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Deploy and manage API solutions efficiently with centralized hybrid systems
What is our primary use case?
I use Kong Konnect as an API Gateway or API management solution. I have several use cases, including securing internal APIs within Siemens network by deploying Kong Gateway on Amazon EKS. This acts as an API management layer to expose other internal services such as logging and Jira APIs. Additionally, I utilize it for external use cases by deploying an API Gateway for consumers accessing services from the internet. My aim is to create a federated API management platform where various business units can still use their preferred choice of gateways while maintaining a central federation layer to control security and logging policies.
What is most valuable?
Kong Konnect is a SaaS version of Kong Gateway, and it offers a hybrid deployment. The configuration can be controlled centrally via the SaaS offering, and each team can manage their own gateway or runtime part. It is lightweight, suitable for smaller use cases without heavy initial costs, and comes in various flavors such as open source and enterprise. The documentation is excellent, and it includes a developer portal, which helps create a common distribution channel for APIs within and outside the enterprise.
What needs improvement?
Kong Konnect's RBAC needs to evolve more, as they currently offer only one or two levels of RBAC in terms of organization and teams. Additionally, the licensing model could be simplified, especially in how they charge and track usage. There are also some technical restrictions around exposing GRPC APIs, but I have not explored this yet.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with Kong Konnect for the last six or seven months.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
The deployment is straightforward because it's a hybrid model. The control plane is a SaaS offering, so there's not much difficulty there.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The platform is fully scalable, providing various ways to manage data planes or runtimes. They offer managed runtimes, but it's preferred that consumers manage their own runtime, which can be deployed in a containerized manner.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support from Kong is satisfactory.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I was previously using Azure Logic Apps but moved to Kong API Gateway. This decision was influenced by the need to create a service around Kong API Gateway with a federated API management platform.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is very straightforward due to its hybrid deployment model, with the configuration and control plane managed as a SaaS offering.
What was our ROI?
I have not yet seen a return on investment because the project is still in its early stages.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
While the pricing model isn't very clear on how usage is tracked, the initial cost and setup for using Kong Konnect are reasonable.
What other advice do I have?
The knowledge base provided by Kong is excellent, offering various learning paths not just for the technical aspects of Kong Konnect, but also for innovation within the application. It's a highly customizable platform. I would rate Kong Konnect an eight overall.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
A fast API managent solution
What do you like best about the product?
It is a very easy and with a vast range of features tool, and it could be integrated with many cloud environments, and on premises as well.
What do you dislike about the product?
There are some wrong documentation, a high dependency of some beta plugins, and quite high costs.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Rate limiting, microservices orchestration, api security, integration of apps.
Kong is great product for APIM & having potential to become Market Leader
What do you like best about the product?
1. Having mulitple security policy to secure our api
2. We can create out of box custom plugins using Lua, js, python
3. Support Hybrid model
4. Low latency
5. Easy to setup in any cloud gateway like aws,azure,gcp etc
6. Easy to integrate with third party tools like loggly, datadog , prometheus & many more
7. Konnect has recently introduced dedicated cloud gateways, which is fully managed, multi-region API management solution.
2. We can create out of box custom plugins using Lua, js, python
3. Support Hybrid model
4. Low latency
5. Easy to setup in any cloud gateway like aws,azure,gcp etc
6. Easy to integrate with third party tools like loggly, datadog , prometheus & many more
7. Konnect has recently introduced dedicated cloud gateways, which is fully managed, multi-region API management solution.
What do you dislike about the product?
1. Thier documentation regarding things need to be more detailed
2. The developer portal needs to be more mature and should provide more functionality to the developer.
2. The developer portal needs to be more mature and should provide more functionality to the developer.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Kong provide centralize api managment , ensuring security , scalability , low latency & streamlined development, while providing analysitic for optimization, benefiting developers and business alike. It also enhances API security, performance, and management by providing robust features like rate limiting, authentication, and monitoring.
Konnect - Kongs SaaS Offering
What do you like best about the product?
Quick and Easy to start deploying APIs.
Provides different deployment options Hybrid and SaaS.
Provides different deployment options Hybrid and SaaS.
What do you dislike about the product?
Lack of monetization feature within the Developer Portal.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Konnect helped in setting up a full fledged API gateway in minutes.
Kong Konnect API Management with the power of cloud
What do you like best about the product?
Can have our API deployed and live within a few minutes with dedicated cloud gateway.
Integration with third party application like amazon cognito and okta.
Integration with third party application like amazon cognito and okta.
What do you dislike about the product?
Low transparency of data kong is storing for our APIs.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Prebuilt developer portal allowed us to easily publish APIs to the outside world.
Kong API Gateway is highly extensible but complex to configure.
What do you like best about the product?
Kong Gateway recently introduced several powerful features focused on AI readiness, performance, and enterprise-grade security. The latest version includes prompt compression to reduce LLM token usage and multimodal agent support for handling workflows across text, images, audio, and more. Earlier enhancements brought semantic caching, prompt guardrails, and intelligent routing—enabling the gateway to understand prompt intent, block unsafe content, and route requests to the most suitable AI model.
Core infrastructure has also been improved with incremental configuration sync for faster, lighter deployments and full OpenTelemetry integration for enhanced observability. Centralized config and consumer management through Kong Konnect make it easier to govern large-scale environments. Security features like PII sanitization, JSON threat protection, and certificate-based authentication further strengthen the platform. These updates position Kong Gateway as a smart, scalable solution for both traditional APIs and AI-driven traffic.
Core infrastructure has also been improved with incremental configuration sync for faster, lighter deployments and full OpenTelemetry integration for enhanced observability. Centralized config and consumer management through Kong Konnect make it easier to govern large-scale environments. Security features like PII sanitization, JSON threat protection, and certificate-based authentication further strengthen the platform. These updates position Kong Gateway as a smart, scalable solution for both traditional APIs and AI-driven traffic.
What do you dislike about the product?
While Kong Gateway is a powerful and feature-rich platform, there are still areas where it could improve to enhance usability and scalability. The developer experience, for instance, can be challenging—especially for newcomers. A more intuitive UI, better error messages during configuration, and clearer guidance within the dashboard would make it easier for teams to get started and manage complex setups. Additionally, while Kong offers a wide range of plugins, the documentation and transparency around which plugins are open-source, enterprise-only, or tied to Konnect could be more consistent. This would help users make informed decisions more easily.
Support for additional protocols like WebSocket, MQTT, or GraphQL subscriptions is another area of potential growth, especially for real-time and IoT use cases. High availability configurations and multi-region deployments, though possible, can be complex and would benefit from more streamlined tooling, templates, and cloud-native deployment guides. Rate limiting is solid for typical workloads, but for AI-driven or token-sensitive APIs, more advanced controls—such as token-based throttling—would be highly valuable. Lastly, integration between local setups (like decK) and Kong Konnect could be more seamless, especially for teams adopting GitOps workflows. Addressing these areas would make Kong Gateway even more developer-friendly, scalable, and ready for evolving enterprise needs.
Support for additional protocols like WebSocket, MQTT, or GraphQL subscriptions is another area of potential growth, especially for real-time and IoT use cases. High availability configurations and multi-region deployments, though possible, can be complex and would benefit from more streamlined tooling, templates, and cloud-native deployment guides. Rate limiting is solid for typical workloads, but for AI-driven or token-sensitive APIs, more advanced controls—such as token-based throttling—would be highly valuable. Lastly, integration between local setups (like decK) and Kong Konnect could be more seamless, especially for teams adopting GitOps workflows. Addressing these areas would make Kong Gateway even more developer-friendly, scalable, and ready for evolving enterprise needs.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Kong API Gateway resolves issues like API management, controlling traffic, security and monitoring. Kon centralizes the control of API Traffic, carrying it at a root cause level that is guaranteed to scale with advanced security features, such as authentication and rate limits, improving performance via load balancing. This can translate into easier API management, increased reliability, and reduced times in deploying new services, hence a benifit to users.
Market leader as A API Gateway and the Leading API Gateway for Microsevices Management
What do you like best about the product?
1. Currently Dev portal is really mature because of we can customize many of things.
2. Documentation is very improve like step by step guidance for setup the dev portal.
3. We can also integrate the third party IDP server like Okta and auth0 and much more like these.
4. Multi Dev Portal support is obviously now.
5. A plugin, I most like name as Mocking is fantastic, like you can use mock data when your API is under the development.
6. Introduce API tracing on the SaaS platform, Now we don't have to integrate the Dynatrace or other third party service.
7. AI manager is also in the SaaS platform.
8. They improved Observability & Metrics as compare to previous version.
9. AI plugin introduced like ai-proxy, ai-proxy-advanced.
10. Introduce Redis configuration for rate liming plugin.
11. A simple, user-friendly interface that's easy for anyone with basic API management knowledge to use.
2. Documentation is very improve like step by step guidance for setup the dev portal.
3. We can also integrate the third party IDP server like Okta and auth0 and much more like these.
4. Multi Dev Portal support is obviously now.
5. A plugin, I most like name as Mocking is fantastic, like you can use mock data when your API is under the development.
6. Introduce API tracing on the SaaS platform, Now we don't have to integrate the Dynatrace or other third party service.
7. AI manager is also in the SaaS platform.
8. They improved Observability & Metrics as compare to previous version.
9. AI plugin introduced like ai-proxy, ai-proxy-advanced.
10. Introduce Redis configuration for rate liming plugin.
11. A simple, user-friendly interface that's easy for anyone with basic API management knowledge to use.
What do you dislike about the product?
1. I thing they have to work on the pricing of the Kong gateway, price is much higher as compare to other tools in the market like Apigee.
2. They can improve the multi-tenant support in upcoming version.
3. Improve the RBAC for tight security and user permissions.
2. They can improve the multi-tenant support in upcoming version.
3. Improve the RBAC for tight security and user permissions.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
1. Security, Like there is lot of plugins avalible in kong for example. Key auth, open id connect, Jwt and many more.
2. API Management, there is lot of functionality like rate limiting, load balancing, Authorization using ACL plugin and routing.
3. Monitoring and Logging
4. Dev portal for the developers, we can easily publish the api product and expose the service for new developers
2. API Management, there is lot of functionality like rate limiting, load balancing, Authorization using ACL plugin and routing.
3. Monitoring and Logging
4. Dev portal for the developers, we can easily publish the api product and expose the service for new developers
Kong enterprise and Kong Konnect review.
What do you like best about the product?
The software is very easy to implement. We use docker on a linux VM. The Kong API gateway is easily configurable for defining services and routes. We take advantage of both basic authorization and key authorization for our security needs. The API gateway is used for both production and non-production environments. We have had some needs for support. We have found that customer support is quick in responding to tickets to help us resolve the issue or question. We recently started using Konnect to control our configurations for easier data plane management.
What do you dislike about the product?
The one thing that we don't really like is the UI and the filtering ability. The filter feature is good. But, feel that the filter should stay in place until you change it.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The gateway is primarily used as a security front end for routing to our services.
A powerfull and fully featured API orchestrator
What do you like best about the product?
A very powerful orchestrator to manage lots of API products and leveraging the full power of API Gateway, Service Mesh, Kubernetes and other related tools, easily m,anaged from a nice web UI. You can count with Kong support to make sure your API products will be successfull.
What do you dislike about the product?
Almost nothing, but the documentation could be a little more intuitive.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Kong Konnect allows you to easily manage sophisticated and complex API programs, involving multiple components necessary for modern microservices architectures.
Easy and Fast
What do you like best about the product?
Its very easy to configure. plenty of option available to run the data planes right from VMs to EKS etc.
What do you dislike about the product?
Nothing to dislike so far. its a new product and takes away a lot of complexies from on-prem Kong mesh/gateway platform.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We use Kong konnect for API Management. It very easy chose from a large number of ootb policies to protect and govern our APIs.
Most of our policies are around security i.e. Authentication and Authorization and QoS.
Most of our policies are around security i.e. Authentication and Authorization and QoS.
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