Microsoft Azure API Management Reviews

I am using Microsoft Azure API Management to connect external systems.

The solution has overall high performance.

Microsoft Azure API Management could improve by having better integration with third-party solutions.

In an upcoming release, there should be more focus on API lifecycle management, such as MuleSoft provides and the API gateway is not comprehensive enough, we need to put a lot of extra effort doing manual work. 

I have been using Microsoft Azure API Management for half a year.

The solution is stable.

For what we have been using the solution for it has been scalable.

Our company is a medium-size using this solution.

We have found some configuration that is not supported by the solution yet. There is room for improvement in their support.

I would rate the technical support of Microsoft Azure API Management a four out of five.

The setup and configuration are very quick.

The price of the solution is reasonable compared to others. 

We are still looking for a better API-optimized solution.

I would recommend this solution for some small and medium-sized projects, as it is quite easy and effective to start with. I am not sure if it is suited for large companies that have heavily loaded APIs which the solution might not be able to support.

I rate Microsoft Azure API Management an eight out of ten.

We are publishing microservices using API management. We have created various packages and policies that we are applying over there. We have also created a portal for developers so that they can see what we are doing.

The most valuable feature is the developer portal, which has source code examples in various programming languages to help developers learn the API.

It is possible to combine APIs and make a new product, which is a very good feature.

It is very user-friendly and easy to use. 

This solution is only available as a cloud-based deployment and it would be very helpful to have an on-premises version. This is driven by the fact that some of our clients have specific requirements and they do not want to be on the cloud.

I would like to have an administrator's option that shows me API usage and can generate bills that I can send to my customers. Currently, our customers can see the usage but not how much it is going to cost. For example, assume that you get 100 calls for free and then 100 more free each month, but after than, each call costs twenty cents or one cent, whatever the price is. The administrator can generate reports when the bills are available and can charge them to the customer. This could be done with a monetization module, which would be better than the manual calculations that we have to do now.

I have been using Azure API Management for almost one year.

I think that this is a stable solution.

Microsoft handles the scalability so you don't need to worry about it.

Microsoft's technical support is okay. On a scale from one to ten, I would rate them an eight.

Your first response will be fast but after that, it will be slow. Then, the technician might just say that they are not the right contact. From opening the ticket until final closure will take time. Generally, it takes the experts some time to comment. Unfortunately, everywhere is like that.

We did not use another API management solution prior to this one. We were developing applications and then moved into APIs.

The initial setup is very simple. Within a few days, one can understand completely how to use it. It does not require deployment because it is available on the cloud and everything is ready. In fact, there is no installation at all.

It will take some time to onboard your API and define your policies, such as those for security. It should take about ten minutes to get up and running.

We considered other options; however, our client is mainly a Microsoft shop and they were already using Azure for various things. As such, we did not fully evaluate other options. 

This is absolutely a solution that I would recommend for others.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

• API gateway features
• AD integration
• Access management capabilities
• Usage plans
• Quotas for APIs, etc.

It is a simple and effective way to enable micro-services architecture. The Standard Tier is cost effective.

• An IaaS option is needed. The SaaS option limited our requirement, as we wanted more control on our data, and integration with our virtual LAN. Integration with our VLAN was possible only with the premium version and expensive gateway controllers.
• PCI compliance

I evaluated it for one month.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is 7/10.

I did not previously use a different solution. However, I evaluated other API gateways and shortlisted ForgeRock - OpenAM/OpenIG, because it has an IaaS option.

Initial setup was fairly straightforward; excellent documentation.

The Standard Tier is cost effective.

Before choosing this product, I evaluated NGINX, Apigee, and ForgeRock (OpenAM/OpenIG).

Code impact: Required services to import Swagger library.

Being SaaS, if you are running services on IaaS, communication between APIM and your services will be through the public internet (if that’s a cause of concern).

APIM was available in classic mode only (as of April 2016). Our infrastructure was ARM. Connectivity was complex and expensive.

We use Microsoft Azure API Management with a custom software solution.

I like the stability and the ease of use.

The licensing fees should be cheaper.

I have been using Microsoft Azure API Management for three years.

Microsoft Azure API Management is a stable product.

It is a scalable solution. We have 60 users in our organization who use this solution.

Technical support is good.

I knew MuleSoft Anypoint. I worked with it for two years.

It was better for the enterprise architecture to use Microsoft Azure API Management.

Microsoft Azure API Management is easy to install.

We have a team of four engineers and managers to maintain this solution.

The licensing fees are expensive. I would like it to be cheaper.

Our licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis.

I would recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it.

