webMethods.io Reviews

The API Gateway and Portal go together. It's not one or the other. Essentially they're just leveraged for overall enterprise API management facilities, being able to go on the API development life cycle, being able to go on the API run time, API monetization, things like that. Usually, most organizations, most of our customers use APIs to supplement other architectures, typically microservices-based application architecture, and SaaS integration etc.

API Gateways and API Management in general first and foremost standardizes and democratizes the Integration problem across all IT domains. API Gateway specifically allows for centralizing all integration interfaces to a simple style and normalizes the patterns of security, access control, cross-domain compatibility across the enterprise. API Gateways also enable enterprise integration across various public cloud infrastructure and enable Hybrid nature of Enterprise IT.

On the API gateway, I would say the runtime metrics that the gateway collects are definitely useful.

The product provides a lot of insights into the operations of the API itself at runtime.

The cloud version of the solution is very easy to set up.

The stability has been good. The performance is strong.

The scalability is excellent overall.

We have found the technical support to be very helpful and responsive when we have questions.

In terms of improvements, maybe on the API monetization side, having users able to create separate API consumption plans and to be able to throttle API execution against those consumption plans at run time could be better. Those are abilities that might need some improvement.

The on-premises setup can get a little complex, needs to be more simplified.

I've been dealing with the solution over the last three or so years at this point.

The stability and performance are excellent. 3G really comes strong on an enterprise-scale in terms of stability and performance. It doesn't crash or freeze. There are no bugs or glitches. We find it to be reliable.

We have found that the solution scales quite well.

API management is all about internally leveraging the software development life cycle, across various domains. Typically, most customers, when they adopt API management, they are delivering it for their entire IT software development organization, not just the integration team. The application team and the database team and so on will also use it. Everybody will be on board. Sometimes we have seen customers onboard about 60, 70 developers and then maybe a few additional external consumers. However, we also see some customers with very small teams of around 10 people. It works well for both.

We've dealt with technical support in the past. There's always that possibility, especially with newer versions, that we might run into some technical issues. However, tech support and issue management are both pretty straightforward.

You can create tickets with the portal on Software AG through Software AG's support portal. They respond within 24 hours usually, and try to resolve the issue quickly. Sometimes the issues might need a product or a quote fix, which might take a day or two. Otherwise, they might be able to look through the knowledge base and give us a solution immediately. 

They have a pretty good response time and offer quality service. We're pretty satisfied with the level of support.

In terms of setting up the solution, the solution offers both cloud and on-premises options. The on-premise license and setup can be done yourself. That can be a little complex depending on what is the overall deployment architecture that is needed. 

However, webMethods API also comes in a cloud form, the webMethods.io, and that is just a subscription. Most of our customers can just subscribe to it and they don't really have to worry about the setup. Everything is already pre-set.

Typically, while the on-premises setup is somewhat complex, we don't really require people to be continuously monitoring it once it's launched. The setup itself might take less than a week or two, depending on the size. 

In terms of maintenance, unless there's a lot of APIs subsequently developed and running, you don't really have too much. Once the customer starts developing a lot of APIs and puts a lot of those APIs into production, that's what will contribute to the support and monitoring needs of the team. 

Typically one person can handle deployment and maintenance. Of course, the cloud doesn't really require the same amount of work.

The pricing can fluctuate. I don't have the numbers on hand, however, I can say that they're somewhere in the middle in terms of pricing. They aren't the most expensive or the cheapest. They're priced right for their capabilities and the quality of service as well as the stability and performance on offer. They're well priced for their general offering.

We are partners with Software AG. We've been a partner for more than 20 years now.

I'm a consultant. I work with a consulting company. 

I'm familiar with API Gateway, API Portal, and Active Transfer.

The API Portal and Gateway form the layer of API management, however, usually, API management does not go on its own. There's typically some level of an integration layer behind it as well. Either a customer is applying an API management layer on top of an existing integration layer, or, if not, a customer is starting fresh and has to apply both layers subsequently, or consecutively, kind of like creating an API management layer, and integration, a hybrid integration layer. 

Both go together, especially in data integration, or in application integration and cloud application integration.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

The API Gateway and the Portal go together. It's not one or the other. Essentially they're just leveraged for overall enterprise API management facilities, being able to go on the API development life cycle, being able to go on the API run time, API monetization, things like that. Usually, most organizations, most of our customers use APIs to supplement other architectures, typically microservices, based application architecture, and so on.

On the portal, the user management and the API life cycle management are definitely robust. 

