Azure API Management vs. Azure App Service

The range of policies that enable the APIs to loosely couple it with security, rate limit, retry, etc. are good. We can easily tie authentication mechanisms to external and other internal services without having to modify the backend.

Incentivized

Azure App Service is well suited in our case :

• Our website is developed by our tech partner in a full Microsoft Azure cloud based environment.
• We gave them specific access rights and the CI / CD integration helped a lot for updates and improvements deployment.
• Most of the infra issues we had with our website weren't coming from App Service

Incentivized

• Management of APIs
• Security of the API through Azure AD, AD B2C etc.
• Providing an outer layer through APIs

• Super quick & easy to deploy new apps in visual studio
• Easy scaling to help reduce costs during off-hours
• The powerful Azure ecosystem offers a lot of functionality that ties in well with Azure App Service

Incentivized

• Cost - the upfront cost is a bit restrictive. I've been told it is because there are a few underlying VMs that are running this service. So if you're just starting out with API management, it can be an expensive proposition. Value increases as you add additional APIs. If you're using Azure B2C for the developer portal, you'll require Standard or Premium since they support AAD integration.
• Security granularity - at time of writing, APIM doesn't support breaking out operations to products. For example, if you have an API that has a GET and a POST operation, and you want the POST operation to require a different subscription. There is a work around, but it makes management a bit messy.
• Developer and Publisher portal - it's a little weird. Microsoft hasn't migrated all the publisher portal functionality into the "native" Azure portal. So some of it feels a little weird - especially when working with the content management side of things for the developer portal.
• Scaling - while it's easy to scale up, the cost of APIM ramps up very quickly. Standard -> Premium is a 4x jump.

Incentivized

• Abstraction of computing resources like Heroku does with dynos.
• Azure Portal overall is pretty bloated and that affects managing Azure App Service applications.

Incentivized

I enjoy the fact that Azure App Service can be managed by the Azure portal and a fully graphical user interface, as well as from two different flavors of command-line interface, i.e. Azure CLI and Azure Powershell. By utilizing the Azure Cloud Shell, we are able to switch between Azure Bash (CLI) and Powershell at any given moment and manage the Azure App Service settings from devices of any form-factor (Web based management).

Incentivized

We had an issue where we deployed too large of a resource and didn't notice until the bill came through. They were very understanding and saw we weren't utilizing the resources so they issued a generous refund in about 4 hours. Very fast, friendly, and understanding support reps from my experience.

Incentivized

Azure APIM vs Amazon API Gateway:

1) Azure APIM was a complete package that included a developer portal.

2) We are very Microsoft centric - so the Microsoft product suite aligned very well with our business needs.

3) It was faster and easier to stand up Azure APIM for testing than it was for the Amazon API Gateway.

Incentivized

In terms of deploying your apps, Azure App Service provides a solid foundation. You may use either the Azure command-line interface or the Web Portal to administer these apps. As a whole, I find You may easily deploy your apps to Azure App Service to be a really difficult platform for novices to get their feet wet. First and foremost, I'd look at Heroku's user interface and the way it abstracts compute units.

Incentivized

• It’s really pay as you go, so it's not that costly to get in and try it out. There’s no expensive client to buy and manage, but you do need to stay on top of the rapidly changing Azure environment to be sure you upgrade or adjust when needed.
• It’s not great having more than one API tool, but it’s ok to spread out your work, as you always want the right tool for the right job. For example, if you are a Salesforce-heavy organization, I’d go with Mule over Azure.
• It was easy getting an external consultant access to the tool to build their own API for a project they were working on for us.

Incentivized

• Download time is reduced because of auto scaling feature.
• Insight tool helps in finding issues quickly.
• CI/CD has helped in automation.

Incentivized