Amazon API Gateway vs. Vonage Communications APIs

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

While there are likely a variety of scenarios that would work well with Vonage [Communications APIs (formerly Nexmo)], implementations that need transactional message and response actions are a great fit. Our experience with transactional messaging has been really good and we are continuing to look at opportunities to expand our usage of this part of their service.

• 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

• I like the delivery speed, it's very instantaneous. As soon as the delivery status changes on the website, the message gets delivered. The rates are also cheap and affordable.
• The accuracy of the services and the non-stop supportive team.
• Simple API, easy to integrate with existing notification functionality in your Laravel apps.
• Ease of implementation. We needed less than one month to go live.

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

• Written documentation and discovery could be a lot better.

The overall usability of Vonage [Communications APIs (formerly Nexmo)] system for message delivery is sufficient for our implementation. Some improvements and additional reporting options in the account administration interface would increase our utilization of the post-delivery data further in order to provide further value-added features for our clients.

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

The product feels a bit like a black box since it's built to be an off-the-shelf solution so sometimes it feels like the only way to really understand it is to talk to an engineer directly as the documentation is so-so.

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

Nexmo is the best platform in the industry for sure. We don't use all the features that the API provides but we are really satisfied with the ones we use. We are sure this is the best solution in the market if you need to solve the communication in real time with your customers. When we have to build a new website we are going to support the solution with Nexmo.

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

• Allowed us to go to market faster (positive).
• Greatly limits our claim to quality as the ceiling on video quality is lower than other platforms (negative).