Kong Gateway Enterprise Reviews

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.

Within Kong Gateway Enterprise, we utilize Kong Ingress and the Com API Gateway. It offers a wide range of plugins that we leverage, including OIDC, Rate Limiting, Lambda functions, and more. We also configure multiple deployments and utilize plugins like the OIDC Registration plugin for authentication and authorization. Additionally, we ensure schema validation for incoming requests and utilize security scanning. Kong Gateway provides a Request Transformer plugin that allows us to add or remove header values as needed.

Upgrading Kong Gateway Enterprise should be more sophisticated and innovative. The main issue is with the update process. Our DevOps and admin teams need to update multiple files, which is cumbersome. For instance, in cases where Palantir countries are involved, they have to update many files, which is not ideal. However, for other tasks like configuring the message routing and services and handling all the configurations, the process is acceptable.

The software version upgrade process should be improved. Additionally, the DevOps portal should be integrated more natively. There are a few other areas for improvement, such as implementing automatic load balancing. The status of the office team, whether it is up or down, should be checked at the API gateway level to facilitate load balancing. 

I have been using Kong Gateway Enterprise as a partner for three years.

It is scalable. 5,000 people are using this solution. We need 10 administrators to manage this solution.

When architects work, there should be some flexibility. We are currently receiving support from both the AWS and the Kong sites. You can raise the ticket immediately on the AWS site, and people will get involved quickly. However, Kong's support is not as good. They tend to have market delays, and tickets are not addressed promptly, which is a problem with Kong's support. I can give 75 points out of 100.

There are multiple options in the market, such as Apigee. We opted for Kong because it's scalable to meet our needs and integrates well with our technical stack. Therefore, we recommend adopting it quickly.

We had to develop the image for Kong Gateway Enterprise. In AWS, there's a concept of imaging, so we needed to focus on that. We must scan the image for security and ensure all necessary measures are in place. Therefore, we must first create the image and proceed with deployment and other related tasks.

Pricing is fine.

We use plugins for Kong Gateway for authorization and authentication. It supports connectivity with IDP providers to enable authentication and authorization. There are request plugins available to handle validation and inspect incoming requests. Most importantly, the OIDC plugin, consumer plugin, rate limiting plugin, schema validation plugin, and request validation plugin are some of the key plugins.

Version upgrades should be more sophisticated and innovative. Currently, the upgrade process lacks efficiency and could be improved. Previous versions required significant effort to update and should be made easier. The process needs to be streamlined, reducing the complexity and number of steps involved.

High gateway uptime is okay. It ensures high uptime for your gateways, although some latency may occur due to the added layer of processing. The benefits of using a gateway, such as enhanced security and control, outweigh the drawbacks. The gateway acts as an intermediary, preventing direct access to microservices by requiring traffic to pass through it. This setup enables features like authorization and authentication, including integration with IDPs. The gateway can handle these processes before forwarding requests to the microservices.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of 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. 

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.

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.

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.