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3scale API Management pros and cons

Vendor: Red Hat

3.6 out of 5

12 reviews
84% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

3scale API Management offers a robust gateway for centralized traffic management and strong security features enhancing safe API exposure. Seamless integration with OpenShift clusters and easy installation likened to a two-click setup are notable. Users appreciate API automation, though CMS customization needs improvement, and only RESTful APIs are supported. Route-limiting features are less intuitive than alternatives like Kong, and there's limited support for configurations with a desire for on-platform plugin integration and extensions.

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

3scale API Management effectively consolidates all traffic into a central proxy, enhancing gateway functionality.

The solution integrates seamlessly with OpenShift clusters, providing additional adaptability.

It offers a simplified deployment process with straightforward, lightweight installation.

API automation features receive positive attention for enhancing operational efficiency.

3scale API Management contributes to increased security by simplifying external API exposure.

CONS

3scale API Management has room for improvement in its CMS, which relies on liquid scripting and can be difficult to use for customization without adequate knowledge.

The platform only supports RESTful APIs and does not support SOAP, which limits its versatility.

Enhancements in route-limiting features are needed, as current capabilities are not as user-friendly compared to Kong.

Users have pointed out the need for more flexible plugin integration to extend functionalities and manage custom requirements.

Red Hat's configuration support is limited, leading to challenges with supportability for certain configurations in 3scale API Management.

3scale API Management Pros review quotes

PM

Non-Corporate Consultant at Absa Group Ltd

Sep 20, 2022

To me, the most valuable feature of 3scale API Management is that it lets you add a backend to the product. I also like that you can integrate it well with OpenShift clusters, making 3scale API Management a useful solution.

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MS

MichaelSukachev

Sr. Enterprise Architect at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Nov 14, 2022

The standard deployment is very simple.

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Associate Manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Jun 1, 2023

The solution is quite lightweight, and the installation is very easy. It's like a two-click installation.

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lead architect at Sys Manager

Jun 9, 2023

I like the API automation.

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reviewer1909362

Digital Project Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Jul 13, 2022

3scale API Management's best feature is API management.

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Co-Founder at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees

Nov 17, 2021

The gateway is the most valuable feature because it makes it possible for us to gather all traffic into one proxy, which is a good thing.

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reviewer1111221

Principal Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Jun 4, 2020

The most valuable features are the gateway and security features.

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SD

Sylvain Déjardin

TechOps Engineer - Middleware & Containers specialist at EBRC -European Business Reliance Centre

Nov 6, 2019

3scale: what a really good product to secure an unsecure API if you have multiple backend unsecured routes provided by an ESB (Red Hat Fuse), and available through one unique frontend acting as a secure gateway (with HTTPS protocol and API keys).

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Co-Founder at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees

Jul 14, 2019

It's good that they aren't adding a lot of features like ESP, etc. It's okay with just being a gateway.

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3scale API Management Cons review quotes

PM

Non-Corporate Consultant at Absa Group Ltd

Sep 20, 2022

What I'd like to improve in 3scale API Management is its route-limiting feature. Currently, I don't know how to do that effectively on the solution, but in Kong, I know how to do it, so I would love to see route-limiting being easily done on 3scale API Management. It would also be good if there was some authentication that you could do from 3scale API Management because Kong offers that functionality out of the box. What I'd love to see in the next release of 3scale API Management is the ability to integrate more plug-ins easily onto the platform, so you'll be able to extend it, and even do customs management. If Red Hat could offer that extension where it allows the internal organization where 3scale API Management is deployed on-premise to integrate its tools on top of 3scale API Management and provide an API for that, that will make the solution very powerful.

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MS

MichaelSukachev

Sr. Enterprise Architect at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Nov 14, 2022

What was suggested by Red Hat was a crucial part of the configuration, but when we started to ask about the supportability of this configuration, Red Hat said only some parts of the configuration would be supported.

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Associate Manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Jun 1, 2023

The product is not that flexible for developers. It's less flexible and rigid. It's not easy to make changes or customize it.

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Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat, Google, IBM and others in API Management. Updated: June 2026.

900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.

lead architect at Sys Manager

Jun 9, 2023

The user experience could be better. The developer portal is too complex and hard to configure.

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reviewer1909362

Digital Project Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Jul 13, 2022

3scale API Management only supports restful APIs and doesn't support SOAP.

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Co-Founder at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees

Nov 17, 2021

We tried to use the portal, but we decided that it wasn't enough. The content management system (CMS) is not easy to use if you want to customize things, and it's hard to get someone who has the knowledge to work with the CMS.

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reviewer1111221

Principal Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Jun 4, 2020

It would be helpful to improve the customization features so that the customer can do it based on their own needs.

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SD

Sylvain Déjardin

TechOps Engineer - Middleware & Containers specialist at EBRC -European Business Reliance Centre

Nov 6, 2019

Setting up OIDC authentication would be another use case for this product.

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Co-Founder at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees

Jul 14, 2019

I believe the CMS part of it has room for improvement though. That is where you write a couple of things if you want to publish your API. It's based on liquid scripting, which doesn't seem like the obvious ones to script with.

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Popular Comparisons

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Microsoft Azure API Management vs 3scale API Management

Amazon API Gateway vs 3scale API Management

webMethods.io vs 3scale API Management

Apigee vs 3scale API Management

IBM API Connect vs 3scale API Management

IBM DataPower Gateway vs 3scale API Management

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs 3scale API Management

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Postman Enterprise vs 3scale API Management

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