Tyk or Akana: Which Has the Right API Management Tools to Match Your Needs?

Whether you work for a startup or a giant corporation, your organization likely needs a reliable API management solution that helps all of your SaaS apps communicate with each other. The following article compares Tyk and Akana to help you decide whether one of them could meet your needs.

Overview of Tyk

What Is Tyk?

Tyk is an open-source API SaaS suite of products that work on-premises or on a cloud server. The company offers tiered pricing that helps clients save money by only paying for the features they use.

Tyk has been serving a wide range of businesses, including small companies and enterprise organizations, from its London office since 2014. Over the years, it has earned a positive reputation for providing reliable API gateway and management services.

What Features Can You Expect From Tyk?

Tyk offers a surprisingly long list of features that can help you manage and secure your applications. Some features that you might find useful include Tyk’s:

• Dashboard for detailed monitoring and analytics.
• API developer portal.
• API documentation.
• Rate limiting.
• Notifications and events to keep your team informed.
• A flexible, open-source API gateway that supports JSON Web tokens, access tokens, basic auth, and Social Oauth from platforms like Twitter and Github.
• API sharding.
• Containerisation.

Tyk focuses on microservices, but you can access plugins that help it connect to more diverse applications.

Recommended reading: Tyk vs. DreamFactory: An Overview, Comparison, and Review

Overview of Akana

What Is Akana

Akana stands out as an API management platform that lets users manage the full API lifecycle, deploy apps across multiple cloud infrastructures and ensure regulatory compliance. Clients can also access a broad spectrum of features that make API management and creation more intuitive.

The company has been operating since 2001, so has had longer to test it's product within the market, refine its features and articulate its benefits to the API management community.

What Features Can You Expect From Akana?

Akana highlights seven key features of its enterprise API platform:

• Secure APIs with fewer points exposure and comprehensive Oauth provider and client.
• API design from a graphical interface that lets developers use practically any coding language, including JavaScript, Golang, and Java.
• Traffic management with an integrated portal and global API endpoints deployment.
• Mediation and integration platform that helps turn SOAP into JSON and REST APIs.
• Turnkey developer portal.
• API analytics to track runtimes, rate limits, and API traffic.
• Full life cycle API management with Asset Version Control and DevOps automation.

Comparing the Pros and Cons of Tyk and Akana

Pros of Tyk

• Load balancing with a circuit-breaker function
• Open-source for backend customization and flexible functionality
• Useful dashboard that helps users navigate features and track APIs

Cons of Tyk

• New features lack stability as Tyk seeks to optimise this new feature set
• Lacks .NET core functionality
• No instant REST API generation

Pros of Akana

• Multi-cloud and hybrid cloud integrations.
• Supports a broad range of coding languages.
• Excellent analytics features.

Cons of Akana

• Lack of integrated billing feature
• Lack of user reviews could mean you take a chance with Akana.
• The graphical user interface helps but needs improvement.

Other API Management Platforms to Explore

If you don’t think Tyk or Akana sound like good options for you, there are a multitude of other API management platforms including:

• Amazon API Gateway (AWS)
• Apache Kafka
• Apigee Edge
• Axway
• Boomi
• IBM API Connect
• Kong
• Microsoft Azure API Management
• Mulesoft Anypoint
• Oracle API Manager
• TIBCO Mashery
• WSO2 API Manager

Choose DreamFactory for an Effective API Management Solution

DreamFactory provides a comprehensive API management solution with a range of user friendly features. Many users prefer DreamFactory because it offers:

• Instant API creation
• Live API documentation
• An intuitive admin console
• API limiting
• API publishing
• Logging and reporting
• Server-side scripting

DreamFactory can even automatically update your SOAP APIs into restful APIs to improve access control and give you more flexibility. Start your free trial to help you decide whether DreamFactory has the features that you want for your organization. You can choose a hosted trial or talk to an integration expert about an on-premises solution.