Comprehensive API Management Platforms: Who Has The Most Features?

Developers often create many small API tools that can improve functionality, creation, tests, and management. For many organizations though, a comprehensive API management platform that consolidates many features into a single, unified solution presents an attractive alternative. If you don’t want to bother with managing a suite of small, disparate tools, you could be interested in understanding more about the following API platforms that provide an exhaustive set of features.

Apigee

Apigee is a cloud-based API management platform owned by Google. Apigee gives you full lifecycle API management features, including:

• AI-powered monitoring for APIs and web services.

• Flexible deployment and scaling.

• Automated performance testing.

• A DevOps portal with SMTP configuration, custom JavaScript coding, mobile device display optimization, and API docs from OpenAPI specifications.

Apigee comes with most of the API management features you will ever need. Unfortunately, those features come with a very big price tag. Google doesn’t advertise its rates, but plenty of reviewers have indicated that moving to Apigee has required a significant financial investment. Whilst it's ability to deliver comprehensive API management is clear, whether you need all of these features at the cost required is something you will need to carefully consider.

Dell Boomi

Dell Boomi is a cloud-native integration platform as a service (iPaaS) solution with many built-in tools. Many developers like Boomi because it:

• Uses artificial intelligence to analyze data maps and make configuration suggestions.

• Analyzes errors to offer likely causes and solutions.

• Runs automatic API tests.

• Has a large library of pre-built connectors.

Boomi has five integration editions (Base, Professional, Pro Plus, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus). You will need to contact Dell for pricing, which makes it difficult to decide which option best fits your budget. Like the other platforms discussed here, careful thought about whether you need all of the features that come with such a comprehensive API management solution should be given before deciding to commit to large and often very expensive software.

Recommended reading: Reviews, Pricing, and Comparison of Dell Boomi

DreamFactory

DreamFactory gives you a complete solution for API creation, functionality, and management. DreamFactory’s open source platform works on nearly all operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. You can choose to run it in on public, private, or hybrid cloud infrastructures, making it easy to move applications when needed.

Other features that make DreamFactory such an attractive option include:

• Instantly turning SOAP APIs into REST APIs while generating API Docs and converting responses to JSON.

• Server-side scripting that supports NodeJS, PHP, Python, and V8JS.

• API limits that automatically throttle API calls at runtime to ensure exceptional functionality.

• Deployment with GitHub, Bitnami, Docker, and Kubernetes.

• A no-code user interface that helps non-technical employees create and manage RESTful application programming interfaces.

With its API automation and agile features, DreamFactory is clearly one of the top API generation tools. Notably, it costs much less than other API functionality platforms representing a clear alternative both in terms of cost and feature set when compared to some of the other big API management solutions.

Schedule a guided tour of DreamFactory to learn more about how the open-source tool can address all of your API management needs.

Mulesoft

Mulesoft is best known for its Anypoint API and integrations platform. Mulesoft stands out for its:

• Load testing and high availability.

• Agnostic data mapping that can connect to any database or location.

• Data transformation that uses a scripting feature to transform and remove data before moving the payload to its destination client.

• Test automation and API key generation.

If you are in the market for a comprehensive API management platform with unrivalled features, it is hard to find a solution that offers more API services than that of MuleSoft Anypoint. Like other similar platforms however, the cost associated with MuleSoft Anypoint can be quite prohibitive. Before deciding on whether you need a platform such as MuleSoft Anypoint, consider whether you need all of the features that come with the product or whether your requirements can be satisfied by a tool that has a more tailored set of features.

Other API Tools to Explore

It could be the case that your API requirements can be met through a platform that delivers against a specific use. There are a number of platforms that rather than providing a comprehensive suite of features, focus on a more refined set of functionality. Below, we discuss some of these other API platforms, plugins, and tools that have a very targeted application.

Assertible

A small tool for testing and validating API responses with JSON scheme.

Jenkins Remote Access API

An API tool built for Jenkins. You can choose XML, Python, and JSON with JSONP support options to create jobs, copy jobs, and trigger new builds.

SmartBear ReadyAPI

A platform that excels at load resting RESTful, SOAP, and GraphQL web services.

IBM API Connect

A scalable, intuitive API and web applications platform from IBM

REST-Assured

A testing and validating REST service that goes beyond Ruby and Groovy to help developers debug Java apps.

Postman

A popular collaboration platform for API development.

Apache JMeter

Open source software that can performance test apps, servers, and protocols, including TCP, Soap and REST web services, LDAP, FTP, and Java Objects. Offers continuous integration with some third-party libraries.

SoapUI

A SmartBear tool to create, execute, and manage end-to-end tests.

Swagger

Open source deployment based on the OpenAPI specification.

Recommended reading: 3 Best API Management Tools

Start Your Free Trial With DreamFactory

Software development teams need comprehensive API management platforms that offer exploratory testing that finds all endpoints, adapts to domain-specific languages, and reuses APIs when possible. Ideally, you want an API creation, validation, and testing platform that automates as many tasks as possible.

Give your programmers and software testing teams more opportunities to focus on meaningful work instead of handling mundane tasks. Get started with a 14-day free trial from DreamFactory. The automation tools, debugging features, and functional tests will transform your team’s workflow, making them more productive than ever.