They have nominal features for API. They have a self-serve API portal as well. That means consumers for APIs can come onto the portal and learn about various APIs that they can put into the consumption model. 

The initial setup of the cloud version of the solution is very easy.

The solution can scale.

The product is quite stable.

Technical support is responsive and quite helpful.

We have found the pricing of the solution to be fair.

On the API monetization side, being able to create separate consumption plans and throttle all those consumption plans towards the run time. Those are abilities that might need some improvements.

The on-premises setup can be difficult.

I've been dealing with the solution over the last three or so years at least.

The stability and performance are definitely very good. 3G really comes strong on an enterprise-scale in terms of stability and performance. It doesn't crash or freeze. There are no bugs or glitches.

The solution can scale quite well. A company that needs to scale can do so.

API management is all about internally leveraging the software development life cycle, across various domains. Typically, most customers, when they adopt API management, they are delivering it for their entire IT software development organization, not just the integration team. The application team and the database team and so on will also use it. Everybody will be on board. Sometimes we have seen customers onboard about 60, 70 developers and then maybe a few additional external consumers. However, we also see some customers with very small teams of around 10 people. It works well for both.

We've dealt with technical support in the past. There's always that possibility, especially with newer versions, that we might run into some technical issues. However, tech support and issue management are both pretty straightforward. 

You can now create a ticket on an issue with the portal on Software AG through Software AG's support portal. They respond within a day, and at least try to resolve the issue. Sometimes the issues might need a product or a quote fix, which might take a day or two. Otherwise, they might be able to look through the knowledge base and give us a solution immediately. In general, they have a decent response time and a decent quality of service. We're satisfied. 

In terms of setting up the solution, there are two ways. The first is that you can have an on-premise license and set up this conference yourself. That can be a little complex depending on what is the overall deployment architecture that is needed. On the other side, webMethods API also comes in a cloud form, the webMethods.io, and that is just a subscription. Most of our customers can just subscribe to it and they don't really have to worry about the setup. Everything is already pre-set.

Usually, while the on-premises setup is fairly complex, we don't really require people to be continuously monitoring it once it's launched. The setup itself might take less than a week or two, depending on the size of the enrollment. In terms of maintenance, unless there's a lot of APIs subsequently developed and running, you don't really have too much. Once the customer starts developing a lot of APIs and puts a lot of those APIs into production, that's what will contribute to the support and monitoring needs of the team. Typically one person can handle deployment and maintenance. Of course, the cloud doesn't really require the same amount of work. 

The pricing fluctuates. I don't have the numbers with me, however, I can say that they're not the cheapest in the market, and they're not the most expensive either. They fall right in the middle, and they're priced right for their capabilities and the quality of service as well as the stability and performance on offer. They're well priced for their general offering.

We are partners with Software AG. We've been a partner for more than 20 years now.

I'm an IT consultant. We are a consulting company, most of my teams are certified in Software AG technology, and we've worked for a lot of customers leveraging that technology.

We typically deal with the most up-to-date versions of the solution, although occasionally, one or two might be a version behind.

A lot of the API Portal and Gateway form the layer of API management, however, usually, API management does not go on its own. There's typically some level of an integration layer behind it as well. Either a customer is applying an API management layer on top of an existing integration layer, or, if not, a customer is starting fresh and has to apply both layers subsequently, or consecutively. It's kind of like creating an API management layer, and a hybrid integration layer. Both go together, especially in data integration, or in application integration and cloud application integration.

Overall, I would rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

The solution offers a services catalogue that extends beyond monetization, acting as a source for API for external users and entities and monetization.

webMethods API Portal is overall very valuable. It is now a comprehensive API catalogue that serves various purposes, including API assessment and evaluation. The monetization module is particularly robust. It is applied across different sectors, including the government, and is known for its strong performance.     

The improvement needed is related to the model's position. As of now, it seems to be more of a conceptual idea rather than a widely implemented solution. Monetization is currently on the rise, driven by the growing demand for APIs. With everything being provided as APIs nowadays, it's crucial to grasp this concept and establish a robust solution for subscription plans and the price model.

I have been using the webMethods API Portal for the last seven years.

Since webMethods API Portal is regularly used by big enterprises, the performance needs to be the best. There can be no issues whatsoever, so it is stable. 

webMethods API Portal offers extensive scalability. Its primary focus is on catering to enterprises dealing with vast amounts of data or APIs. This solution appears to have certain minimum requirements that enterprises must fulfill to access it or make requests. It seems to be a compatible solution designed specifically for large enterprises managing huge data volumes. I would rate it seven out of ten. 

