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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Azure API Management

    Score9.1 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft's Azure API Management supports creation of API.

    $0.04

    per 10,000 calls

    Azure Front Door

    Score6.7 out of 10
    N/AAzure Front Door is a cloud content delivery network (CDN) service that helps users deliver high performance, scalability, and a secure user experiences for content and applications. It includes a customizable rules engine for advanced routing capabilities. It boasts instant scalability with global HTTP load balancing and failover.

    $35

    per month

    Pricing
    Azure API ManagementAzure Front Door
    Editions & Modules
    Consumption
    0.042 per 10,000 calls
    Lightweight and serverless version of API Management service, billed per execution
    Developer
    $48.04
    per month Non-production use cases and evaluations
    Basic
    $147.17
    per month Entry-level production use cases
    Standard
    $686.72
    per month Medium-volume production use cases
    Premium
    $2,795.17
    per month High-volume or enterprise production use cases
    Isolated
    TBA
    per month Enterprise production use cases requiring high degree of isolation
    Standard
    $35
    per month
    Premium
    $330
    per month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Azure API ManagementAzure Front Door
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details—Base fees (Billed hourly and only for number of hours used)​
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    Azure API ManagementAzure Front Door
    API Management
    Comparison of API Management features of Azure API Management and Azure Front Door
    Feature
    Azure API Management
    8.0
    4 Ratings
    5% below category average
    Azure Front Door
    -
    Ratings
    API access control8.94 Ratings00 Ratings
    Rate limits and usage policies5.44 Ratings00 Ratings
    API usage data8.94 Ratings00 Ratings
    API user onboarding9.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    API versioning8.94 Ratings00 Ratings
    Usage billing and payments5.23 Ratings00 Ratings
    API monitoring and logging9.84 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Azure API ManagementAzure Front Door
    Small Businesses
    Amazon API Gateway
    Score7.2 out of 10
    Amazon CloudFront
    Score8.2 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Amazon API Gateway
    Score7.2 out of 10
    Google Cloud CDN
    Score6.2 out of 10
    Enterprises
    OCI API Management
    Score7.9 out of 10
    Azure CDN
    Score7.6 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Azure API ManagementAzure Front Door
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (4 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Azure API ManagementAzure Front Door
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Microsoft
    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
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    Microsoft
    Azure Front Door is very easy and fast to set up and implement, if you are looking for an easy solution that is secure and reliable, Front Door does all that and can be configured in a few hours. AFD is a CDN with WAF, accordingly, it is well suited for any CDN Scenario, other providers such as Akamai or Verizon have a more expensive base price and are harder to manage/configure, Front Door is simple, easy, and provides what's needed when it comes to Web App Security. If you have multiple data centers, have apps in different regions, or targeting a global audience, AFD is an excellent option to get up to speed quickly. If you are looking for more features and capabilities, or planning a very complex setup, Front Door might be sufficient, but other specialized provides such as Imperva, Cloudflare or Akamai are generally a bit more advanced (but harder to set up and maintain). It always depends on the scenario, but for us, Front Door was an excellent option and served us very well with no issues.
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    Pros
    Microsoft
    • Easy commissioning of APIs.
    • Great policies to control access.
    • Easy mock services for testing.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    • Content delivery across all continents
    • Web & media acceleration
    • Web application firewall
    • Backend geo-availability
    • Reporting & access metrics
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    Microsoft
    • 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
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    Microsoft
    • Better control over origin caching
    • Hierarchal Management UI instead of distributed management
    • TLS & Cipher Control
    • Faster publishing or change updates
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Microsoft
    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
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    Microsoft
    It's generally hard to compare CDNs, each has its features, POP locations, latency, and availability. We have used many other CDNs, including Akamai, Verizon, and Cloudflare. They are all great, but each has its own advantages/disadvantages. From our perspective, all other providers were much harder to configure and maintain and their overall cost was higher than AFD. For example, Verizon was great, performance was excellent, but reporting/logging was not up to our expectations, and we had many issues with its Rules Engine. AFD is great for delivering your web apps globally quickly and easily, the cost is reasonable and comes with very little operational overhead, the logging and reporting capabilities are very good, additionally, its integration with Azure Cloud Services gives it an advantage over other competitors.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Microsoft
    • We can always think of positive ROI impact on business
    • It helps to easily facilitate the design, deployment, and maintenance of our APIs
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • AFD implementation was approx. 80% cheaper than other providers, from initiation to operation.
    • It allowed us to minimize backend resources size/processing power, taking all the load from client requests, cutting tens of thousands of dollars monthly on compute, memory, and network bandwidth.
    • Overall, the ROI of AFD is very quick, it is not an expensive solution, therefore, its ROI goals are easy to calculate and achieve, our overall ROI exceeded 300%.
    Incentivized
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