API management is the practice of managing the full lifecycle of your APIs. This includes the creation, acquisition, deployment, security, monetization, and governance of APIs. With good API management practices in place, your developers should be saving lots of time working with APIs and be able to deploy APIs efficiently and securely.
There are dozens of reputable API management tools out there, and there is some commonality in the problems they tackle, including:
Ultimately, an API management platform allows your developers to manage the full lifecycle of your APIs in a unified platform.
Sometimes those looking for an API management solution may actually be content with an API gateway, and vice versa. An API gateway provides the following benefits:
Which are the API management vendors usually worth including in your vendor evaluations? We've compiled the list below.
Choosing the API management vendor can save your API development team considerable time and ensure proper lifecycle management for your APIs.
Many of these vendors offer similar functionality, but at times there can be hidden “gotchas” that only show themselves at scale. What's more, is that there is a lot overlap between API gateways and API management platforms. In our comparisons listed below, we cover the pros, the cons and the gotchas that could impact your decision on the right vendor for your API strategy.
Our most popular comparison pages are:
Apigee is best-in-class, but very expensive to use. Would you be better working with a vendor with more affordable kind of pricing structure, like WSO2? API management platform (APIM) pricing will largely depend on the following factors:
In 2018, Google Cloud announced the release of its API management platform that allows for designing, securing, and scaling APIs. This crucial milestone marked the tenth birthday of the service, thus the name Apigee X.
With Apigee, Google cloud has integrated a more profound integration to its AI, networking services, and security. The primary goal for this move is digital excellence. According to the blog post that followed its release, the Apigee X offers a new approach for applying Cloud Armor web app firewall with enhanced API security. It also has a Cloud Identity and Access Management feature that allows Apigee Platform authentication and authorization access.
The Apigee X allows its users to deploy APIs across several Google cloud locations and integrate with Google’s AI and machine learning. This enables them to map metadata, predict traffic, and identify bugs.
Even better, Apigee X provides its users with data storage flexibility and authority over encrypted data, which helps businesses adhere to requirements and regulations.
Microsoft announced the Azure Private Link Support preview for the recent Azure API Management service. The new private link support enables more than just communications between customers’ virtual networks.
Customers can now use the private link to create private endpoints for the gateway component accessible through a private IP address within the virtual network.