The support is available 24/7 and they are extremely experienced.

Positive

For APIs and gateways, I have experience with various platforms such as IBM MessageHQ, Microsoft Remote, and an Apache tool. In the case of IBM, there was a registry and certain tools that stood out, particularly the initial versions of the API gateway. These early versions were rather basic and targeted more toward experts or developers familiar with the system. While not the most user-friendly at the time, I believe IBM has likely evolved its offerings to include more advanced and user-friendly solutions. However, I acknowledge that my feedback might be somewhat outdated.

The initial setup is straightforward, but it requires extensive knowledge about the product.

The solution is deployed on-premises.

I don’t have much idea about prices, but webMethods API Portal is not cheap. 

The suitability of the webMethods API Portal depends on the organization's size. It's not appropriate for small or medium enterprises; rather, it's intended for larger enterprises. This is particularly in cases like ours, where it's utilized for managing big data APIs. As an example, we employ it to oversee the government's resources and permissions on a daily basis. This illustrates the significant volumes of data and APIs we handle regularly.

The solution's most valuable features are web services, XML transformations, and adapters.

The solution's release management and JSON services need improvement.

We have been using the solution for 20 years.

The solution is stable. I rate the solution's stability a nine out of ten.

The solution is scalable. We have enterprise customers using the solution. I rate its scalability a nine out of ten.

The solution's technical support needs improvement. It could be more accessible in terms of communication.

Neutral

The solution is easy to set up. I rate the process a seven out of ten. It takes two months to complete. 

I recommend the solution to others and rate it an eight out of ten. It works fast and is easy to adapt.

The primary use case of the solution is for our digital sale tool.

I really appreciate the form and application that indicate the API. 

The performance is good.

I would like the solution to provide bi-weekly updates.

I have been using the solution for seven years.

The solution is sustainable and stable.

The solution is on the cloud therefore it is scalable.

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

I recommend the solution to others.

We had quite a heavy use case in terms of transactional traffic, and webMethods was quite fantastic in processing all of those workloads.

Some of the key features are the integration platform, query mechanism, message handling within the bus, and the rules engine. We've had a really good experience with webMethods Integration Server.

On the monitoring side of things, the UI for monitoring could be improved. It's a bit cumbersome to work with.

I've been using webMethods Integration Server for about five years.

The current version is in our private cloud, and we implemented the same solution on-premises and in the cloud. So, we have implemented a hybrid solution.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We implemented it through an in-house team, and it took about four weeks.

There are no hidden costs in addition to the standard licensing fees for webMethods.

For corporate organizations, it's a very cheap or fairly priced product, but for growing or small businesses, it's quite expensive. These businesses would probably need to consider an enterprise services bus at some point. Thus, from a pricing point, it closes out non-cooperate businesses.

A slightly watered down version would be nice so that small, growing businesses could afford it.

We tried to use Oracle, and it just didn't do it for us. We explored MuleSoft, but it was a little bit expensive because of their pricing model, which is per transaction. So, it was also not a viable option for us.

You just need to find the right skills. In our country, we don't have people with qualified webMethods skills, so that's a problem for us in terms of resources. Depending on where you are from and if you don't deal with resource scarcity, webMethods could be a good option for you.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate webMethods at eight. 

We're a healthcare technology organization and that space has a great deal of integration work, so we use webMethods to help us manage and develop integration solutions for various healthcare-related needs. Those include HL7 messages, the new interop messages, the new CMS directives for data blocking, Affordable Care Act integrations, and integrations with other health systems.

Our particular product is a SaaS, multi-tenant environment that's on-prem but moving to cloud. It is used by hundreds of healthcare providers to run their businesses.

webMethods provides application integration, data integration, business-to-business communications, APIs, and microservices. We use it for all of those purposes. Having that range of features in a single platform is very important, because that means we have a single platform to learn and use. It reduces training costs. It reduces overall infrastructure costs. It even makes hiring easier because we have one set of resources we need to hire for.

In a very fast moving space—which is weird to say about healthcare, but it has certainly become that in the last few years, and especially in the last year—the ability to move very quickly and to reuse components and to connect to almost anything have become pretty paramount. The solution’s adapters and connectors provide the fastest way to build an integration. The demand curve for integrations goes up daily, so our ability to perform and build integrations is a key core competency.

