Kong Gateway Enterprise Reviews

A central API gateway solution.

The concept of using central API gateway is the change, not the product. Kong was selected based on our CBA (choose between alternative) process.

Almost everything needed is there.

We would like to see an automatic data API - when we have a database table or a store procedure - we want to be able to select it and the data API will be created automatically for GET and CRUD operations in OData format. This feature already exists in other solution and it is a game changer - reducing efforts, risks, and reliability.

I've used it for almost three or four years. I first implemented it eight or nine years ago.

The setup of Kong itself was very easy.

The price is reasonable compared to that of alternative solutions.

Everyone should conduct a CBA based on his requirements in order to choose the right solution for his organization.

Yes.

I would rate Kong Enterprise at nine on a scale from one to ten.

We use it to provide API services to our clients.

The features I like include ease of operation and implementation in a cloud environment, the dashboarding features for API statistics, and the user-friendly developer portal.

The plugin architecture is simple and easy to implement.

There is room for improvement in the licensing model. It charges differently for each geography. If I have to use Kong in two different geographies for the same organization, it charges me twice. When it comes to Azure, it doesn't charge me twice. Azure has a more economical model.

The licensing in the Middle East, where we work. The licensing of Kong and Azure is a lengthy process. It was not readily available. We had to talk to the product owner to make the Kong Gateway available as a solution on the Azure marketplace. The licensing is only as an on-prem or separate product. 

The difference between billing on the cloud and outside the cloud is if I purchase Kong outside, I have to pay the AMC every year or so. The purpose of cloud implementation is to have a consolidated billing for all resources purchased on the cloud. You don't need to deal with multiple vendors. If you have purchased five applications on the cloud marketplace, you get a single consolidated bill every month. 

The ease of billing is lost when Kong is not available directly on the Azure marketplace. This is one area where they can improve. There could be a problem with the Middle East geography. They may have Kong available on the Azure marketplace in other geographies, but this is how it is in the Middle East.

I have been using it for two and a half years. 

It is a very stable product. 

I would rate the scalability a seven out of ten, with one being one scalability and ten being high. 

The scalability aspect has a limitation with geography. I can expand it to any country within one region, but not beyond. There are licensing implications. 

Technologically, it is scalable to whatever extent required, without any limitations. The limitation is only across geography. It cannot be scaled beyond one region.

There are around 25 technical people using this solution in my organization. We use it daily.

Kong is the first API solution we used. We started API solutions with Kong.

I would rate my experience with the initial setup a six out of ten, with one being difficult and ten being easy. 

The first implementation took three months.

The deployment was done by a vendor. 

Kong Gateway doesn't save anything, actually. It is not for that purpose. It's a technological solution, we cannot directly attribute revenue to Kong alone. Multiple applications work together to offer the APIs, and those API solutions have brought in some revenue, but not entirely because of Kong, so I cannot quantify that.

The licensing is expensive. I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with one being cheap and ten being expensive. 

Our parent organization has been using Kong and evaluated all the possibilities. We took their reference. Recently, we did an evaluation and migrated to Azure API Management from Kong.

I would recommend using it. It is a very powerful tool with lots of features. It's stable, user-friendly, and easy to learn.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

Our e-commerce customers use Kong Enterprise.

Customers cannot use the public cloud because of regulations. Kong Enterprise can be used in any environment, like the Red Hat and Openshift environments. Kong Enterprise comes with some ready plug-ins, which is very good for the customers. Kong Enterprise supports hierarchy and redundancy.

Kong Enterprise has decided not to support the web portal feature anymore, but I think that feature should stay in the on-premises solution.

I have been using Kong Enterprise for four to five years.

I rate the solution ten out of ten for stability.

The solution's technical support is good and responsive.

Positive

The initial setup of the solution is very straightforward.

You can install Kong Enterprise in five minutes or half an hour. If the customer is ready for deployment with the Kubernetes or VMware environment, Kong Enterprise's installation is very easy.

The solution's scalability is very nice. Kong Enterprise is a key product in the market with good stability and high availability. Our customers can easily integrate their existing CICD pipelines with Kong Enterprise.

We chose Kong Enterprise because it is a software-based company, and latency and redundancy are very important for our client. Most of the other vendors use the old-school appliance-based solution. Kong Enterprise is very keen to apply the existing CI/CD pipeline. I would recommend Kong Enterprise to other users because of its scalability, security, and redundancy.

Overall, I rate Kong Enterprise ten out of ten.

Kong enterprise has significantly enhanced our ability to manage and secure our Microservices. Its most valuable feature is monitoring. 

The tool needs improvement in UX.

I have been using the product for six months. 

I rate the solution's stability an eight out of ten. 

I rate the tool's scalability an eight out of ten. My company has five to seven users. 

I have encountered communication issues. 

Neutral

I rate the tool's deployment a ten out of ten, and it took a few hours to complete. 

Kong Enterprise's pricing is reasonable for our company size. 

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten. 

We have already registered a couple of APIs in Kong Community, and we are exposing those Kong APIs to our product. ITMS services will be consuming those APIs from Kong. We use the solution for load-balancing, caching, and rate-limiting APIs.

If Kong provides a 30-day license like other API gateways, we can promote the solution to more customers because they are willing to use it. We are unable to showcase the security and functional features during the trial period, which is an issue for us. We are facing issues with the solution's features like reports and traffic analysis.

We have been using the solution for more than one year.

I rate the solution a seven out of ten for stability.

Around 20 users are using the solution in our organization.

I rate the solution a six out of ten for scalability.

The solution's initial setup is very easy.

With Kong Enterprise, we are facing challenges in getting the trial license, reports, and traffic analysis. We have one customer onboarded, but we need to demonstrate to them the features, and we need to migrate from IBM One Gateway to Kong.

The solution is deployed on the cloud.

Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

My company is a financial company involved in credit card processing. We use the solution for internal IT secure gateway. 

The tool's feature that I find most beneficial is rate limiting. In our usage, especially in the financial sector, we prioritize limiting API usage. This is crucial because we provide APIs to other companies and must ensure they adhere to their allocated usage limits. Without rate limiting, there's a risk of excessive usage, which could result in significant costs. 

The solution has improved our organization's performance. 

Kong Enterprise needs to improve its pricing, which starts at hundreds of thousands of dollars. Pricing should be based on API usage rather than monthly. It should improve its documentation as well. 

I have been using the product for six months. 

I rate the tool's stability a nine out of ten. 

The solution is horizontally scalable and very useful. My company has one customer for Kong Enterprise. I rate its scalability a ten out of ten. 

I haven't contacted technical support yet. 

The product is easy to deploy and gets completed in one hour.

Kong Enterprise is cheaper than Apigee. I rate its pricing as four out of ten. 

Kong Enterprise can connect with other tools easily. It has features like APIs and logging that programmers can use to link it up with different systems. I haven't used its integration features much, but I know its possibilities. I rate the tool an eight out of ten. 

We deploy this solution to our customers who are enterprise companies. We are partners with Kong and I'm the director of engineering. 

The solution provides good performance. 

They need to improve the developer portal. There are currently no isolated data plans for federated teams that I can manage easily, and that's something they should look at. 

I've been using this solution for one year. 

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable. We've deployed in numerous companies so there are likely many thousands of users. 

The technical support is good. 

The initial setup is reasonably easy, it takes about two to three weeks.

Licensing costs are reasonable compared to other products.

We have been evaluating other solutions and for now Kong comes out on top in terms of performance. 

I would advise to start with a POC to make sure all use cases are met.

I rate this solution seven out of 10. 

We define our enterprise architect and Kong has been selected as an API integration layer solution. We deploy in some of the markets if they're ready to go, and some of the markets are not really ready because we have 10 different markets at the moment. It's an API integration layer so that we can expedite our microservices to the market.

In our buying companies' perspective, it was easier and more unique to use compared to other platforms. The markets were pretty familiar with the solutions.

It can be our personal, our company's issue, but when we were doing separate projects, we were facing a lot of solutions. For some of our major projects, the API was not using Kong as a group platform. Sometimes they use Microsoft Azure or AWS. That's not a problem, but I think it's wasting some of our budget. We set Kong as an enterprise standard. There should be an easier way to integrate with other solutions, even though it's the same API solution layer. Comparability will be a good improvement. 

We implemented it around May time. 

It is a stable solution. 

Compared to other products, I think it's pretty scalable.

I think we have around 100 users. 

Our plan to increase usage depends on the market deployment plan. I think we should because we just started that journey last year and it's ramping up at the moment. We do have a plan to increase the manpower.

I would rate their support a seven or eight out of ten. I'm pretty okay with the technical support.

We previously used Axway. We switched to Kong because of its reliability and scalability.

We have a lot of other platforms that we're using as the API integration platform, but from the enterprise architect's perspective, Kong is the standard.

The initial setup was relatively okay, but it depends on the market. Some of the markets we had easier solutions to deploy but we had trouble with some other markets we had trouble to make them understand and go through the legacy systems so that we could link different layers to Kong's API platform. The difficulty depends on the market.

The dependency on the legacy has to be very minimal so that you can leverage your new platform or integration layer and it will be easier to build up to scale. I think those parts are the important ones you have to think through.

There are so many new technologies, and I think at the moment low-code is very popular to use. If we get into the no-code or low-code aspect, sometimes coding can be easier. If they can provide relevant no-code or low-code service to the customers, not making the process very complex, I think that will be the main winner for the platform service providers.

I would rate Kong an eight out of ten.