MuleSoft API Manager Reviews

We utilized Mulesoft API Management for a learning management system and content management system for the education sector.

We used the latest version of this solution. It was deployed on a hybrid Azure cloud.

There are around 200 people using this solution.

The security features are good. It's easy to configure the end-to-end integration with existing applications.

There should be more pricing options or certain discounts for the education sector.

I used this solution for about six months. I work as a cloud solution architect for a few companies.

It's stable.

We didn't utilize the scalability features.

Technical support is good. I was already working in Mulesoft, so I didn't require any technical help.

I'm a technical guy, so it was pretty straightforward by reading the documents.

Deployment took five months.

I was working as an architect. After that, they got their own in-house development team, and I handed over the entire project to them to manage the deployment and further development.

There were two people on the development team, and I was working as a cloud solution architect, so the whole team was three people.

I would rate this solution 8 out of 10.

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.

We are solution integrators and this is one of the products that we implement for our clients.

It is used for integrating and logging data from legacy systems to make it available for other systems within the IT infrastructure in the enterprise. It is also used for data migration and making it available for customers, devices, services, and so on.

Essentially, it is for data governance and API governance.

The most valuable things about this solution are how it is implemented and managed, and that it is vendor-free.

For system integrators and analysts, it is pretty clear how this system works.

The documentation is great; it is always up to date and well-presented. If any details are missing then there is a blog available that contains a lot of details. There are also channels on YouTube to help you better understand the solution and what some of the processes look like.

The initial setup is very complex.

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

This solution is stable but it is important to remember that it is the glue between other systems that might have issues with instability. The MuleSoft platform connects all of the systems together and collects data from different sources to create new types of data and new statistics.

In general, it is used on a daily basis and most of the time, it's stable.

Scalability is perfect. The API Manager is used by large clients and is made to be scaled.

I have never been in contact with technical support. It is not often that something goes wrong.

I have worked with other API management systems such as those by Kong and Tyk. Each vendor has its own functionality that you need to know about so that you can work with effectively.

The initial setup is complex compared to solutions such as Kong or Tyk. There are many things to keep in mind concerning configuration, features, and different options for different systems. I would say that overall, it is very complex.

When all of the requirements are well defined, well described, clear, and consistent, the implementation is fast and can be done in a matter of weeks.

Maintenance only needs to be done when there is a change in business or operational processes. Also, there are some updates that are required but usually not many.

The licensing fees are approximately $80,000 USD per year and there are costs for additional functionality, as well as premiums for connectors to systems such as Oracle and SAP.  You're not obligated but it is better to buy premium and official connectors, although they cost approximately $25,000 per year.

My advice to anybody who is considering this solution is to first make sure that there are no alternatives that are most cost-effective, such as open-source products. Many of them are much cheaper but are still able to provide the same relevant functionality and the same level of data security.

I would say that MuleSoft has the best API manager but it is not the cheapest one and as such, not for everybody. It is not everyone who needs to connect expensive systems together.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

I am offering consulting services to help clients build the API. I am not involved in the deployment or anything behind the API.

We are using the Anypoint component for the integration layer which is not specific to the API management.

Its best feature is that its plugins are somewhat unique in the market. We have budgets, prime membership, and pre-plugins available in the marketplace that we can use immediately.

I believe there is an issue with MuleSoft, specifically the studio, it is very slow.

The performance could be faster. Their studio performance is very slow, and it requires a lot of memory which should be improved. 

It is not as compatible as other options available.

You would like to improve studio performance in the next release.

I have been working with Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager for three years.

Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager is very stable.

Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager is a scalable product.

We have 300 users in our company, and we use approximately 10,000,000 hits per day.

We will definitely increase our usage. It should be standard as a requirement model. It's not specific. We have a capability team, and the capability team gives us access to that information. We have a plan, but we cannot provide specific data numbers because of time constraints.

The technical support is very good. One of the best things about MuleSoft is its community. They provide support if you raise an issue in the MuleSoft community they will respond. Anyone who is available will respond and resolve your query as soon as possible.

I was not involved in the installation.

Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis.

Definitely, I will recommend Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager over IBM App Connect.

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

We use it for integration with backend applications. We use it to connect to applications like SAP databases, or Infomatica Collibra or MongoDB, and some other backend applications.

One good thing about MuleSoft, is that they have a lot of connectors to those backend applications. We don't really need to write code to be able to connect to a database or to connect with SAP. You just need credentials and the connectivity details. Most of the development of what we do is just drag and drop. They're able to connect with applications using standard connectors that are provided by ESB, by MuleSoft.

The initial setup is very straightforward.

The solution has been very stable.

Technical support has been great.

If you want to see the full-fledged functionality of their analytics engine, you have to pay separately for that. It's not the case with, for example, Apigee. That is out of the box. For MuleSoft, then you need to specifically pay an additional licensing fee be able to get the benefits of the analytics.

It would be ideal if they had full-fledged features out of the box versus having to pay for them separately. 

I have five years of experience using this product.

The product offers a very stable platform. We've had a couple of issues, however, it's a stable platform overall. Due to the API, there may be some buggy codes. We have not had any major issues, and, if we do, the technical support is very responsive to our queries.  

