Kong Konnect Plus

Kong Konnect serves as my main API gateway. A specific example of how I use Kong Konnect as an API gateway in my organization is that we host all of our Node.js microservices as REST APIs, and these REST APIs are published in Kong Konnect so that external services can access them.

Kong Konnect supports other functionalities such as developer discovering API specifications, traffic routing, and rate limiting and authentication, which are also used in our organization.

In my experience, the best features Kong Konnect offers include its integration with our Node.js microservices, centralized access for multiple teams to the APIs, and support for rate limiting, authentication, and monitoring of API usage.

The centralized access for multiple teams helps our organization day-to-day by encouraging collaboration as other teams are able to discover published APIs across the organization, and it saves time in terms of specification and in terms of request and response structure.

Kong Konnect has positively impacted our organization by providing centralized access for our APIs for internal and external partners, enforcing authentication and rate limiting at a gateway level, and enabling discoverability of API documentation through Kong Konnect.

Kong Konnect can be improved by simplifying pricing to make it more transparent, simplifying the user experience so that non-technical people can also configure API specifications, and by supporting more enterprise plugins and third-party integrations to make it more robust.

Regarding other improvements Kong Konnect needs, based on our AI integration, there may be some improvements, but as of now, the points that have been mentioned are adequate.

I have been working in my current field for over six years. I have been using Kong Konnect for over a year.

Kong Konnect is stable based on the functionalities we currently use.

Kong Konnect scales well horizontally; multiple instances of different services can be spun up, and traffic can be routed. Kong Konnect is scalable for the functionality that we use, which is redirecting traffic to our Node.js microservices.

Customer support is useful, and documentation is quite clear. Overall, we are happy with it.

Previously, we explored MuleSoft and Boomi as our API gateways, but we switched to Kong Konnect to utilize its AI capabilities.

I have seen a return on investment; with more integration of external partners to our APIs via Kong Konnect, there has been an increase in revenue and overall less time spent onboarding them to our API functionalities.

Regarding my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing, I find that the pricing can be made more transparent and more helpful for enterprise integration.

Before choosing Kong Konnect, I evaluated alternatives including AWS API Gateway as well as Apache APISIX.

We are planning to integrate AI and LLMs, which are also supported by Kong Konnect, so this might prove useful in the future.

Since using Kong Konnect, I have observed less time in onboarding external partners for our internal APIs, less time in exposing our APIs with proper authentication and rate limiting, and more collaboration for discovering API specifications across platforms.

My advice for others looking into using Kong Konnect is to decide to use it based on the throughput that is actually required and consider the total cost of ownership as well. I recommend starting with a proof of concept so that the AI functionalities can be utilized first and to see if they provide value to the organization. I would rate this review as a seven out of ten.

We use Kong Konnect primarily for centralized API management, API security, Kubernetes ingress management, traffic control, observability, and governance across multiple environments. Additionally, we leverage custom plugins and AI Gateway capabilities to secure and manage both traditional APIs and AI-driven workloads.

I have used Kong Konnect in such a way that sometimes the upstreams are also authenticated. So we used to add some upstream auth plugin first so that the upstream will get authenticated. Then we used to add our own plugins, such as the OpenID plugin, so that we can authenticate from our end too.

Kong Konnect has positively impacted our organization by enabling us to create a single platform for all the APIs where we can monitor all the APIs together on one platform. This centralized platform has significantly reduced our time, and compared to other platforms or API platforms, I think it is more cost-effective than any other option in the market.

The best part of Kong Konnect is the Konnect UI, and it has a very user-friendly interface where we can easily onboard the APIs by just adding the services and passing the hostname onto that and giving a specific name to the services. Then we add the endpoints on the routes. It also has an observability platform where we can see all the logs of Kong.

For automations, Kong Konnect has a very out-of-the-box approach. I can say that automations run deck commands to connect with it and also to set up the automations using the deck tools.

I would recommend that Kong add the capability to sort the routes by name, date, or size, as the current setup does not support this. I would suggest that Kong make the routes or services appear in alphabetical order or sort by date modified or date added. Additionally, I suggest adding an alert system in Kong so that whenever we receive any non-200 response, we will get alerts to third-party tools such as Teams or Slack or any other channels.

I have been using Kong Konnect for four years.

Kong Konnect is stable.

Kong Konnect's scalability allows it to give us logs and enables easy setup and installation in any type of cloud or platform. It supports everything, whether it is Linux, Kubernetes, or others, and helps us in automations by using just the deck tools.

Customer support for Kong Konnect is very good. They are very helpful, and whenever we raise a ticket at any time, we just need to submit the ticket and we receive feedback or a response very soon.

This is the first time that I am using Kong Konnect product since the beginning of my career; I have not used any different solution before Kong Konnect.

The pricing is good, and the setup is very easy. Licensing is also obtained very easily.

I have not seen a direct return on investment personally, as I was not part of the compliance team handling this, but I would say that it has saved us money, and the supporting team is very helpful.

I have not evaluated other options before choosing Kong Konnect; we decided to go with Kong because it matches our organization's requirements.

I have not worked much on the AI capabilities of Kong Konnect, but I have gone through all the plugins, and it has very out-of-the-box plugins and capabilities. As per the market, it is now necessary for APIs to have AI capabilities, so I think Kong is extending in that area.

I have not worked much on accuracy and reliability either, but during my POCs, I found that it has very good capabilities and accuracy is also very good. Whatever content we are passing and adding some plugins onto that, it is providing us with responses as per our expectations.

My advice for others looking into using Kong Konnect is to please go with it. It is very good compared to other tools in the market. It is low cost, has a user-friendly interface, is easy to set up, and customer support is also very good. I would rate this product a 9 out of 10.