Microsoft's Azure API Management supports creation of API.
$0.04
per 10,000 calls
WSO2 API Manager
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
WSO2 API Manager makes it possible for developers to both develop and manage APIs of different types. Unlike solutions which focus only on managing API proxies, WSO2 API Manager provides tools to develop APIs by integrating different systems as well. It supports a variety of API types from REST, SOAP, GraphQL, WebSockets, WebHooks, SSEs and gRPC APIs with specialized policies and governance for each different type. Being fully open source, its architecture and extensibility…
$0
per month
Pricing
Azure API Management
WSO2 API Manager
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
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.
It's free! No argument can win a fight with that! And it's the only reason I gave it a 5. If you have no money to spend, and a simple environment you'll have a nice product. But free does come with a price. After 5 years we're still struggling with ports, and analytics (it just won't work without any errors caused by some configuration somewhere). An API Manager should work out of the box. The only configuration expertise that any developer wants to invest in, is the configuration of API's. Not the product itself... Anyone who've seen the training material, just for installing this thing will agree that this is not the way to go. Of all the API Managers out there (we've tried 4), WSO2 is the only one were you need to know how this dragon of a java application works internally. Did I already mention the humongous amount of config files?
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.
Providing better capabilities comparing the overall API lifecycle management, especially the availability of API Integration layer and a strong identity layer of their own which provides an end-to-end API ecosystem that would be advantageous in terms of a large software development initiative.
We've moved away from legacy SOAP services where nobody knew what services was used by who. WSO2 eliminated at least 90% of time spend on any service.
Creating API's (or actually creating the API Management layer...) is so simple that new developers can get away with it in no time. Again, real time gainer.
Since creating API's is so simple, developers are very fast in adopting a kind of "Domain thinking". In comparison with Azure API Manager: Azure does not demand knowledge of "how" the product works, but it's definitely more difficult to get an API up and running in Azure. And for some reason, azure does not promote clean domain driven architecture. Domain Driven architecture is the greatest time saver strategy possible. And WSO2 fits nicely in there.