Because we use most of the platform, it's hard to call out a most valuable feature, but it's probably the ease of mapping which is the single largest feature. It gives us the ability to craft anything. A lot of single-purpose technologies, like Mirth, are good for healthcare messages, but we use webMethods not only for healthcare messages but for other business-related purposes, like integrations to Salesforce or integrations to Office 365. It's multi-purpose nature is very strong.

The ease of deploy and maintenance of integrations is a key element for us. If the strength is the mapping tool and the ability to change quickly, and having all of the components that we can then alter as we need to, the result is that it allows us to react very quickly to changing business demands. For example, we have a need to send the same types of data to many different integration partners, and because we're able to tailor the delivery to each endpoint, but use one master flow, it allows great economies of scale.

I'd like to see the admin portal for managing the integration server go up a level, to have more capabilities and to have a more modern web interface.

We've been using webMethods Integration Server for four or five years.

It has been very stable.

We find that it scales very well. It's a true enterprise tool.

Our usage will increase as our business grows. It's a core part of our infrastructure.

The tool is very good and we haven't really needed to engage with support enough to know if their support for the solution’s adapters and connectors brings long-term stability.

Support has been there in the couple of times we've needed them. We have gotten a fine response. They completely meet our expectations of support for an enterprise tool. But typically, there's no need for them.

We had a couple of competing platforms: Systems Integration from IBM, and MuleSoft in the open source world. We switched to webMethods for the support from the company and the range and depth of available adapters and connectors. It gave us more capabilities.

We used an integration partner to help us stand it up, so the setup didn't really impact us. We had a total of two or three people involved on our side. We used The Normandy Group and our experience with them was very positive.

It took us about three months to have the first integration running. The implementation strategy was 

• install tool
• get it to work
• build first integration.

Those same two people in our organization are the ones involved in the day-to-day maintenance of Integration Server. We have two webMethods technical resources who are responsible for about 400 integration points or integration services.

We have seen return on investment from using it. We have to compute that every year, and the value is always greater than the cost. It's just that every year it gets harder to justify that value against the competitors. 

Keeping in mind that we haven't explored the microservices completely, which has been a key element of their innovation recently, I do think webMethods is coming under increasing pressure when it comes to their price-to-feature value proposition. It's probably the single biggest strategic risk they have. They're very expensive in their industry. They've been raising the price recently, especially when compared with their competitors.

I'm familiar with Mirth, in the healthcare space, and IBM SI is still a very large tool. Various other IBM platforms that will do similar things. The space has gotten more crowded over the years.

The single biggest differences between webMethods and the other solutions are the range of the offering, the connectors, the stability of the system, the fact that it is an enterprise-grade system, and that you can basically do anything you need with it. 

The con is the fact that you are paying for the best-of-breed solution in the space, and the expense of it can be quite high. When you couple that with the fact that adding Software AG services increases the cost very fast, there is a real detriment to our adding additional Software AG offerings to the portfolio. The sheer expense makes us reluctant to do that. It's still justifying its cost for us, currently, but I feel that there are open source solutions that are charging up very fast. Also, finding resources who are trained in the tool is becoming increasingly hard as they become increasingly more in-demand.

It's a very valuable and a very powerful tool, but it's a tool that you have to dedicate resources to, to learn and to use well. Use an integration partner to help get it stood up and in use in your organization faster. That is something that is very valuable. And then dedicate staff to learn it. This isn't one more tool in the toolbox. This has to become someone's toolbox.

The comprehensiveness and depth of its connectors to packaged apps and custom apps is fairly low, but its ability to build what you need is very high. The value of the tool is the Lego block nature of it, so instead of being framed into set paths, we can build what we need.

I would rate it at seven out of 10. The cost-to-feature value is what brings that number down. The difficulty in finding webMethods-trained resources in North America also brings that number down. The powerful, scalable, stable nature of the offering brings that number up.

We use it mainly for policy implementation and securitization when we're exposed outside the internet.

They should develop clear visibility for the onboarding. They could also improve the clustering.

We have been using this solution for three years.

it is a stable solution.

It is scalable and can adapt to third-party integration. We have more than 500 users.

I've worked with MuleSoft, and webMethods API Gateway is the most stabilized tool with a robust integration server. It's a good tool, and it has a stable messaging broker. In addition, from the infra point of view, it is always compliant and not complex. You can integrate everything with webMethods API Gateway.

The initial setup was straightforward and not complex. I rate the setup an eight out of ten.

I do not have details about the pricing. However, it is cheaper than APG.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten.