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WSO2 API Manager pros and cons

Vendor: WSO2

4.0 out of 5

41 reviews
94% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

WSO2 API Manager is highly scalable, enabling flexible scaling and extensive customization due to its open-source nature. It offers a comprehensive API management lifecycle, covering security and token-based authentication. Despite easy deployment and strong internal security, scalability issues hinder cloud integration. Users face challenges with support, documentation, and concurrency, and pricing models lack flexibility, complicating accessibility and partner selections.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

WSO2 API Manager is open-source, providing extensive flexibility and customization opportunities.

Its scalability is noteworthy, accommodating both horizontal and vertical scaling with ease.

WSO2 API Manager offers robust API lifecycle management, allowing seamless publication and management.

The integration capabilities of WSO2 API Manager are comprehensive, enhancing its function beyond traditional API management.

WSO2 API Manager supports OAuth2 token capabilities for secure customer interactions.

CONS

API Manager faces challenges in scalability, particularly with components that lack the ability to scale effectively, which is problematic as microservice scalability becomes increasingly important.

There is a notable need for improved integration capabilities within API Manager.

The problem of limited local expertise hinders effective support and maintenance for API Manager, especially when cultural and geographical factors complicate interaction with the primary support team based in Sri Lanka.

The documentation for API Manager, although considered good, requires enhancements for ease of use, especially when dealing with complex migrations like the transition from VMs to Kubernetes.

API Manager does not support the mTLS communication protocol, which is a desired feature for many users.

WSO2 API Manager Pros review quotes

Modupe Aladeojebi

Chief Technology Officer at Swifta Systems and Services

Aug 1, 2019

This is a flexible and versatile API management solution that has the power to integrate with more than just API.

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XL

Chief Specialist at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Jul 5, 2020

The most interesting feature is its Mac-based function.

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reviewer1190643

Lead Business Analyst at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Aug 23, 2020

It's very scalable, which is one of the best features.

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WSO2 API Manager

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Learn what your peers think about WSO2 API Manager. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2025.

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reviewer1234326

Business&Integration Arch Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Oct 26, 2020

The solution is open-source.

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reviewer1450452

Integration Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Nov 19, 2020

API management lifecycle is the most valuable.

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LF

Leonardo Ferreira

Software Architecture Leader at Edenred

Nov 23, 2020

The main feature — the publication of the API, the management section — is great in general.

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AP

Andrés Pastorini

IT Solutions Architect at Agesic

Dec 30, 2020

There are a lot of tools to help the manager. WSO2 is very easy to install. It has all the principal functionalities that you think about when you want to put up the management solution. It's a very friendly tool.

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PS

PrashansaShukla

Software Engineer at Jio Platforms Limited

Dec 31, 2020

One of the great things about WSO2 API Manager is that it is so easy to adopt. And because it's an open source solution, we're able to extend the implementation any time to suit our company needs better.

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reviewer1361130

Project Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Jan 21, 2021

As far as I am aware this solution is the first API Publisher that allows you to create and publish API and to manage the API lifecycle.

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reviewer1207650

Sr. Technology Specialist at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Feb 10, 2021

Its open-source features are very good, especially for your production work.

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WSO2 API Manager Cons review quotes

Modupe Aladeojebi

Chief Technology Officer at Swifta Systems and Services

Aug 1, 2019

The interface needs to be modernized and made more user friendly so the product continues to have a growing community of users.

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XL

Chief Specialist at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Jul 5, 2020

API Manager is not easy to scale because some of its components lack scalability. It's a difficult point. Especially because companies are so cloud-based these days, microservice scalability is a major thing.

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reviewer1190643

Lead Business Analyst at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Aug 23, 2020

Integration is an area that needs to be improved.

Read full review

WSO2 API Manager

Free Report: WSO2 API Manager Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about WSO2 API Manager. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2025.

879,711 professionals have used our research since 2012.

reviewer1234326

Business&Integration Arch Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Oct 26, 2020

The stability is pretty good, but it could be improved.

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reviewer1450452

Integration Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Nov 19, 2020

I would like it to be a more convenient development platform with the ability to write orchestrations and so on. Our problem with this product is that in my country, we are the only enterprise that has been using this product. We're missing a lot of knowledge from colleagues to consult with, and we also aren't able to recruit people with relevant skills. It is a big problem. The small team that is maintaining this product is the only team that can actually relate to any technical issue. The support that we're getting from the company is not great. There is also a cultural gap there because they're from Sri Lanka, and it is not easy. They're putting in a lot of effort, but they are not meeting our expectations.

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LF

Leonardo Ferreira

Software Architecture Leader at Edenred

Nov 23, 2020

I think they could greatly improve the general UX with their solutions.

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AP

Andrés Pastorini

IT Solutions Architect at Agesic

Dec 30, 2020

I would like it to be a more stable solution. Maybe in the last version that is approved. For me it would be good if they had a community established version.

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PS

PrashansaShukla

Software Engineer at Jio Platforms Limited

Dec 31, 2020

From a product perspective, the first thing is that although the documentation provided by WSO2 is good, it could be much better. We're in the middle of a complex migration, moving away from VMs to Kubernetes with the latest version of WSO2 and good documentation is essential to us right now.

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reviewer1361130

Project Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Jan 21, 2021

From what I have experienced from the versions I have tried, they could improve on the multi-tenant environments to allow some kind of SSO single sign-on between tenant.

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reviewer1207650

Sr. Technology Specialist at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Feb 10, 2021

They don't have different URLs for administrators.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 40)

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Product Categories

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Popular Comparisons

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Microsoft Azure API Management vs WSO2 API Manager

Amazon API Gateway vs WSO2 API Manager

Apigee vs WSO2 API Manager

webMethods.io vs WSO2 API Manager

IBM API Connect vs WSO2 API Manager

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs WSO2 API Manager

IBM DataPower Gateway vs WSO2 API Manager

MuleSoft API Manager vs WSO2 API Manager

SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite vs WSO2 API Manager

Layer7 API Management vs WSO2 API Manager

Apache APISIX vs WSO2 API Manager

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