Technical support has been excellent. Whenever we've had to contend with a bug, they have been very helpful at assisting us. We're very satisfied with their level of service. They are extremely responsive and very knowledgeable.

The initial setup is very straightforward. It's much more straightforward, that, for example, Apigee, which is more difficult to execute.

The product added a lot of value to the organization. Usually, all integrations are point to point. For example, if Informatica needs the information from SAP or SAP from PeopleSoft,  they have point to point connection. Due to the fact that we are able to handle connectivity using MuleSoft, it's actually reusable for applications. Therefore, once we connect to SAP, we don't need to deal with that connectivity again. Any other application that needs to connect to SAP reuses the same API that we have developed on this platform. They don't really need to develop a new set of API.

The solution makes users pay integration fees.

You need to pay extra to get proper analytics. It's a separate fee.

MuleSoft has both ESB as well as the API management platform. 

We are implementors.

We are one major version behind. We are not using the latest version of the solution.

We deploy on-prem and we also have deployment on our own AWS OSSIE code infrastructure.

It might be cheaper for someone to implement MuleSoft on-prem rather than on the cloud. With the on-prem version, we can deploy as many applications as we want on the on-prem version, provided the infrastructure is able to support it. However, for cloud-based deployments, they end up charging more.

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

Our first primary use case for this solution are APIs based in MuleSoft. It's natural to use the MuleSoft API manager for MuleSoft APIs. We also use this solution's API manager to manage non-MuleSoft APIs in environments based on the MuleSoft platform. It functions as a kind of API gateway for us.

The feature I found most valuable is the ability to add a central place for managing your policies for APIs. This makes our life easier and enables central monitoring.

I would like to see MuleSoft expand the range of APIs you can manage with it beyond HTTP, GIPC, and others.

I have been using MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager for about six months.

I would rate the stability of this solution a 10, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the least stable, and 10 being the most stable.

My impression is that this product is quite scalable. I would rate its scalability an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

I have not had any contact with their technical support team.

The initial setup was relatively easy. I would rate it a 10, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the hardest and 10 being the easiest. The deployment process was done with an in-house team of three people.

We have seen a return on investment but not from the product itself, but rather from the platform. If you adopt the whole platform, you can build composable applications. This will cut your time creating new applications and updating them – once you have everything running – by up to 50%.

I would rate the pricing of this solution a seven, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best. My opinion is that it's a bit expensive but they do offer a lot.

The advice I would give to anybody looking to try this product is: if you have a lab, test out all the MuleSoft features to make sure that they will bring what you need into your environment. I would say that with any product. It's always good to have a list of requirements and make sure that the product does what you want.

Our primary use case for this solution is for infestation and backend services. It is also a gateway. We use it heavily because Azure offers better pricing than its competitors. 

In addition, we use MuleSoft to run APIs. 

I can explain how this solution helped our organization through an example. Let's say, I want to buy my home insurance. I'd go to the market for the digital product and get a quote. Upon accepting the offer, I'll go through payment and then a three-step process for binding. After that, documents will be released to me in a multi-step process. MuleSoft provides a lot of the visualization and you are able to do the mapping and confirmations. It powers some of the connectors out of the box and you're able to connect to the different endpoints. You do not need to write many core basis and this is a great advantage.

The most valuable features of this solution are the Acura Station and the API Gateway.

The cost model could be improved.

I have been using this solution for around two years now.

I would rate the stability of this solution an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

I would rate the scalability of this solution an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

I would rate the pricing model of this solution a four, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the most expensive and 10 being the best pricing.

Overall, I would rate this solution an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

I am an enterprise architect.  I work with Anypoint API Manager and MQ as part of my role in MuleSoft projects.

Typically, the customers use it to capture events from Salesforce in the auto industry, sending these events to their backend systems. They mainly process events from Salesforce.

The ease of maintaining Anypoint MQ and applying policies on APIs is particularly valuable.

So, the ease of policy maintenance and API functionality are key features for me. They streamline business processes by allowing configurable control over policies, instead of writing codes and making maintenance more straightforward.

Overall, it's quite efficient. However, I'd suggest more control over MQ restarts and greater transparency in traffic management.

I have been using this solution for five years. I am working with the MuleSoft 4.0 stack.

I would rate the stability a nine out of ten. It's mostly stable. However, sometimes, visibility is less in terms of monitoring messages. We lack the capability to restart queues on our own, which is why I rated it nine. Otherwise, it's reliable for regular use.

I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten. It's scalable, so if we need more licenses or queues, we can easily get them.

I've worked on at least ten different projects using this. We have multiple customers using this solution. Our customers are small, medium, or enterprise businesses.

Customer service and support are always great. Whenever we face issues, especially with Anypoint MQ's lack of transparency, we reach out to them. They respond quickly, identifying the issue, and we can set up a call or troubleshoot over email if needed.

Positive

The initial setup is quite straightforward and user-friendly. It's mostly deployed on the cloud.

Deployment is quick since it's a SaaS model. We primarily focus on configuration.

I would rate the pricing a six out of ten. It's not very expensive, reasonably priced. There are no additional costs. 

I would definitely recommend it. It's a fantastic product. Overall, I would rate it a nine out of ten.