Amazon API Gateway vs. Azure API Management vs. frends eiPaaS by HiQ

Experienced a lack of available programming languages while working on a minor project. I had to halt the project and wait for it to be added later. It took ages and had a hit on our productivity. It has a centralized management system which helps and an easy interface which helps to manage multiple tasks in case of large-scale operations and projects.

Incentivized

APIM is useful for the standard scenarios:

1) Securing your back-end APIs - If you have a legacy back-end web service that has a basic authentication scheme, you can add some additional security by placing APIM in front, and requiring subscription keys. Leverage your existing firewall to ensure only your APIM instance can communicate with your back-end API, and you've basically added a layer of protection.

2) Lift and shift - there are always going to be clients that don't want to update their clients to use a newer API; in some cases you can make a newer API look like an older one by implementing some complex policies in APIM. You can also do the opposite, making older APIs look new, such as making an XML back-end accept both JSON and XML.

3) Centralizing your APIs - if you've acquired another company and want to make their API set look as if it's a part of the larger whole, APIM is an easy way to provide a consistent front-end interface for developers.

Incentivized

Hybrid Integrations: Organizations operating with a combination of on-premises and cloud applications will find frends particularly valuable. Its hybrid integration capabilities ensure seamless data flow between these diverse environments. Both for scheduled integrations that are triggered regularly or for event and API-based integrations. High volume of simple integrations: the pricing model is not tied to the number of integrations like in many competing products.

Incentivized

• API Gateway integrates well with AWS Lambda. This allows us to build a web server in the language and framework of our choice, deploy it as a Lambda function, and expose it through API Gateway.
• API Gateway manages API keys. Building rate limiting and request quota features are not trivial (or interesting).
• API Gateway's pricing can be very attractive for services that are accessed infrequently.

Incentivized

• Easy commissioning of APIs.
• Great policies to control access.
• Easy mock services for testing.

Incentivized

• It has been very stable and reliable over time
• The developer tools are simple to use
• It offers out of the box tasks/activities for typical routine tasks

Incentivized

• Client certificates are troublesome when trying to attach them to API GW stages.
• Debugging across several services can be difficult when API GW is integrated with Route 53 and another service like Lambda or EC2/ELB.
• Creating internal/private APIs, particularly with custom domains, can be unintuitive.

Incentivized

• Lack of robustness is a bit of an issue. Several other providers offer more options and capabilities, but then, they are lacking in interface ease.
• As with anything Azure, pricing is really hard to stay on top of. I always find that you really don’t know what you’re paying for until you get the bill. Having an excellent Azure Administrator can help resolve that.
• Integrating with app services outside of Azure can be a challenge, or at least much more challenging than just using Azure App Services.

Incentivized

• The recently renewed user interface has not been as clear as the previous version
• Sometimes the performance or capacity has been at limits with more complex integrations

Incentivized

It is a great product very reliable and stable for connecting various aws services like we connected with lambda function and it is working very well, never faced any issue after the setup. It also saves out lots of money as well as time after we implemented the automatic ec2 server recovery system

Incentivized

We always had a great experience with the AWS support team. They were always on time and very dependable. It was a good partnership while we worked to resolve our issues.

Incentivized

When we tested Azure API Management at the time, it had serious connectivity issues, it was very unstable, and it needed to do a lot using the command line. Comparing with the AWS solution, which was more mature, and the fact that we have services in use on AWS, we ended up choosing to continue using AWS products. This so as not to run the risk of increasing latency in accesses, and of some functionality not working, due to being developed yet.

Incentivized

Azure APIM vs Amazon API Gateway:

1) Azure APIM was a complete package that included a developer portal.

2) We are very Microsoft centric - so the Microsoft product suite aligned very well with our business needs.

3) It was faster and easier to stand up Azure APIM for testing than it was for the Amazon API Gateway.

Incentivized

frends does not have as broad functionality but it's lightweight and easy to use and has enough features for most integration needs. For example the frends API Management exists but it does not offer lot of options. frends might not be the choice for the largest enterprises but for small and mid sized organizations it does everything you will probably need. They have also recently improved their training materials to help new developers get on board.

Incentivized

• ROI is negative, you need either to hire them to work with you or spend days/weeks to figure out issues.
• For some of the projects in the end it is not worth it, it is just a "buzz" to use serverless but not practical.
• Service is easy to set up authorization and it is easy to manage.

Incentivized

• We can always think of positive ROI impact on business
• It helps to easily facilitate the design, deployment, and maintenance of our APIs

• Pricing model suites us very well as it is not tied to number of integrations or users. It's much more economic than most well-known competitors
• The stability of the service is crucial and has served as well. We run hundreds of processes on the platform daily and they are really important for other operations.

Incentivized