WSO2 API Manager Reviews & Insights

Score9.4 out of 10

16 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for WSO2 API Manager are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Easy to use and manage: Users found the WSO2 API Manager to be user-friendly and easy to navigate, making it accessible for both beginner users and experienced developers. Many reviewers mentioned that they were able to quickly understand and utilize the tool without any complications.

Useful for securing APIs: Reviewers highlighted that the WSO2 API Manager is effective in securing APIs by applying policies. They appreciated the ability to publish APIs in the publisher portal, which allowed them to control access and ensure data security through API gateway policies.

Simplicity of configuration: Users appreciated the simplicity of configuring the WSO2 API Manager in various environments. They mentioned that it can be easily set up using different methods, requiring no prior knowledge or technical expertise. The intuitive user interface further contributed to a seamless configuration process.

Reviews

4 Reviews

Quick time to market with a great cloud ready feature set

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

September 19, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

WSO2 API Manager mainly helps me to expose my internal APIs to the outside world in a secure manner. Furthermore, it helps me with the API transformation as well (e.g., Rest to JSON)

Pros

API Security
API Transformation
API Monetization

Cons

Documentation
Support
Hybrid / SaaS offering

Likelihood to Recommend

It is good for any requirements on API security and API transformation. Furthermore, it would be ideal if you have an API-centric business process for a software development organization. It has an excellent Developer portal to support the internal development processes.

Verified User

Consultant in Information Technology (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

Reseller

3 years of experience

API Management and Transformation using WSO2.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

September 13, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

WSO2 API Manager is used to transform STL Product APIs into TMForum Compliant APIs. It is also used for TLS Termination, Authentication, and Rate Limiting purposes. All STL APIs are published to the external world via WSO2 API Manager only.

Pros

Authentication based on OAuth 2.0 and HTTP Basic Authentication.
Rate Limiting applied at different levels like Subscriber, API, Resource and Backend.
Monitoring by exporting the metrics in Prometheus and traces in Jaeger.
Mediation to perform transformation, orchestration etc.

Cons

reduce number of portals for configuration like admin, carbon etc.
improve certificate handling in case of Kubernetes based deployment.
provide out of the box dashboards for Grafana and Kibana.
provide more connectors out of the box.

Likelihood to Recommend

WSO2 is a unique product that provides pre-integrated components like Gateway, Integrator, identity management, etc. Hence it is best suited when the requirement is not just only publish the APIs but also to secure and transform the APIs. WSO2 can be an overhead if only Gateway is required, as there are other very lightweight gateways available in the market.

Verified User

Professional in Research & Development (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Prepare to dig through countless config files with this product!

Rating: 5 out of 10

Incentivized

March 8, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

WSO2 API Manager is used across the whole organization to expose the business entities on which 50% of all our applications are dependent on. We use it for our micro service infrastructure to connect and "loose couple" different application domains. It's main function is to provide a way to subscribe to API's and track API subscriptions.

Pros

Very easy to create API's: it has a very intuitive interface.
Overall (Subscriber and Store) everything looks clean and simple.
If you know how to, it provides you with all functionality that an API manager should provide. Like security, sandbox, API Console, swagger, mediation policies and much more.

Cons

Installation of this product is a hell. You need to be an expert to get this running together with WSO2 Analytics. It uses a really confusing method of "port + 1" to connect extra products. I guess this was meant to provide a handy way to add new WSO2 products. In reality you'll need to scroll through numerous config files to set this straight. If you use this out of the box, everything will work all right. But the moment you add SSL certificates, DNS names and you'll need special ports to configure your firewall, this product becomes unmaintainable.
The "Store" provides a nice way to group API's. However, the "Publisher" does not... if you have more than 30 API's searching for API's becomes really annoying.
The number of configs in this product is huge. As a developer myself, I've never seen (and definitely never created) a product that needed that much config files. Installation and maintenance of products should be stupidly simple, since no developer nor infrastructure person wants to learn something that "just" needs to be a tool.. opposed to being a whole new area of expertise. After using WSO2 API Manager for a while, we wanted to change the admin password... this should be simple enough, like just change the password in "Carbon." But nope. The whole WSO2 environment crashed. We just gave up. Too dangerous.
Why so many different "products"? Publisher, Store, Carbon, and numerous hidden interfaces. Analytics, ESB whatever... No wonder there are so many config files and port issues. Make it simple!!!

Likelihood to Recommend

It's free! No argument can win a fight with that! And it's the only reason I gave it a 5. If you have no money to spend, and a simple environment you'll have a nice product. But free does come with a price. After 5 years we're still struggling with ports, and analytics (it just won't work without any errors caused by some configuration somewhere). An API Manager should work out of the box. The only configuration expertise that any developer wants to invest in, is the configuration of API's. Not the product itself... Anyone who've seen the training material, just for installing this thing will agree that this is not the way to go. Of all the API Managers out there (we've tried 4), WSO2 is the only one were you need to know how this dragon of a java application works internally. Did I already mention the humongous amount of config files?

Verified User

Team Lead in Information Technology (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

WS02 API Manager review from a higher ed instistitution

Rating: 6 out of 10

Incentivized

May 6, 2016

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

WS02 has been used across our IT organization. We have been working to build the capability of APIs and manage the usage of APIs in a more seamless way across the enterprise. For the cost, WS02 API Manager is good for the usage we are using. We have encountered a fair amount of bugs with each upgrade of the product.

Pros

Nice API store-front capability
Management of users and permissions

Cons

Better QA testing prior to releases rollout
Better support needed

Likelihood to Recommend

For smaller organizations, I think this is would be a good tool. For large enterprise organizations, WS02 API Manager is likely not the best fit.

Verified User

Project Manager in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

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Prepare to dig through countless config files with this product!

Rating: 5 out of 10

Incentivized

March 8, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Very easy to create API's: it has a very intuitive interface.
Overall (Subscriber and Store) everything looks clean and simple.
If you know how to, it provides you with all functionality that an API manager should provide. Like security, sandbox, API Console, swagger, mediation policies and much more.

Cons

Installation of this product is a hell. You need to be an expert to get this running together with WSO2 Analytics. It uses a really confusing method of "port + 1" to connect extra products. I guess this was meant to provide a handy way to add new WSO2 products. In reality you'll need to scroll through numerous config files to set this straight. If you use this out of the box, everything will work all right. But the moment you add SSL certificates, DNS names and you'll need special ports to configure your firewall, this product becomes unmaintainable.
The "Store" provides a nice way to group API's. However, the "Publisher" does not... if you have more than 30 API's searching for API's becomes really annoying.
The number of configs in this product is huge. As a developer myself, I've never seen (and definitely never created) a product that needed that much config files. Installation and maintenance of products should be stupidly simple, since no developer nor infrastructure person wants to learn something that "just" needs to be a tool.. opposed to being a whole new area of expertise. After using WSO2 API Manager for a while, we wanted to change the admin password... this should be simple enough, like just change the password in "Carbon." But nope. The whole WSO2 environment crashed. We just gave up. Too dangerous.
Why so many different "products"? Publisher, Store, Carbon, and numerous hidden interfaces. Analytics, ESB whatever... No wonder there are so many config files and port issues. Make it simple!!!

Likelihood to Recommend

Verified User

Team Lead in Information Technology (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience