Azure API Management vs. Azure Traffic Manager

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Azure API Management
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft's Azure API Management supports creation of API.
$0.04
Lightweight and serverless version of API Management service, billed per execution
Azure Traffic Manager
Score 9.7 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft's Azure Traffic Manager operates at the DNS layer to quickly and efficiently direct incoming DNS requests based on the routing method of your choice.N/A
Pricing
Azure API ManagementAzure Traffic Manager
Editions & Modules
Consumption
0.042 per 10,000 calls
Lightweight and serverless version of API Management service, billed per execution
Developer
$48.04
per month Non-production use cases and evaluations
Basic
$147.17
per month Entry-level production use cases
Standard
$686.72
per month Medium-volume production use cases
Premium
$2,795.17
per month High-volume or enterprise production use cases
Isolated
TBA
per month Enterprise production use cases requiring high degree of isolation
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure API ManagementAzure Traffic Manager
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Azure API ManagementAzure Traffic Manager
Features
Azure API ManagementAzure Traffic Manager
API Management
Comparison of API Management features of Product A and Product B
Azure API Management
8.0
Ratings
4% below category average
Azure Traffic Manager
-
Ratings
API access control8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Rate limits and usage policies5.40 Ratings00 Ratings
API usage data8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
API user onboarding9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
API versioning8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Usage billing and payments5.20 Ratings00 Ratings
API monitoring and logging9.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Azure API ManagementAzure Traffic Manager
Small Businesses
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
F5 BIG-IP
F5 BIG-IP
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
F5 BIG-IP
F5 BIG-IP
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Azure API ManagementAzure Traffic Manager
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Azure API ManagementAzure Traffic Manager
Likelihood to Recommend
The range of policies that enable the APIs to loosely couple it with security, rate limit, retry, etc. are good. We can easily tie authentication mechanisms to external and other internal services without having to modify the backend.
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Azure Traffic Manager is a great product, if you have multiple sites hosting similar services (Primary and DR), and you want to ensure that users are directed to the DR in case of a primary datacenter failure, [Azure] Traffic Manager does this very nicely. If you have a service hosted across multiple regions/datacenters and you want to balance the inbound load between the regions, [Azure] Traffic Manager does this very well, of course such scenario would require a database replication or something like Cosmos-DB in the backend [Azure Traffic Manager] is also well suited for inbound traffic with multiple IPs, you can fail-over traffic from one inbound IP to another based on its availability, or if you have multiple internet connections that you want to balance the load across, it does this pretty nicely too.
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Pros
  • Management of APIs
  • Security of the API through Azure AD, AD B2C etc.
  • Providing an outer layer through APIs
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  • Performance DNS Load Balancing for Lowest Latency Endpoint to Clients
  • Priority-Based DNS Load Balancing to ensure maximum up time for a service
  • Geographic-based DNS Load Balancing to force certain clients in certain regions to connect to specific endpoints
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Cons
  • Cost - the upfront cost is a bit restrictive. I've been told it is because there are a few underlying VMs that are running this service. So if you're just starting out with API management, it can be an expensive proposition. Value increases as you add additional APIs. If you're using Azure B2C for the developer portal, you'll require Standard or Premium since they support AAD integration.
  • Security granularity - at time of writing, APIM doesn't support breaking out operations to products. For example, if you have an API that has a GET and a POST operation, and you want the POST operation to require a different subscription. There is a work around, but it makes management a bit messy.
  • Developer and Publisher portal - it's a little weird. Microsoft hasn't migrated all the publisher portal functionality into the "native" Azure portal. So some of it feels a little weird - especially when working with the content management side of things for the developer portal.
  • Scaling - while it's easy to scale up, the cost of APIM ramps up very quickly. Standard -> Premium is a 4x jump.
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  • Traffic View is a great feature, but doesn't work very well, sometimes it gets stuck and stops loading traffic view data
  • Automatic probing for endpoints sometimes gets stuck too, I would recommend a technique to test the endpoint in real time from Azure Portal
  • Traffic View heatmap is buggy and doesn't point correctly to locations
  • Traffic View portal doesn't show source countries (Shows coordinates) it would be much more helpful to have coordinates auto-translated to geolocations/countries
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Alternatives Considered
Azure APIM vs Amazon API Gateway:
1) Azure APIM was a complete package that included a developer portal.
2) We are very Microsoft centric - so the Microsoft product suite aligned very well with our business needs.
3) It was faster and easier to stand up Azure APIM for testing than it was for the Amazon API Gateway.
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Amazon Route 53 Traffic Flow does what [Azure] Traffic Manager does, however, in Azure Configuration is separated between Azure DNS Zones (For DNS Zone Management) and [Azure] Traffic Manager for DNS Traffic Management and Load Balancing, Route 53 in a unified product for DNS Traffic Management using Traffic Flow and DNS Zone Management. Route 53 does a great job, however, we found it to be a little bit more complex to setup than [Azure] Traffic Manager, Setting up traffic manager is pretty easy even for the first time, and getting the best out of it is relatively simple.
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Return on Investment
  • It’s really pay as you go, so it's not that costly to get in and try it out. There’s no expensive client to buy and manage, but you do need to stay on top of the rapidly changing Azure environment to be sure you upgrade or adjust when needed.
  • It’s not great having more than one API tool, but it’s ok to spread out your work, as you always want the right tool for the right job. For example, if you are a Salesforce-heavy organization, I’d go with Mule over Azure.
  • It was easy getting an external consultant access to the tool to build their own API for a project they were working on for us.
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  • Service cost is exceptionally low
  • Overall, this product saves a lot of money for the value it provides and it isn't expensive
  • It's around half a dollar per million queries, which is truly peanuts, extras may be required if you do advanced configuration
  • I can't see any reason why any business wouldn't be using this product, very low investment for a very high return and savings
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ScreenShots