Kong Gateway Enterprise Reviews

I lead the integration practices in my organization and have been working in integration for the past 16 years, managing API integrations with various API manager tools such as Kong Enterprise.

We are primarily using Kong for the API gateway functionality. For example, we've had a couple of mobile applications with outbound traffic where we would use the Kong Enterprise gateway to expose the API by applying authorization, authentication, and other security policies.

We have also used Kong for role-based access control mechanism (RBAC) and integrated it with our enterprise directory in order provide it with this form of access control.

There was another particular use case in which we performed some customization, as well. In that scenario, we wrote a Lua script on top of Kong to add an AppDynamics plugin to our web server, for observability and monitoring purposes. 

Kong has been used over a large user base, not only because it's an enterprise application, but also because the mobile applications we worked with were B2C-based in the retail industry, so the number of users was quite high.

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.

Another nice aspect of Kong Enterprise is the ability to customize it with Lua script, such as when we developed a way to provide observability for our web server with AppDynamics. 

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.

I have used Kong Enterprise for a year and a half.

I don't recall that we have faced any challenges in terms of stability. It has been a good, solid implementation.

It is scalable in the sense that, as we started putting things onto the cloud, we added one application and then we scaled up the same instance with Kong for multiple applications, which was where we served everything. And since it was a mobile B2C application focused on the retail sector, the number of users was quite high.

The tech support was good. We mainly used them when we needed help with our Lua plugin installation and they were responsive to our needs. The team we dealt with were based in Singapore.

We previously tried using Apigee, but for our needs, Kong was the right solution.

The setup wasn't that simple. There was definitely a learning curve because Lua as a language was new to us and so we had to learn about Lua script first. At the same time, we also faced some other challenges in the implementation where we had to ask for professional support from Kong Enterprise.

The technical team working on our Kong deployment included three or four people on the infrastructure side and another two or three involved in development.

I don't have any information on licensing costs currently.

We also evaluated different options such as those provided by Mulesoft and others.

Kong Enterprise is a good API gateway and API management product which is based on lightweight and high-performance software. However, there will likely be a learning curve for beginners because they are using Lua script, which is not that popular. Regardless, anybody coming from a core software and integration background should be okay.

It's always good to keep in mind that you should use Kong for the purpose it is meant for, rather than overloading it or overburdening it with use cases that are not appropriate.

I would rate Kong Enterprise a nine out of ten.

I use the solution in my company since we build our own products by using Spring Boot, Python and FastAPI. We mainly use the tool to monitor and provide security on top of those APIs.

The most valuable features of the solution are proxies and API monetization.

The tool needs to improve in areas like documentation and UI. The product needs to have good documentation and a good UI where we can see the other features. It was difficult for our company to understand the document when we needed to do some research and development work, which was some sort of a challenge we faced earlier. The tool should put efforts into the documentation, which can help the developer to develop products that the community is going to use in the future.

Additional features like offering good analytics performance and enhancing Kong Gateway Enterprise with GenAI capabilities can be helpful.

I have been using Kong Gateway Enterprise since 2018. I do not remember the tool's version. My company operates as an implementor and service provider of the tool.

In terms of stability, the tool's team has made some good efforts, and my company is very happy with the product's approach.

I rate the stability an eight to nine out of ten.

At the moment, we have ten people using the tool. Before COVID-19, we had a great team of around thirty members. Currently, we have a small team.

Scalability is part of the product. When we deploy the tool on any cloud, Docker supports the scaling process, both horizontally and vertically.

Basically, my company uses the tool's open-source version. I don't think we connected with any of the technical team members of the tool. We will get in touch with the team only if we go with the licensing model.

I have used Apigee, WSO2, and Microsoft's API gateway, along with some commercial tools like MuleSoft and Boomi. The tools were used as a part of the implementations done for our customers.

Considering that my company has experience with other products that are similar to Kong Gateway Enterprise, I can say that there is only a difference of a percentage or two between all the solutions, making it all the same for our organization.

I am an enterprise architect who is involved in everything from design to deployment.

For the product's initial setup phase, my company has a DevOps team that implements the APIs. The DevOps teams take care of containerization and ensure that everything is connected, which is like a general life cycle in any project. All the different teams, like the development teams, DevOps teams, admin teams, and DB teams, don't see any issues in the tool because all of the implementations are taken care of by all the teams. My company did not work with the team from Kong Gateway Enterprise.

Our organization supports Docker and containerization, so our company can put in some stuff related to Kong Gateway Enterprise outside of Docker containers.

My company chose the open-source model of the tool.

My company evaluated Kong Gateway Enterprise against WSO2, after which we started using it.

The performance and speed of the gateways created with the tool are both good.

My company used one or two plugins that Kong made available for Kong Gateway Enterprise.

