MuleSoft API Manager Reviews

We use MuleSoft API Manager effectively to manage traffic, especially in scenarios where we need to control access to sensitive data for public bodies. By implementing the API gateway, we ensure traffic control and enhance security for personal data APIs. This solution provides a layer of control and security without changing our existing technology stack. It also helps in managing traffic for mobile applications, ensuring seamless consumption of our services while applying necessary policies for governance.

The most effective features of Anypoint API Manager for policy enforcement include security enforcement, rate limiting, client enforcement, traffic control, service level agreement policies, and caching policies. These features provide a comprehensive set of tools to ensure governance and security across our APIs, enabling us to meet the diverse needs of our clients effectively.

To improve Anypoint API Manager for the next release, it should focus on better consumption scalability, especially for smaller APIs. The current model doesn't perform well for APIs with lower volumes, impacting their efficiency. Enhancing consumption scalability about capacity and transaction volume would greatly improve the overall usability and effectiveness of the product.

I have been working with MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager for a year and a half.

I would rate the scalability of MuleSoft Anypoint as a seven out of ten. We have approximately 20 users of the solution at our company.

For the initial setup experience with MuleSoft's Anypoint, I would rate the easiness of the setup at five out of ten. While we hoped for a quicker and smoother setup process, we encountered some complications and challenges.

The deployment process for MuleSoft's Anypoint takes varying amounts of time depending on factors like our organization's architecture and familiarity with the technology. It wasn't always straightforward due to the complexities involved, such as integrating with Kubernetes.

While I find MuleSoft's product to be expensive, I believe in paying for value. If the product delivers as expected and provides excellent performance without issues, then the price can be justified. Currently, I'm not fully satisfied with the value of the price, but I'm hopeful that it will improve.

Integrating API Manager with other systems like Flex Gateway is straightforward, but with brands like Fabric or Anypoint, it's a bit more complex. We need to adapt our approach and mindset, as it requires a different philosophy and development approach.

Overall, I would rate MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager as a seven out of ten.

Our primary use case is API connectivity when integrating different systems or applications with the help of the API. There is a very robust API architecture that helps in directing different applications. In the B2B space, they have come up with a new offering, which is a partner manager, that helps to have the B2B integration with any EDI, X12, or any other B2B transactions. 

I believe the API connectivity within the cloud marketplace is most valuable. There are a lot of services available in the form of services or microservices, which are exposed via the API. Currently, API connectivity has become a mainstream integration. When you go to the B2B space where they have the partner ecosystem, there are a lot of suppliers and vendors there. Integrating them seamlessly for your supply chain or for your inventory management creates an efficient team of partners.

I think that they can bring some transparency in reference to the terms of the microservices architecture. It is already there, but it is not obvious. 

I have been working with Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager for the past seven to eight years.

We have not seen many tickets which tells us it is very stable.

Everything is on the cloud and it is very scalable. We have around one thousand five hundred users onboard.

I think that technical support is good. They are coming out with a community edition as well as an enterprise edition. If you have full enterprise support, they are pretty responsive. 

Positive

The setup was great. Depending upon the size of the program, and the number of integrations that you are having, you will keep on adding the people based on the business requirement.

If you have a strong engineering background and capability, then you can setup everything into automation where you can have three processes. When the pipeline is setup, then the deployment can be easy. They call a C4E Center for Enablement, which helps in terms of setting up the right practices, platform, governance, and best practices.

I think that it is pretty expensive. It is very innovative in terms of multiple licensing options out there. So, depending upon the need of the organization, they can offer different kinds of licensing. 

I would rate Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager a nine out of ten.

We use the solution for process orchestration. We have some upstream and downstream systems, and the orchestration happens there with the help of MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager.

MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager is a low-code product. You can build an API with Python or Java as well. Since it's a low-code tool, you can easily develop an API and expose it to the consumers. The solution's data view coding language is easier to use than other languages.

The solution should facilitate the creation of custom connectors for use cases where a user would require extra connectors. This will make it easier for the user to use the product.

I haven't suffered many breakdowns or security issues with the solution. Nowadays, we are using CloudHub. However, we faced some stability issues when we previously used RTF (Runtime Fabric).

MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager is a scalable solution. More than 50 people use the tool in our organization.

The solution’s initial setup is easy.

MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager is an expensive solution.

I would recommend the solution to other users because it is easy to use. However, users should first consider the solution's high license cost. Depending on the execution, the solution is worth the money. New users will find the solution easy to use.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We could employ it for tasks like access control and other minor functions like controlling licenses using an API gateway alongside SS rules.

It is a good management tool for controlling purposes.

Since most components are situated in the cloud, there's one particular hosted in the cloud. This presents a considerable challenge. While all other components are implemented on-premises, this specific one isn't permitted to be hosted in the cloud as per customer requirements. Shifting this component to an on-premises environment requires a significant effort. 

I have been using MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager for more than two years.

It is a stable product. 

Regarding scalability, I have some uncertainty. During our interaction with the vendor, they introduced us to the possibility of running MuleSoft within a Kubernetes environment. If we can leverage this approach, it could potentially enhance scalability. However, during the testing phase, I found that the implementation process was rather complex.

I would rate the scalability seven out of ten.

The support is satisfactory.

Neutral

It is complicated. I would rate it three out of ten. We collaborated with professional service experts based in Hong Kong. When delving into the architectural aspects, it became apparent that the setup was intricate. Consequently, we relied on their assistance for both the installation process and the architectural design. The project itself extended over a considerable duration, not solely due to its length but also because it involved multiple components.

It is extremely high, and I would rate it one out of ten.

Personally, I find this to be a satisfactory option. I would rate the product seven out of ten.

Our primary use case for the solution is managing all the new APIs, and we deploy the solution on cloud.

We were trying to integrate, and we were trying to expose ourselves to external B2B scenarios. So we exposed our APIs overall and new API management. We found it easy to configure partners. It also allows us to create a new client secret, providing access limits, rate limits and more by splitting it into multiple tiers of services.

The integration of API management with security features is valuable. For example, communication security is very strong, and it automatically decrypts your images and encrypts your messages during communication. In addition, it provides different kinds of policies you can apply, which is just a plug-and-play configurable, which is very easy.

Monetization and cataloging can be improved. So we are looking for monetization to understand how well we can catalogue.

We have been using the solution for approximately four years and are currently using the latest version.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable. Currently, all our developers use API Manager.

We have had a good experience with customer service and support. I rate them ten out of ten.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We implemented the solution with an in-house team.

We have seen a return on investment.

I rate the solution eight out of ten. I advise new users to ensure they are configuring security as it is the most important key to success.

We primarily use the solution for our APIs. We are moving from monoliths to API architecture and we have approximately 10,000 to 12,000 APIs across banks, which are hosted on this product. It also provides us a gateway service to ingress the traffic as well as whole policy management where stuff is taken care of from the PC Any Point. It also has some API-level runtime policy management, which we use.

The gateway service to ingress the traffic is great. 

The whole policy management has been great. 

It has some API-level runtime policy management, which is useful for us.

The solution is extremely mature.

You can scale the solution.

The only drawback is that, due to the fact that we are going into a completely API structured way of working, it is very tightly coupled with the vendor solutions. For example, the run times. What happens is when you have to do a change or you have to do anything, you have to rip off all the APIs and rebuild it.

If you see the features, they are really good in one sense, however, they have a certain drawback when you get into the operational way of working. We definitely need APIs to have policies at runtime. They provide a feature where there's a lot of policy on authorizations, however, the only problem is the runtime. 

When the runtime upgrades, we have to basically publish a new build pack and then do all the rebundling. When we were 2000, 3000 APIs, it was okay. However, when you start going up to 10,000 to 12,000 APIs, it was too much.

The whole cost is an issue. Deploying to production is not a very easy job in that bank as we go through the whole change process. The whole tight coupling of the product is a problem. 

As a bank, we didn't want to take any risk of getting so much tightly coupled with any vendor product. It should be replaceable as required. That's the only reason we are now changing products.

The upgrade is a very messy process. Mule 3.X to 4 or 4.2 requires you have to rewrite the APIs. It is not just upgrading the build pack with a runtime. That is something that gets us scared a lot. They came back and told us when we move to four run times we had to upgrade. You had to rewrite the APIs. The APIs cannot just work in a straightforward manner. There is a lot of change and we have approximately 5% Mule APIs and then the rest are boot APIs. While, now, that means 5,000 APIs need rewiring, after two years, we might have 20,000 APIs. They should have a proper way of having backward compatibility.

The initial setup is complex. 

If they are going with that control pane in a cloud, which is a very good feature and it is a managed service, they should give it 24/7, 100% uptime. They should also spin it across multiple regions. Currently, they are just the US and the EU is coming up. However, they should add, for example, China or Asia, et cetera. We operate in more than nearly 40 countries. Every country has a lot of its own governance and compliance and regulatory checks or some, where we cannot host to the cloud.

We have used the solution for three and a half to four years at this point.

We have a massive set up and definitely, there are sometimes a few issues, which come here and there, however, we manage to build a resiliency inside that.

We have scaled from a few hundred APIs to 10,000 APIs. Just on the retail part, the gateway service runs more than 125 million transactions per day. It's a huge setup we have. 

The only drawback back again is that their gateways are pretty heavy on hardware. Therefore, we spend a lot of money on the hardware. If you compare with Kong, Kong actually can just replace everything with two VMs. We have 500 VMs running for us as gateways. It has scalability, however, it will cost you, which is a problem.

Technical support has been helpful. There were also people embedded in my team.

We are migrating from Mule to Kong now. We just have signed the contracts and we are basically getting the thing set up. It is a big project and it is going to take maybe another three to four months to roll it out to non-production and maybe another five months into production as we need to get everything in compliance and clear.

The initial setup, if you go back three or three and a half years, definitely, for us, was complex. As a bank, we run through a lot of securities. Since then, they have matured the process. They worked with us, to do some upgrades. Kong also will have to do a few things for us, once we migrate. Currently, we are already finding some issues, which Kong is trying to help us and fix it. However, Mule took a bit of time to set up. If we were to do it now, it would be easy. 

They have come up with API management and cloud hub, which is the manual service. We have not used it much, however, there are some use cases from a different part of the bank that tried it out. It's a good option as you get rid of the whole operational management side of the whole control pane. The control pane we are running is a PC 1.7.3 or something, which is old and coming up on the end of support.

The cloud hub may solve the problem of the control pane, even though they have some issues with the maintenance windows and stuff. Due to the fact that the policies are cast in the control pane, and run times can struggle, if the control pane goes down or needs maintenance because we need a hundred percent of availability in some way or other, it needs to be resilient also. The maintenance windows can cause trouble for us in banking.

We originally signed a three-year licensing agreement.

There's room for improvement on the licensing. They could do better.

I'm not sure I would recommend the solution to everyone. The approach we have taken is, we have moved out completely from the Mule APIs to Spring Boot APIs. We will decouple the whole vendor locking and stuff. However, it depends on the use case for each company. There is no good and bad product. These guys are both very mature products. Depending upon the use case, you will have to consider how you will handle scaling, for example, or other challenges. 

Everything has a drawback and plus and minus, so pros and cons. Even Kong is a new product. It may be a good performer, and very lightweight, with low infrastructure needs. We don't know. 

Our cyber is very strong. Like us, people will have to evaluate, depending upon their use cases, all the pros and cons of security and see how it fits. 

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

I have dealt with a few use cases involving MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager, but I am unsure whether its features are useful in my company. The tool is useful for the governance of APIs that I have created with some policies, like SLA-based policies or rate-limiting policies. In general, it is an advanced product.

The main reason for using MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager is that the company's external systems inside the customers' ecosystem need to be publicly called APIs by providing the paid version of API so that anyone can access the endpoints from the internet. In our company, we need some tools to configure who can or can't call you while being able to control the amount of calls, irrespective of how many they are. In our company, the tool becomes useful to make five calls per minute with our current license.

The most valuable features of the solution for securing APIs stem from the tool's ability to allow users to deploy policies.

The tool already can solve the problems for which it was designed, and it is really hard to have any thoughts over what can be improved in the product, as it is a very niche task.

The product's price should be available for public review since it is not currently available for others to see, making it one of the areas where the product has certain shortcomings. The product's price is revealed only when you contact MuleSoft Anypoint.

I have experience with MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager for a year.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

My company deals with clients having small and medium businesses.

I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

I rate the product's initial setup phase a nine out of ten.

Experienced developers can deploy the product in a day.

The product is expensive.

Speaking about how MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager helps in the area of API lifecycle management, I would say that API Manager can be considered the last step after you have established all your systems in your environment. It is useful to configure some small details in areas like rate limiting.

The monitoring part of the tool is not needed for simple solutions. The monitoring part of the tool is required when you have a large ecosystem of different software applications. The tool helps monitor when your systems slow down. I don't have experience with the tool's monitoring part.

The benefit of the policy management feature in MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager ensures that your APIs are secured. The tool also provides our company with very flexible control when it comes to the usage by our clients.

I rate MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager's support for my organization's digital transformation efforts a ten out of ten.

I have no special recommendations for those who plan to use the product. The tool is used by technical developers for development purposes.

I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.

The use cases are regarding telecommunication provisioning. Another aspect involves managing logistics, which includes connecting suppliers and the company's partners.

MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager is initially complex to utilize, but it provides extensive control over various capabilities. This means it can create high-cost solutions, allowing for a great deal of customization to make it well-suited for specific needs.   

When discussing potential enhancements overall, it primarily involves making it more user-friendly and lowering the pricing. There are several aspects that could benefit from improvement, or perhaps a few other areas to consider.

I have been using MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager for the past five years.

It is stable and has no problems. 

It is scalable and appropriate for every enterprise.

I have no experience with tech support.

The ease of maintenance depends on how you design your solution. You should consider having a team, typically consisting of four or five members for maintenance.

Comparing Mulesoft with Microsoft, MuleSoft has an advantage in the sense that it offers an all-in-one solution, while with Microsoft, it's more like dealing with numerous separate components. So, you have to figure out which specific components you need and how to connect them, almost like a toolkit that provides options to connect and integrate different things. It can be a bit challenging to determine which one is the most suitable for your needs in Microsoft's case. While you can build nearly anything with it, there's always a search for better methods to achieve your goals.

When considering the adoption of MuleSoft, it's important to take into account the expenses, including the licensing costs and the time and costs associated with training to become proficient in using it. On the other hand, starting with Azure might offer a more straightforward path to expansion and growth.