Modern IT infrastructure demands agile and modular ways of exchanging information. And what better way to achieve this goal then leveraging APIs? APIs provide the perfect data segue across applications, departments, and geographical regions of an enterprise. However, with many APIs used simultaneously, there is this problem of abundance, with too many choices. Moreover, with the APIs getting accessed, both internally and externally, there is a security concern. These challenges manifest in misuse or redundant usage, which may ultimately cause unauthorized billing or revenue losses. API management platforms come to the rescue here.
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This blog post covers the API management platform's general features, along with a qualitative analysis of the most feature-rich and uniquely positioned platforms out there. If you have been tasked to identify the most suitable API management platform for your organization, look no further. We have got you covered, both in terms of rating each API management platform's features and their unique capabilities.
Follow the table of contents to jump to the specific sub-section of this post. In case you are curious, check out the API management platform list covered later in the post.
What is an API Management Platform?
An API management platform serves many purposes in managing the interactions between an API, its creator, and the consumer. If you consider the steps involved in creating different types of APIs, a lot goes into designing, implementing, and deploying them. Similarly, if you are consuming an API, then you interact with it in a few different ways. An API lifecycle diagram best describes these interactions.
Courtesy, Dzone
There are three types of personas that interact with an API.
Courtesy, Dzone
Most of the time, the primary persona interacting with the API is an API consumer. An API consumer, be it a user, or a developer, triggers an API to fulfill a specific need, in line with the API's specification. The API publisher is an individual or a team that is responsible for building and hosting the API. This can even be a company that serves its customers via a set of API products. The third persona, API Manager, plays a prominent role in orchestrating the interactions between the API publishers, API consumers, and the APIs themselves.
Need for API Management
The realm of API management has evolved over the years, along with the emerging API trends. In the beginning, API management was all about monitoring API usage and setting access restrictions based on rate limits, quotas, and some standard parameters.
This was the case with all the first generation of API management tools, mostly focused on managing the API access operations. If you consider the API life cycle phases, these tools would only fit for the API's operations phase.
In the early days, APIs were more like utility tools. As their usage and adoption increased, enterprises and large companies took a strategic shift by positioning APIs as value-added services and platforms. This demanded a better way to manage and administer the APIs such that the organization's strategic interests are not jeopardized. For example, if a company decided to monetize its internal APIs to provide a paid subscription service to customers, they had to ensure that the customers can differentiate between the versions of the APIs. Most importantly, they also needed to ensure that there is no chance for someone to gain unauthorized access to the APIs. Managing all these aspects related to API interactions, by different personas, required a holistic approach to API management. But the biggest impediment to this progress was the lack of standardization. The standardization efforts created a more level playing field for API management platforms.
The Open API Specification (OAS) solved this problem. It paved the way for a unified approach to manage an API throughout its entire lifecycle. Thanks to OAS, the tools around API development, testing, and deployment have evolved faster. Moreover, this shift also resulted in a much broader scope for API management platforms.
Essential Features of an API Management Platform
Today, API management platforms cover a whole gamut of activities spanning across all API life cycle phases. These activities can be split into the following essential features.
API Governance
API governance involves managing all the activities of the API lifecycle. The main component of API governance is a policy-based enforcement mechanism that directs all interactions between the API and the user personas, from the cradle to the grave. A typical cradle to grave transition for an API follows the sequence from creation, publishing, deprecating, to retirement. Some platforms with robust API governance mechanisms provide advanced governance features such as a visual interface for defining policies and adaptive governance based on machine learning.
API Visibility
Organizations expose APIs to different roles and departments. In many cases, the exposure is defined based on access from outside the organizational boundaries also. This kind of access is meant for external users, such as partners or customers. Managing the API visibility across the departmental and organizational borders is a crucial aspect of API management. Good visibility control is about packaging the APIs into different products, views, or aggregations mapped to a set of users and roles.
API Subscription
This feature is mainly applicable to API consumers. Managing API subscriptions and facilitating secured access is imperative to ensure that the APIs are not misused, and their usage quotas are kept in check. Additionally, some platforms also provide custom workflows for API subscription. These include custom signup mechanisms, OpenID based third-party authentication, and more.
API User Access
API user access deals with managing access control for the user personas. This is mostly a matter of governance. However, special importance needs to be given for defining access to real users, and additional tiers of access based on roles and teams. There is also a need for particular access provisions based on the custom API parameters. Some platforms support fine-grained access control based on applications as well as third-party federated identities.
API Ecosystem
An API ecosystem is all about creating a community around a set of related APIs that provide related services or form a part of an API platform. All API management platforms have a developer portal for this purpose. Though the portal, APIs can be tagged, identified, and bunched for easy discovery. These portals also enable the API producers to host useful information about the API, such as documentation, tutorials, and FAQs. As part of building a close-knit API ecosystem, some platforms provide social and content-based tools for API publishers and API consumers to share and collaborate.
API Traffic Management
This is the most frequent day-to-day operation of an API Ops team under the API manager's purview. Again, this can be considered as a part of governance. However, different API management platforms provide specific options to manage and control the traffic based on APIs' performance parameters. Some platforms support advanced traffic management features such as traffic optimization based on rate limits, traffic filtering based on IP addresses, quota, and cache settings based on API request/response data.
API Monitoring and Analytics
API monitoring is all about keeping track of the vital parameters of the API's health. These parameters include, but are not limited to, response time, response codes, outages, and retries. Additionally, the API management platforms also provide advanced analytics based on user segmentation, service tiers, and custom filters. Some platforms offer even more advanced analytics and monitoring features in custom dashboards for billing and business-related KPIs.
A Note on API Security
Additional Considerations
External Integrations
External integrations extend the reach and capabilities of the API management platform beyond hosting internal APIs. Some of the most common integrations available are:
API Marketplace: Support of an API marketplace helps to tap the power of external APIs and expedite internal API adoption. If your organization's API strategy aligns with this thought process, you must look at a vendor whose API management platform has seamless integration with an API marketplace.
API Monetization: If generating a revenue stream from your APIs is a part of the API strategy, this is a must-have feature. In that case, you have to look at API plan configuration options provided by the platform. Additionally, you also have to check for a suitable payment gateway integration to take care of payments against API subscriptions.
Internal Customization
To get the best out of APIs, API management platforms offer various kinds of customizable options, such as:
Gateway Support: An API gateway provides the runtime hosting environment for API. Many API management vendors provide this as part of their suite of products. Otherwise, you have to look for an external API gateway integration, which is obviously a more tedious effort.
Pluggable Extensions: Managing an API lifecycle involves a lot of workflows. Some workflows are user initiated operations. However, there is a lot of requirement for building automated workflows. These are centered around API request and response parameters, protocol options, traffic patterns, and more. Pluggable extensions provide ways to add custom modules to workflows. They can be either in the form of configuration options, policies, or a programming library module.
Deployment Options
Deployment options are the key to expedite the adaptability of the platform. The most common options to check out are:
Trial Deployment: An API management platform is a complex piece of software with many distributed components. It would be best if you look for a vendor who offers easy installation and commissioning procedures. Ideally, this should be a cloud-managed system with one-click signup and trial.
Sandbox Environment: Developing and deploying an API has various stages similar to software development stages. Therefore, it is imperative to host the same API across different stages to verify all the aspects of functionality and production readiness. This is also applicable to different versions of the same API. A sandbox environment provides multiple deployment partitions for the same API to facilitate a smooth transition from design to publishing.
The Top 12 API Management Platforms of 2020
Based on the essential features and the additional considerations, we present to you our top selection of the most feature-rich and uniquely positioned API management platforms for 2020.
Our Selection Methodology
The API management platforms reviewed in this post have been chosen based on two main criteria:
- 1The richness of Essential Features: The chosen platforms offer a rich set of advanced options for API management's essential features.
- 2Unique Feature: The chosen platforms provide a first of its kind or a unique feature supported by no other platform.
Based on the above, we have done a subjective analysis and assigned a five-point rating for each of the essential features. Further, we have provided additional information about the strengths and USPs of each platform.
All the ratings are given based on information sourced from the official website and documentation links.
Platform List
Are we missing an API management platform you're interested in? Get in touch and we'll help.
Mulesoft Anypoint is one of the most feature-rich API management platforms out there. Mulesoft has a comprehensive suite of API management software for facilitating API driven application integrations within the enterprise.
API Governance
The platform supports well defined policy architecture for enforcing governance rules on APIs.
API Visibility
The platform offers a separate component, Anypoint exchange for easy sharing and discovery of APIs. It allows creation of custom roles and teams to provide different levels of access to view, contribute, or administer APIs.
API Subscription
This is supported through Anypoint exchange via client application subscription feature to create id and secrets for accessing the APIs.
API User Access
The platform supports access management options based on users and roles enforced via policies.
API Ecosystem
The platform supports an API community manager. It has a CMS to publish content related to APIs, including news, tutorials, developer blog posts, and events.
API Traffic Mgmt
The platform supports default policies for rate limiting, IP blacklisting/whitelisting, spike control as well as granular policy enforcement on API resources.
API Monitoring & Analytics
The platform supports exhaustive set of monitoring dashboards and analytics functions with customization.
Additional Options | Supported | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
API Marketplace | This is supported through Anypoint exchange. | |
Trial Deployment | It supports free trial but appears to be moderately difficult to set up. It requires multiple application components to support full featured API management. | |
API Monetization | This is supported as part of Anypoint exchange. | |
Gateway Support | ||
Pluggable Extension | It provides a connector framework to build connectors that plug into API studio. | |
Sandbox Environment | It supports a simulation option to test and demonstrate APIs. |
Mulesoft Anypoint platform is very popular with active engagement in various programming and technology communities. It features API studio, an API designer and visualizer to design, build, and architect API layers. It also has a separate service mesh platform to integrate external microservices and application with APIs.
Mulesoft boasts of some marque customers across industries and sizes.
Tyk offers a complete suite of API gateway and API management platform. Tyk is open sourced, supports REST and GraphQL from the grounds up. It offers an excellent set of features for API traffic management, analytics and monitoring.
API Governance
The platform supports security policies for configuring API access.
API Visibility
The platform supports policies for setting up visibility for APIs. It also supports custom fields and settings for visibility into API catalogs.
API Subscription
The platform supports key based API subscription, management and custom client configuration based on OAuth.
API User Access
This platform supports user, group and role based access.
API Ecosystem
The platform supports API cataloging with access to documentation.
API Traffic Mgmt
The platform supports rate limiting, request throttling, and auto-renewing request quotas, on a per API basis, or globally.
API Monitoring & Analytics
The platform supports traffic analysis on per API / key basis, logs and debug messages, It allows hourly data views and segmentation to track API performance.
Additional Options | Supported | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
API Marketplace | ||
Trial Deployment | It supports easy to deploy options on cloud, as well as on-premesis. | |
API Monetization | This features is supported via third party payment workflow integration as part of the API key approval. | |
Gateway Support | Tyk Gateway is a full featured API gateway with advanced features for hosting and managing API backends. | |
Pluggable Extension | It supports a lot of plugins for transformation, utility tasks, protocol and programming language extensions. | |
Sandbox Environment | Cell |
Tyk has a good social presence and a thriving community. It is well suited for mid to large segment enterprises that need a multi data center deployment. It offers a tiered pricing model starting with free, up to $900, for SaaS based deployment, and custom pricing for enterprise setup.
RapidAPI, a San Francisco startup, is the world's largest API marketplace. The RapidAPI Enterprise Hub is an API management platform that also leverages their public API marketplace for accelerating API-led software development.
API Governance
The platform supports policy based control on visibility and access along with whitelisting of APIs. It also features workflow approval processes for API publishing and editing.
API Visibility
The platform provides essential control on access and visibility of APIs.
API Subscription
The platform supports request based as well as invite based subscriptions for APIs. It supports single universal key for accessing all third-party APIs subscribed via the public marketplace.
API User Access
The platform supports access control mechanism based on user and team management.
API Ecosystem
The platform supports collections and categorization for APIs. it also support tutorial and FAQ pages.
API Traffic Mgmt
The platform supports essential traffic policing for rate limiting and blocking.
API Monitoring & Analytics
The platform supports analysis and tracking of APIs, publishing and consumption data, granular logs, user and team wise usage data, as well as alerts.
Additional Options | Supported | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
API Marketplace | This platform has the world's largest API marketplace with over 10k APIs listed. | |
Trial Deployment | ||
API Monetization | This is supported via an integrated workflow to signup for paid API subscriptions. | |
Gateway Support | ||
Pluggable Extension | It supports RapidQL, a query language to club multiple API requests in a single invocation.. | |
Sandbox Environment | Cell |
The main USP of this platform is the direct access to the world's largest API marketplace. That makes it really easy to integrate internal APIs with third-party, external APIs. Feature-wise it is a mid-segment API management platform and is relatively new compared to others. That's why it does not have much community around it, as of now.
TIBCO Cloud Mashery is a cloud native API management platform. Its main capabilities include, robust API subscription and access management, It also has a API modeller suite for designing APIs.
API Governance
The platform provides a wide range of policies for fine-grained control over how, when, and from where the user community can access the APIs.
API Visibility
The platform supports productization of API as private, partner, and public APIs.
API Subscription
The platform supports API on-boarding, key management and delegated administration rights for complex usage scenarios.
API User Access
The platform supports users and team management. It also supports federated authentication with Google and other protocols such as LDAP, JWT, and SAML.
API Ecosystem
The platform supports APIs to be packaged as products along with documentation.
API Traffic Mgmt
The platform supports access & security policies like rate limiting and throttling between different consumers. It also supports API runtime performance optimization through caching.
API Monitoring & Analytics
The platform supports complete analytics and reporting on API usage and API health. It also supports exporting of API logs for external analytics.
Additional Options | Supported | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
API Marketplace | ||
Trial Deployment | It supports easy to deploy options on cloud. | |
API Monetization | ||
Gateway Support | This is supported by their own API Gateway product. | |
Pluggable Extension | ||
Sandbox Environment |
TIBCO Cloud Mashery has a reasonably active community support. It is well suited for enterprises adopting cloud-native development and deployment practices, such as Dev Ops, microservices, and containers. It offers, limited free trial with a $500/month basic subscription.
Layer7 API management platform was formerly owned by CA technologies. Since its acquisition by Broadcom in 2018, this product is part of Broadcom's enterprise software offering. Layer7 also has an API gateway as part of its API management platform.
API Governance
The platform offers a separate policy manager component for governing application and service policies mapped to APIs.
API Visibility
The platform supports targeted visibility control based on internal and external audience for APIs.
API Subscription
The platform supports API Key handling via organizational level admin control.
API User Access
The platform supports user, group and role based access control.
API Ecosystem
The platform supports API catalog for exploring APIs with documentation and sample code.
API Traffic Mgmt
The platform supports policy assertions for rate limiting, throughput, caching, IP address filtering and other security related assertions.
API Monitoring & Analytics
The platform supports detailed monitoring of APIs, and precision monitoring at an app/service level along with detailed transaction tracing.
Additional Options | Supported | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
API Marketplace | ||
Trial Deployment | ||
API Monetization | ||
Gateway Support | It offers a full featured gateway with microservices and a host of supported protocols. | |
Pluggable Extension | ||
Sandbox Environment |
The Layer7 API platforms also has a low-code solution for deploying APIs and microservices. It offers SaaS, hybrid as well as on-premises options. However, does not support one click trial deployment. The community support is non-existent.
3Scale API management plafrom is part of RedHat. It offers excellent features for API traffic control and program management.
API Governance
The platform provides API access policies with application plans.
API Visibility
The platform supports the abiliity to define multiple control mechanisms to expose APIs, wheather public, private, or internal.
API Subscription
The platform supports authentication with API keys, OIDC tokens or custom configs. It also supports custom signup workflows.
API User Access
The platform provides the ability to create different service tiers and multiple types of users and ability to control actions performed on APIs.
API Ecosystem
The platform supports a CMS for hosting APIs along with its documentation in OpenAPI specification format.
API Traffic Mgmt
The platform supports all the typical restrictions that can be imposed upon APIs around rate limiting and throttling.
API Monitoring & Analytics
The platform supports detailed monitoring including hits, data transfers and CPU hours consumed by APIs.
Additional Options | Supported | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
API Marketplace | ||
Trial Deployment | It is easy to start with, as a SaaS offering, and supports on-premises deployment for enterprise plan. | |
API Monetization | It supports billing and invoicing and payment gateway integration with Stripe and Braintree. | |
Gateway Support | It is supported through APICast which is a NGINX based API gateway. | |
Pluggable Extension | Supported for access control, security, traffic reporting and monetization. | |
Sandbox Environment |
3Scale is backed by great community support of RedHat. It offers a free trial, and paid subscriptions start with a PRO plan for $750/mo.
The Akana API platform offers some of the best workflow customization options for managing API lifecycle. It also supports a robust API community manager for nurturing API ecosystem.
API Governance
The platform supports a PolicyManager component for governance along with full fledged life-cycle governance mechanism with custom workflows.
API Visibility
The platform supports visibility control for public, private or registered users along with license based access to APIs.
API Subscription
The platform provides workflows for setting up a contract with API via an approval process.
API User Access
The platform supports user groups, teams and roles. It also allows access control through API consumer policies configured in Akana community manager's developer portal.
API Ecosystem
The platform supports an Akana API community manager which creates a social channel to manage and promote APIs with developer and partner audiences. It also has API forums.
API Traffic Mgmt
The platform supports traffic management through different policies for managing quota, bandwidth, and throughput.
API Monitoring & Analytics
The platform provides API level analytics along with operational and business analytics. It also supports a standalone analytics platform called Akana Envision.
Additional Options | Supported | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
API Marketplace | ||
Trial Deployment | It supports free trial via a limited usage of Akana SaaS. It also offers on-premises and hybrid deployment. | |
API Monetization | This is supported through licensing but does not seems to have a payment integration. | |
Gateway Support | The API Gateway enables enterprises to standardize API and service delivery with high security, performance, and availability. | |
Pluggable Extension | It supports scripting languages to augment policies or orchestrations. | |
Sandbox Environment | This is supported in the form of an additional URL endpoint along with the live API. |
Akana platform has an active community engagement. It is deployed in diverse industries and large enterprises, from banking, financial services, to retail and insurance. The Akana Envision provides advanced analytics capabilities on enterprise-wide API programs.
Sensedia offers the industry's first adaptive API governance system. it helps enterprises deal with the complexity in API management by adopting to governance styles and mechanisms in different business contexts.
API Governance
This platform is industry's first and only adaptive governance framework based on a feedback loop to learn and improve the governance related operations.
API Visibility
The platform supports visibility control via multiple environments and segregation between internal and external APIs.
API Subscription
The platform supports API keys and tracking mechanism.
API User Access
This platform supports users, roles and teams with quota controls with flexible flows.
API Ecosystem
The platform supports API dashboard, with complete documentation and custom content.
API Traffic Mgmt
The platform supports quota control, spike arrest.and access plans.
API Monitoring & Analytics
The platform supports API performance, billing hits and advanced analytics. It also offers flexible actions to configure different types of alerts and notifications on APIs.
Additional Options | Supported | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
API Marketplace | ||
Trial Deployment | ||
API Monetization | ||
Gateway Support | It supports various BaaS integrations along with a service mesh component. | |
Pluggable Extension | It supports custom interceptors and protocol transformations. | |
Sandbox Environment |
The community engagement of Sensedia is very low. However, apart from adaptive governance, it also offers IoT enablement for APIs and event driven callbacks.
WSO2 API Manager is an open source API management platform. It offers excellent API productization features along with granular access control and analytics features.
API Governance
This platform supports a custom API lifecycle module to define policies for controlling granular aspects of API access.
API Visibility
The platform supports control over API visibility and subscription availability based on roles and domains.It also offers the ability to create API products by packaging a preferred set of resources from multiple APIs and exposing them as a separate API interface,
API Subscription
The platform supports API key wizard and custom subscription workflows.
API User Access
The platform supports role based access for users and based on IP.
API Ecosystem
The platform supports API dcumentation, view, search, rating and comments features.
API Traffic Mgmt
The platform supports rate limiting and enhanced threat protection, and bot protection.
API Monitoring & Analytics
The platform supports detailed and granular display of API stats with monthly and geolocation based reports.
Additional Options | Supported | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
API Marketplace | This is supported along with AI based recommendation for APIs. | |
Trial Deployment | It offers downloadable package along with installation configurations for many platforms. | |
API Monetization | It supports the ability to define various business plans. | |
Gateway Support | ||
Pluggable Extension | It supports custom workflows and custom widgets for analytics dashboards. | |
Sandbox Environment |
WSO2 community is moderately active. It has one of the best offerings in API management around open sourced technologies, and is majorly adopted by enterprises in healthcare, finance and airline space.
The Amplify platform from Axway is an easy to use, yet feature-rich API management platform. It offers a great tool for managing API governance, as well as detailed options for API traffic monitoring and analytics.
API Governance
This platform supports an interactive policy studio for designing custom policies. It supports many forms of policies for authorization, quota, request and access based policies.
API Visibility
The platform supports partner organization creation for managing multiple organizations for segregating APIs. It also has a client registry which is a repository of API consumers in the form of organizations, partners, and client applications.
API Subscription
The platform supports subscriptions defined through apps and API keys.
API User Access
The platform supports organization and role based access for users.
API Ecosystem
The platform supports build in CMS for blogs and discussion forums around APIs.
API Traffic Mgmt
The platform supports comprehensive quota management on a per application basis, and on API requests as well as on the processing pipeline.
API Monitoring & Analytics
The platform supports metrics for analytics. monitoring of traffic, system level metrics, performance parameters, protocols and transactions. It offers the ability to generate custom reports and API alerts.
Additional Options | Supported | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
API Marketplace | ||
Trial Deployment | It offers free signup and trial option. | |
API Monetization | ||
Gateway Support | ||
Pluggable Extension | It supports protocol transformations and stream extensions. | |
Sandbox Environment |
The Amplify platform has an active social presence but mot much community engagement. It offers an intuitive visual API builder. It also supports API streaming for easy data sharing with third party apps. Most customers include banks and airlines.
Apigee, which is now part of Google, is an excellent API management platform with great features around API ecosystem and analytics.
API Governance
This platform supports multiple policy definitions for API access, traffic management, transformation, monetization and, extending the APIs at the API proxy layer.
API Visibility
The platform supports APIs grouping as products and packages. It allows developers to access packages by defining an application.
API Subscription
The platform supports app and API keys to access API packages and products.
API User Access
The platform supports organization and role based access for users with complete administrative control.
API Ecosystem
The platform supports a developer portal with CMS for customized content, blogs and API spec hosting.
API Traffic Mgmt
The platform supports rate limiting and quotas.
API Monitoring & Analytics
The platform supports detailed analytics with custom dashboards, reports, traffic and response time analysis, risk analysis and also metrics for developer engagement. It also provides configuration for alerts based on traffic, expiry and anomaly detection caused by API parameters.
Additional Options | Supported | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
API Marketplace | ||
Trial Deployment | It offers quick evaluation option. | |
API Monetization | It provides flexible policy based control for recording transactions and offers payment modes based on pre-paid and post-paid plans. | |
Gateway Support | ||
Pluggable Extension | ||
Sandbox Environment |
The Apigee platform is very popular. It has been around for a long time and has an active community engagement. The platform's documentation is good, thanks to Google's excellent documentation practices. Along with that, it offers flexible monetization policies with great API productization and packaging options.
Apigee is used by some of the marquee name in global enterprises such as Walgreens, eBay as well as Netflix.
Part of an offering from IBM Cloud, the IBM API Connect is a no-frills API management platform with all the necessary features, and is simple to use.
API Governance
This platform supports API life cycle management in the form of products and life cycle states starting with draft, stage, to published, deprecated and retired.
API Visibility
The platform supports packaging of APIs within products and catalogs. Staging and production catalogs can be created for APIs packaged as products and exported to developer portals for API consumers.
API Subscription
The platform supports API subscription, and additional secured access via client id and secret.
API User Access
This platform supports creation of user accounts in the developer portal for accessing the APIs. It has predefined roles for governing the APIs.
API Ecosystem
The platform supports API discovery, specs import, and live testing.
API Traffic Mgmt
The platform supports rate limiting.
API Monitoring & Analytics
The platform supports basic analytics at catalog and product level. it also supports creation of custom dashboard.
Additional Options | Supported | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
API Marketplace | ||
Trial Deployment | It is easy to deploy with Lite plan that offers 50K API calls per month. | |
API Monetization | ||
Gateway Support | ||
Pluggable Extension | ||
Sandbox Environment |
This platform has a decent popularity, thanks to IBM's community engagement. It does not offer too many custom workflow options. However, it enjoys good adoption among IBM's enterprise customers, especially banks.
Conclusion
With a software system as complex as an API management platform, it is a daunting task to get the right mix of features and benefits. On one end, you have the most feature-rich platforms, such as Mulesoft, Apigee, and Axaway. One the other end of the spectrum are simpler platforms such as RapidAPI, Sensedia, and IBM Connect. The trade-offs are what you have to take a call on, based on your needs, priorities, and budget.
We hope this post makes your task of comparing the API management vendors a bit easier. If you're interested in learning more about API management, or have any thoughts to share, or questions about any of these platforms, please let us know by leaving a comment!