If I were to assess Kong Gateway Enterprise for its speed of innovation through its version updates, I would say that it is a good tool. Its features are the reason why we shortlisted it as an open-source API management solution.

I did not check if the design of the gateway infrastructure helps achieve high gateway uptime. We have our own product, where we are developing a lot of APIs, and we want to deploy them through a gateway that takes care of routing and security. That was the intention that could stop not going with commercial tools like the Apigee or Microsoft's API gateway. My company thought of choosing Kong Gateway Enterprise to containerize and deploy our products.

The ease of the tool's update process is good.

I did not work with Kong Gateway Enterprise's team when my company was in the transition phase. We referred to the documentation.

I recommend the tool to others.

I rate the tool a seven 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. 

My company uses Kong Enterprise for ISC, so if we need data in one place or one application, we use the solution to retrieve the data with the help of REST API.

The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it seamlessly supports a vast number of tools. The integration capabilities the tool offers are smooth, and I don't see any hiccups there.

There is a tool called Apigee. Apigee has a portal where you can inspect the APIs and do a live tracing of the API, features that are missing in Kong Enterprise and Azure API Management. I am unsure if something else needs to be considered for improvement. Kong Enterprise fails to provide live tracing of the APIs, which is possible nowadays. With live tracing of the APIs, you can see how the request is going and where it gets stuck, what the actual input was, what the response is, and all that information we can see with the help of live requests, which is impossible in Kong Enterprise. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement in the solution. With Kong Enterprise, you can examine after the fact, but why it happens can't be examined.

I have experience with Kong Enterprise. My company is a customer of the solution.

The solution has been stable so far in my company.

I can't comment on the solution's stability since my company is still in its development phase.

For support, a group was created with the help of Microsoft Teams. My company hasn't contacted the actual support team of Kong Enterprise.

I have used Apigee in the past. You can do the live tracing of APIs in Apigee, but it is not possible in Kong Enterprise.

The solution's deployment was done in a couple of weeks.

Our company has not gone live with the product since we are still in the solution's development phase.

The solution's deployment model has changed from an on-premises to a cloud one.

It was not my company but our company's service provider who gave us Kong Enterprise.

Kong Enterprise is a good solution with a few missing features, especially the one provided by Apigee, which is the live tracing of APIs.

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.

We had worked for a client from the travel industry who wanted to propose an API manager. They had built microservices on Java and another integration tool. They wanted to apply policies, register their APIs in the API manager, and enforce policies and plugins, like client ID, client secret, throttling, rate limiting, and protocol transformation. The client wanted to apply these things to their APIs.

Protocol transformation is the most valuable feature of Kong Enterprise.

Kong Enterprise allows a lot of customizations that provide a specific UI experience for each client.

The solution should include policy features that are available in other solutions like MuleSoft API manager but missing in Kong Enterprise.

I have been using Kong Enterprise for the past six to eight months.

We have not seen any stability issues so far with Kong Enterprise. None of our customers have reported any issues with the solution.

Kong Enterprise is a scalable solution.

No setup is required for Kong Enterprise because it has a complete cloud setup. You pay for a license, get credentials, and start registering your API and applying policies. It's completely cloud-based. We also have some open-source options where you set up the API manager on your Kubernetes clusters or dockers and register your API in the on-prem Kong API manager.

The solution requires maintenance, but I haven’t heard of any maintenance challenges so far.

A user's decision to choose Kong Enterprise or MuleSoft varies from use case to use case. Users should do a detailed technical assessment before choosing Kong Enterprise, MuleSoft API manager, or any other API manager tools available in the market.

Overall, I rate Kong Enterprise an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case for this solution is API management.

The route limiting feature is very valuable.

The product could be improved by making the scaling up process easier. For example, it becomes difficult if you try to scale it up to multiple clusters.

We have been using this solution for approximately three years.

The process of scaling up with this product is difficult. We have a small company, and about 20 people are working with this product, and approximately five people are maintaining it.

We have had a good experience with customer service and support. Initially, we used to have challenges, but thanks to a third-party vendor who developed a plugin called Konger, a UI dashboard, we can interact easily with Kong. However, it is not an official plugin.

The initial setup was straightforward.

The implementation process is easy because we have our own documented script, which automatically deploys it out of the box, depending on which environment we choose.

The product price is higher than similar products. Fortunately, a community version is available.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. The solution is good, but the scaling up process could be improved. I recommend new users store Kong Enterprise on a Red Hat-certified operating system, so they don't have challenges managing the binaries. Additionally, I would advise them always to use Kong Enterprise alongside a proxy so they have more extensible integration in terms of routing. I enjoyed using the Mongo DB, the Cassandra DB offering, and the Postgres DB offering as the database of choice because it becomes highly scalable and writes fast. Hence, I found that deploying and choosing Cassandra DB made it much faster to run.

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 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.

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. 

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.