Layer7 API Management vs. NGINX

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Layer7 API Management
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Layer7 API Management (formerly CA API Management) from Broadcom company CA Technologies enables creation and management of API.N/A
NGINX
Score 9.0 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
Layer7 API ManagementNGINX
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Layer7 API ManagementNGINX
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Layer7 API ManagementNGINX
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Layer7 API ManagementNGINX
API Management
Comparison of API Management features of Product A and Product B
Layer7 API Management
8.6
1 Ratings
5% above category average
NGINX
-
Ratings
API access control9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Rate limits and usage policies10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
API usage data9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
API user onboarding7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
API versioning8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Usage billing and payments7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
API monitoring and logging10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Application Servers
Comparison of Application Servers features of Product A and Product B
Layer7 API Management
-
Ratings
NGINX
8.2
21 Ratings
3% above category average
IDE support00 Ratings7.310 Ratings
Security management00 Ratings8.018 Ratings
Administration and management00 Ratings8.118 Ratings
Application server performance00 Ratings8.718 Ratings
Installation00 Ratings9.418 Ratings
Open-source standards compliance00 Ratings8.016 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Layer7 API ManagementNGINX
Small Businesses
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
Apache HTTP Server
Apache HTTP Server
Score 8.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat
Score 8.8 out of 10
Enterprises
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Layer7 API ManagementNGINX
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.8
(48 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(1 ratings)
8.1
(4 ratings)
User Testimonials
Layer7 API ManagementNGINX
Likelihood to Recommend
Broadcom
Well suited for publishing internal services with very high security, protecting against attacks, and managing on-demand load. Also good for transform messages and SQL to Rest services. Not appropriate for business logic implementation.
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F5
[NGINX] is very well suited for high performance. I have seen it used on servers with 1k current connections with no issues. Despite seeing it used in many environments I've never seen software developers use it over apache, express, IIS in local dev environments so it may be more difficult to setup. I've also seen it used to load balance again without issues.
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Pros
Broadcom
  • SOAP to Rest / Rest to SOAP web services transformation.
  • Secure authorization and authetication (JWT, OpenIP Connect, OAuth, SAML and more). WASP Features as injection protection.
  • Easy rule writing without coding.
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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
Broadcom
  • It would be nice to have an integration with services like Github for managing projects and versions.
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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
Broadcom
No answers on this topic
F5
Great value for the product
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Usability
Broadcom
The Layer7 API Management is a great solution, but, sometimes the documentation is not clear or has lack of examples.
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F5
Front end proxy and reverse proxy of Nginx is always useful. I always prefer to Nginx in overall usability when you have application server and database or multiple application servers and single database i.e. clustered application. Nginx provides really good features and flexibility which helps the system administrator in case of troubleshooting and also from the administration perspective. Also, Nginx doesn't delay any request because of internal performance issues.
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Support Rating
Broadcom
The support team is good and the response time is reasonable, but (there is always a but), when support inquiries are made by someone experienced, and the question is not trivial, it is boring and takes a long time to get the case escalated to the next level of support.
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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
Broadcom
We evaluated 3 tools and decided on Layer7 API Management because it had the shortest implementation times and fastest learning curve, without losing power of customization and scalability.
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F5
We have used Traffic, Apache, Google Cloud Load Balancing and other managed cloud-based load balancers. When it comes to scale and customization nothing beats Nginx. We selected Nginx over the others because
  • we have a large number of services and we can manage a single Nginx instance for all of them
  • we have high impact services and Nginx never breaks a sweat under load
  • individual services have special considerations and Nginx lets us configure each one uniquely
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Return on Investment
Broadcom
  • Very fast implementation and is easy to learn & use.
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F5
  • Nginx has decreased the burden of web server administration and maintenance, and we are spending less time on server issues than when we were using Apache.
  • Nginx has allowed more people in our company to get involved with configuring things on the web server, so there's no longer a single point of failure ("the Apache guy").
  • Nginx has given us the ability to handle a larger number of requests without scaling up in hardware quite so quickly.
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ScreenShots

NGINX Screenshots

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