I would rate Microsoft Azure API Management an eight out of ten.

We have two approaches to how we use the solution. We own the managed services and the other we have customers take the subscription and we manage it. 

From my understanding, there are some constraints around governance and service-to-service intercommunication managing priorities and our own governance. Examples include, how you manage all your clusters, the entire service communication, and having more tolerant experts.

I have been using the solution for approximately one year.

The technical support has not been the greatest. Microsoft has been outsourcing its support services and we have quite a few challenges in terms of technical support. We rarely asked them for anything and try to find the solution ourselves. This has been our most recent experience. However, there are certain advantages as well. Now you have a large internet resource pool to support Azure. This balances the support out, but otherwise, if you are looking for very specific support, there will be some challenges for your teams.

The initial setup is not that complex, but there are certain challenges.

We are limited to what choice of solution we can purchase. There are multiple aspects here. If it is a choice that we have to make, then we do it based on the requirement or recommendations, such as GCP, AWS, or Azure platform. However, given the present circumstances, the customer base that I am supporting at the moment is all Microsoft shop customers. Their inclination is always towards Microsoft-based solutions. That is where it has left us with no choice, but to go with Azure. While we still recommend this solution in some cases, for instance, analytics and where we need the big data solutions. We have been pushing for a GCP and in some cases to have AWS as well. For now Azure is the platform and this has been the journey that has left us with no choice but to go with it. Based on the resources that we are leveraging, the price we are paying to use this solution is slightly higher than other competitors. In a few cases, it has its own advantage in some resources. 

I have evaluated GCP and AWS.

I would advise those wanting to implement this solution that they can use this solution if it fits their deployment criteria. However, there are better options available.

I rate Microsoft Azure API Management a seven out of ten.

The Azure Active Directory Synchronization is quite good.

They should improve the inbuilt policies that they have and that should properly create a deployment architecture as well.

We have been using Azure for about a year. 

It is stable.

It is scalable. 

The price could be lower.

At the end of the day, all the products are one and the same, just that some of them have more features than others. That's all.

I would rate Azure a seven out of ten. Not a ten because I would like for them to improve on the number of policies it has inbuilt and for it to have better deployment architecture.

• Monitoring: It gives us a detailed overview of how clients are using the API and it allows us to see the consumption trends in real-time.
• Policies: It allows us to control and enrich the API behavior without the need to make code changes
• The documentation and configuration of APIs.

Internally, we use this product to give our employees a catalog of all the APIs that we implemented over the years. They get detailed documentation on how to use those APIs and can develop their own solutions on top.

Security could be improved.

I have used this solution for a year.

There were no stability issues.

There were no scalability issues.

I would give the technical support team a rating of eight out of 10 .

The setup was straightforward, setting up a basic API management portal is only a few clicks in the Azure Portal. Once it is set up, the APIs can directly be added by just importing the Swagger file.

The developer and standard pricing tiers of Azure API Management are very competitive compared to other products. If a customer wants to expose their internal APIs to the Azure API Management Portal, then they would require a VPN connection which requires the Premium Pricing tier. This can be expensive and we currently recommend our customers to not use a VPN connection, i.e., if they don’t need additional Premium features; and we suggest they expose their APIs publicly through other technologies such as the relay services.

Learn how policies work since this is where the real added value of Azure API Management is.

The ability to manage user access to given API operations.

• Visibility on user usage analytics
• Set policies across API operations, which control the type of access (CORS, JSONP)
• The ability to piece together an array of services into one proxied service. Where I can create consistency to both usage and documentation

We were securely able to offer services to external third parties to securely consume within a relatively short amount of time.

• Versioning of API operations (which I have heard is in the pipeline)

• Easy exporting of configurations from the Administrator portal.

I've used it for around six months or so.

I did follow the prescribed steps to export our Test subscription setup to import into a production subscription environment, but I was unable to achieve the export within the short amount of time I had to achieve it. So to get around the issue, I just manually configured it in the production environment as part of the release.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Didn't use them.

10/10, as our Microsoft account manager arranged direct contact with members of the API Management Team.

No previous solution used.

Pretty easy. The online documentation is very thorough.

In-house implementation.

The product probably saved us at least two to four sprints worth of extra work, which would not have achieved the quality, which this PAS provides us, out of the box.

Nothing. Day to Day costs are very minimal, tens of dollars a month or so depending on peaks of usage.

No. I was evaluating Azure PAS offerings and producing proof of concept solutions just before the project kicked off.

Definitely check it out. The documentation is plentiful and it is pretty easy to setup and have something going within an hour or so.