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Kong Gateway Enterprise pros and cons

Vendor: Kong
4.0 out of 5

Pros & Cons summary

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Kong Gateway Enterprise excels at combining an intrusion prevention system with firewall and antivirus capabilities.
It features excellent plugin support, notably OIDC, Rate Limiting, and Lambda functions, enhancing its flexibility and utility.
The platform offers significant benefits in authentication and authorization, especially with role-based access control (RBAC).
Its capability to seamlessly integrate with various security tools boosts its overall value.
Kong Gateway Enterprise demonstrates remarkable speed, stability, and resiliency, especially under heavy usage.

CONS

OS upgrades are infrequent and bulky, and the software version upgrade process should be improved.
Integration with existing tools is challenging, requiring more effort than implementing MuleSoft or Azure APIM.
Pricing is a significant concern, with costs starting at hundreds of thousands of dollars, necessitating improvements in pricing strategies.
Kong Enterprise should include policy features available in other management systems and improve live tracing capabilities.
Technical support team response time needs improvement, and Kong Enterprise would benefit from enhanced documentation.
 

Kong Gateway Enterprise Pros review quotes

BT
Digital Architect at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jul 28, 2019
This is a solid intrusion prevention system that combines a firewall and antivirus in a single solution.
reviewer1298580 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Digital Delivery at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Mar 25, 2020
In our buying companies' perspective, it was easier to use compared to other platforms. The markets were pretty familiar with the solutions.
reviewer1455135 - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President – Technology and Architecture at a venture capital & private equity firm with 51-200 employees
Dec 1, 2020
Good at intercepting traffic and modeling APIs around that.
Learn what your peers think about Kong Gateway Enterprise. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.
881,757 professionals have used our research since 2012.
ASHOK YADAV - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Architect at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Oct 6, 2021
Kong Enterprise has excellent plugin support.
ItielMaayan - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Architect at AT&T
Apr 13, 2022
I like everything about it. It provides the security we need.
AP
Manager Information Systems at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Aug 24, 2022
The most valuable features of Kong Enterprise are the out-of-the-box open source easy functionality.
AmitKanodia - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud & Integration CoE Head at Capgemini
Sep 2, 2022
There are a few features that I like about Kong when it comes to authentication and authorization. Specifically, being able to use Kong for role-based access control (RBAC), and then further being able to integrate the RBAC mechanism with our enterprise directory, was very useful.
PM
Non-Corporate Consultant at Absa Group Ltd
Sep 20, 2022
The route limiting feature is very valuable.
KM
Director Of Engineering at INtegralzone
Nov 16, 2022
The solution provides good performance.
Buchibabu Kotagiri - PeerSpot reviewer
Technology Analyst at Taashee
Aug 21, 2023
We use the solution for load-balancing, caching, and rate-limiting APIs.
 

Kong Gateway Enterprise Cons review quotes

BT
Digital Architect at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jul 28, 2019
The OS upgrades are not as frequent as they should be and they are bulky.
reviewer1298580 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Digital Delivery at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Mar 25, 2020
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.
reviewer1455135 - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President – Technology and Architecture at a venture capital & private equity firm with 51-200 employees
Dec 1, 2020
They could focus more on pricing.
Learn what your peers think about Kong Gateway Enterprise. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.
881,757 professionals have used our research since 2012.
ASHOK YADAV - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Architect at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Oct 6, 2021
Because it is open-source, it should be less expensive than others.
ItielMaayan - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Architect at AT&T
Apr 13, 2022
We would like to see an automatic data API when we have a table in the database.
AP
Manager Information Systems at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Aug 24, 2022
Kong Enterprise can improve the customization to be able to do the integration properly.
AmitKanodia - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud & Integration CoE Head at Capgemini
Sep 2, 2022
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.
PM
Non-Corporate Consultant at Absa Group Ltd
Sep 20, 2022
It becomes difficult if you try to scale it up to multiple clusters.
KM
Director Of Engineering at INtegralzone
Nov 16, 2022
The developer portal needs to be improved.
Buchibabu Kotagiri - PeerSpot reviewer
Technology Analyst at Taashee
Aug 21, 2023
We are facing issues with the solution's features like reports and traffic analysis.