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Kong Gateway Enterprise vs webMethods.io comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Kong Gateway Enterprise
Ranking in API Management
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
webMethods.io
Ranking in API Management
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
92
Ranking in other categories
Business-to-Business Middleware (3rd), Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (3rd), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (10th), Cloud Data Integration (7th), Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of Kong Gateway Enterprise is 6.6%, up from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of webMethods.io is 2.1%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

AmitKanodia - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides role-based access control and can be easily customized with Lua script
Kong is meant for north-south communications, so it will be interesting to see what solutions they can come up with in the realms of east-west communications, service-to-service communications, and Zero Trust architecture. I believe that if they can provide for these areas, then they will be able to solve the overall integration and security concerns for microservices architecture in general.
Michele Illiano - PeerSpot reviewer
Can function as an ESB along with the core product, with decent integration of message protocols
I have noticed that webMethods ActiveTransfer has had problems when handling large files. For example, when we receive (and perform operations on) files that are larger than about 16 MB, the software starts losing performance. This is why, for most customers who have to deal with big files, I suggest that they use a product other than ActiveTransfer. I would like to note that this problem mainly concerns large files that undergo extra operations, such assigning, unassigning, or file translation. When these operations take place on large files, ActiveTransfer will use up a lot of resources. Within the product itself, I also believe that there is room for improvement in terms of optimization when it comes to general performance. I suspect that the issues underlying poor optimization are because it is all developed in Java. That is, all the objects and functions that are used need to be better organized, especially when it comes to big files but also overall. webMethods ActiveTransfer was born as an ESB to handle messages, and these messages were typically very short, i.e. small in size. A message is data that you have to send to an application, where it must be received in real-time and possibly processed or acknowledged elsewhere in the system as well. So, because it was initially designed for small messages, it struggles with performance when presented with very large files. All this to say, I suggest that they have an engineer reevaluate the architecture of the product in order to consider cases where large files are sent, and not only small ones. As for new features, compared to other products in the market, I think Software AG should be more up to date when it comes to extra protocol support, especially those protocols that other solutions have included in their products by default. Whenever we need to add an unsupported protocol, we have to go through the effort of custom development in order to work with it. Also, all the banks are obligated to migrate to the new standards, and big companies are all handling translations and operating their libraries with the new protocol formats. But webMethods ActiveTransfer doesn't seem to be keeping up with this evolution. Thus, they should aim to be more compliant in future, along the lines of their competitors such as IBM and Primeur.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"In our buying companies' perspective, it was easier to use compared to other platforms. The markets were pretty familiar with the solutions."
"The route limiting feature is very valuable."
"It boasts remarkable speed and stability, and these qualities, particularly the gateway's resilience, are standout features for me."
"The most valuable feature of Kong Enterprise is its capability to integrate with various security tools."
"The solution provides good performance."
"Good at intercepting traffic and modeling APIs around that."
"Kong Enterprise comes with some ready plug-ins, which is very good for the customers."
"The most valuable features of Kong Enterprise are the out-of-the-box open source easy functionality."
"The messaging part is the most valuable feature."
"It is a bundled product stack for A2A and B2B usage. It is one of the best products which I have used during my integration career."
"The stability is good."
"EDI is robust and integration with SAP is good."
"It integrates well with various servers."
"How simple it is to create new solutions."
"When it comes to the user interface, I'm already really used to it. I cannot say anything against it. For me, it's easy to use."
"This solution has given us a competitive advantage because we have better automation and insight."
 

Cons

"The main challenge, in my opinion, is the price. It's difficult to convince our management to approve the budget to purchase it from our vendor. There are no technical problems."
"From an improvement perspective, the product should offer more readily available connectors and also allow for more seamless AI integrations."
"It becomes difficult if you try to scale it up to multiple clusters."
"Kong Enterprise fails to provide live tracing of the APIs, which is possible nowadays."
"We would like to see an automatic data API when we have a table in the database."
"Understanding the configurations and knowing what needs to be done can be a bit difficult initially."
"They could focus more on pricing."
"The open-source version of Kong does not support a dashboard, which would be very helpful."
"The product needs to be improved in a few ways. First, they need to stabilize the components of the whole platform across versions. Also, they should stop replacing old components with brand new ones and, rather, improve by evolution."
"wM SAP Adapter User Guide - Example, like Message Broker setup was unclear, leading to issues during Testing and we had refer the internet forums to understand that there is a Message Broker Cleanup utility and that needs to be setup as well."
"The initial setup of the webMethods Integration Server is not easy but it gets easier once you know it. It is tiresome but not difficult."
"The high price of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The price has room for improvement."
"This product is for larger companies. Compared to TIBCO I think webMethods is better in terms of ease of use and support."
"Rapid application development has to be considered, especially for UI, where user interference is crucial."
"We'd like for them to open up to a more cloud-based solution that could offer more flexibility and maybe a better rules engine or more integration with rules engines."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Kong Enterprise is cheaper than Apigee. I rate its pricing as four out of ten."
"Kong Enterprise's pricing is reasonable for our company size."
"The licensing is expensive."
"There are many factors that influence the price of Kong Enterprise, such as scale, licenses, and usage."
"The licensing fees are paid yearly."
"Kong Enterprise's pricing is at par compared to the other technologies."
"It's expensive in Thailand (10 million baht, in Thai currency)."
"The product is reasonably priced because it goes by the SaaS model."
"Pricing is the number-one downfall. It's too expensive. They could make more money by dropping the price in half and getting more customers. It's the best product there is, but it's too expensive."
"I am not involved in the licensing side of things."
"It is expensive, but we reached a good agreement with the company. It is still a little bit expensive, but we got a better deal than the previous one."
"Currently, the licensing solution for this product is pretty straightforward. The way that Software AG has moved in their licensing agreements is very understandable. It is very easy for you to see where things land. Like most vendors today, they are transaction based. Therefore, just having a good understanding of how many transactions that you are doing a year would be very wise. Luckily, there are opportunities to work with the vendor to get a good understanding of how many transactions you have and what is the right limit for you to fall under."
"It is worth the cost."
"webMethods.io Integration's pricing is high and has yearly subscription costs."
"The price is high and I give it a five out of ten."
"I do think webMethods is coming under increasing pressure when it comes to their price-to-feature value proposition. It's probably the single biggest strategic risk they have. They're very expensive in their industry. They've been raising the price recently, especially when compared with their competitors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Kong Enterprise compare with Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager?
The Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager was designed with its users in mind. Though it is a reasonably complex piece of software, it is easy to install and upgrade. While there are different things that ...
What do you like most about Kong Enterprise?
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...
What needs improvement with Kong Enterprise?
The open-source version of Kong does not support a dashboard, which would be very helpful. We use an open-source tool called Konga for basic dashboard needs, but it lacks support. It would be bette...
What do you like most about Built.io Flow?
The tool helps us to streamline data integration. Its BPM is very strong and powerful. The solution helps us manage digital transformation.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Built.io Flow?
webMethods.io is expensive. We have multiple components, and you need to pay for each of them.
What needs improvement with Built.io Flow?
webMethods.io needs to incorporate ChatGPT to enhance user experience. It can offer a customized user experience.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Built.io Flow, webMethods Integration Server, webMethods Trading Networks, webMethods ActiveTransfer, webMethods.io API
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cargill, Zillow, Ferrari, WeWork, Healthcare.gov, Yahoo! Japan, Giphy, SkyScanner
Cisco, Agralogics, Dreamforce, Cables & Sensors, Sacramento Kings
Find out what your peers are saying about Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. webMethods.io and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,589 professionals have used our research since 2012.