise, it is a little higher, comparative. 

For Apigee, I think licensing is on a monthly basis. The cost increases as the usage increases. It's higher than many competitors.

Azure APIM is the one option we evaluated.

From two or three years back using it to now, it's quite fast. The performance side is good.

It's a user-friendly product, it is. You can customize all you want, and the policies and the features they have are quite easy to use. Anyone can use it, drag and drop, and it supports a lot of other languages like JavaScript, non-JS, and all. 

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.