Blackbird API Development vs. NGINX

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Blackbird API Development
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
Ambassador offers a suite of products designed to deliver API developer experiences that fuel innovation. Blackbird API Development Platform enables developers to spec, mock, write boilerplate code, and debug APIs faster.
$10
per month (for a single user and 5 concurrent instances)
NGINX
Score 9.1 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
NGINX, a business unit of F5 Networks, powers over 65% of the world's busiest websites and web applications. NGINX started out as an open source web server and reverse proxy, built to be faster and more efficient than Apache. Over the years, NGINX has built a suite of infrastructure software products o tackle some of the biggest challenges in managing high-transaction applications. NGINX offers a suite of products to form the core of what organizations need to create…N/A
Pricing
Blackbird API DevelopmentNGINX
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Blackbird API DevelopmentNGINX
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Blackbird API DevelopmentNGINX
Features
Blackbird API DevelopmentNGINX
Application Servers
Comparison of Application Servers features of Product A and Product B
Blackbird API Development
-
Ratings
NGINX
8.8
43 Ratings
10% above category average
IDE support00 Ratings8.127 Ratings
Security management00 Ratings8.638 Ratings
Administration and management00 Ratings8.939 Ratings
Application server performance00 Ratings9.139 Ratings
Installation00 Ratings9.140 Ratings
Open-source standards compliance00 Ratings9.037 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Blackbird API DevelopmentNGINX
Small Businesses
Amazon API Gateway
Amazon API Gateway
Score 7.4 out of 10
Apache HTTP Server
Apache HTTP Server
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Postman
Postman
Score 8.7 out of 10
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat
Score 7.9 out of 10
Enterprises
Postman
Postman
Score 8.7 out of 10
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat
Score 7.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Blackbird API DevelopmentNGINX
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.3
(72 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.3
(25 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(5 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Blackbird API DevelopmentNGINX
Likelihood to Recommend
Datawire, Inc., dba Ambassador
Ambassador is really well suited for scenarios were you need to give power and freedom to your developers so they can take advantage of the self-service approach. One of the few scenarios I can not recommend using Ambassador is in the case you are planning to not using Kubernetes as it is a solution designed to work specifically on that platform
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F5
Nginx is well-suited for any web server scenarios, such as web applications, backend or reverse proxy for both application and HTTP requests, and distribution. It is less appropriate for Windows-based applications that run directly on a Windows Server host. In any case, it is very easy to manage, through separate conf files for each application or site you want to host with it.
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Pros
Datawire, Inc., dba Ambassador
  • Simple syntax
  • Easy to understand
  • Easy to install
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F5
  • Very low memory usage. Can handle many more connections than alternatives (like Apache HTTPD) due to low overhead. (event-based architecture).
  • Great at serving static content.
  • Scales very well. Easy to host multiple Nginx servers to promote high availability.
  • Open-Source (no cost)!
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Cons
Datawire, Inc., dba Ambassador
  • Documentation is not updated
  • Implementing external authentication doesn't always work as described in the documentation
  • The Administration console is limited
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F5
  • Customer support can be strangely condescending, perhaps it's a language issue?
  • I find it a little weird how the release versions used for Nginx+ aren't the same as for open source version. It can be very confusing to determine the cross-compatibility of modules, etc., because of this.
  • It seems like some (most?) modules on their own site are ancient and no longer supported, so their documentation in this area needs work.
  • It's difficult to navigate between nginx.com commercial site and customer support. They need to be integrated together.
  • I'd love to see more work done on nginx+ monitoring without requiring logging every request. I understand that many statistics can only be derived from logs, but plenty should work without that. Logging is not an option in many environments.
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Likelihood to Renew
Datawire, Inc., dba Ambassador
No answers on this topic
F5
Great value for the product
Read full review
Usability
Datawire, Inc., dba Ambassador
It's great! it's amazingly simple to use and the best part is the self-service approach. I also like how easy it is to add a new route to a endpoint with the mappings definition.
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F5
This tool is really easy to use and configure. Consumes very less system resources. It is highly modular and configurable. You can easily use it with other tools like certbot for SSLs. You can configure basic security with configuration and headers
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Support Rating
Datawire, Inc., dba Ambassador
Overall the support has been great and quick to answer the requests I've submitted in the past. I was originally using the community/open source version and I can't say it was the best experience I had, it wasn't terrible but it wasn't great. I believe the biggest issue was that they refer to the documentation a lot but the documentation isn't updated regularly so I feel it's lagging behind the most recent versions.
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F5
Community support is great, and they've also had a presence at conferences. Overall, there is no shortage of documentation and community support. We're currently using it to serve up some WordPress sites, and configuring NGINX for this purpose is well documented.
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Alternatives Considered
Datawire, Inc., dba Ambassador
They both offer about the same in terms of end goal and purpose of use and scenarios. However, Ambassador does way better in terms of simplifying the syntax and makes offer a little bit more of control by adding the concepts of hosts, mappings while staying away from a hard to read single file configuration.
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F5
I have found that [NGINX] seems to perform better throughout the years with less issues although I've used Apache more. I would definitely recommend [NGINX] for any high volume site and I've seen this to usually be the case from most provided web hosts who will pick [NGINX] over alternatives
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Return on Investment
Datawire, Inc., dba Ambassador
  • Reduced downtime by redirecting traffic between DC.
  • Reduced engineering time, don't have to dedicate 1 person to manage it.
  • Increased training costs in the short term.
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F5
  • By using Nginx, we can host multiple web services on a single server, keeping our infrastructure costs lower.
  • Nginx maintains our HTTPS connections, allowing us to keep our promise to our customers that their data is safe in transit.
  • Due to Nginx's extremely low failure rate, our web addresses always return something meaningful, even when individual services go down. In sense, this means we are "always online" and allows us to maintain brand and support our customers even in the face of catastrophe.
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ScreenShots

NGINX Screenshots

Screenshot of Overview of the NGINX Application PlatformScreenshot of NGINX Controller - MonitoringScreenshot of NGINX Controller - Configuration