We use Amazon API Gateway at the IT department for all internal and external tools integration which involves web services. Our organization uses Amazon API Gateway to have an authentication layer and security for all the public-facing web services. It helped our organization to have better security and zero downtime for new version deployments.
Pros
API Authentication
Zero downtime
Easy deployment
Cons
Not so easy to use for the first time
Need more examples in the documentation with multiple programming languages
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon API Gateway is powerful service where any organization/team can start developing webs services in less than few hours. It is well suited integration with any other AWS services like Lamda, Cloudwatch etc.. Easy to add authentication layer for web services and deployment with multiple versions. As it is server less, billing is based on usage.
Our team develops several APIs for multiple end-users to consume. These are both internal and external customers. Our services are behind the Amazon API Gateway. This helps in securing our APIs and also helps curtail misuse of our APIs by bad actors. Thus Amazon API Gateway is helping us a great deal as we put a lot of the administration efforts within the gateway itself instead of our code.
Pros
Amazon API Gateway is helping us a great deal as we put a lot of the administration efforts within the gateway itself instead of our code.
Very easy to create different environment set ups like dev, test and UAT.
Easy to change headers without much work from the developers.
Helps in avoiding misuse of our APIs.
Cons
The interface is a little complicated to use. It needs some training.
If there are any errors with the configurations, it would not allow to save.
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon API Gateway is helping us a great deal as we put a lot of the administration efforts within the gateway itself instead of our code.
Amazon API Gateway is helping us to manipulate our headers both in and out as we want to keep track of additional metadata information.
We got great help from the support team at AWS to use Amazon API Gateway.
Very easy to set up different scenarios for testing, developing and doing UAT.
Amazon API Gateway has been adopted by multiple teams within our organization. It offers an intuitive easy-to-use entry point to the AWS serverless services, and has helped our team move traditional 3-tier web applications to the cloud with ease.
Pros
Support for multiple stages/environments.
Great settings for configuring routing, caching, and CORS.
Integrates well with other AWS services.
Cons
Granting permissions for accessing Lambda functions using stage variables needs to be improved.
Reminders to deploy the API after changes have been made would be helpful.
Likelihood to Recommend
It is best suited for building out the APIs for a serverless backend. It may not be the best option for Mobile backends, in which case AWS AppSync would be preferred over API Gateway.
We use Amazon API Gateway in conjunction with AWS Lambda functions and the Serverless framework to rapidly build microservices. This combination is very powerful, particularly for small development teams, because it allows us to delegate work to AWS; we can focus our development effort only on features that yield competitive advantages for our business.
Pros
API Gateway integrates well with AWS Lambda. This allows us to build a web server in the language and framework of our choice, deploy it as a Lambda function, and expose it through API Gateway.
API Gateway manages API keys. Building rate limiting and request quota features are not trivial (or interesting).
API Gateway's pricing can be very attractive for services that are accessed infrequently.
Cons
API Gateway introduces some concepts, such as Stages and Integration Requests, that are foreign to most developers. The documentation hints in the Console help, but sometimes these concepts are not transferred to frameworks like Serverless.
Systems that use API Gateway may behave differently in end-to-end tests in local or CI environments.
Navigating the Console can be confusing.
It could be easier to codify API Gateway configurations.
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon API Gateway is a very powerful tool, particularly for small engineering teams. It is ideal for rapidly developing microservices when used in conjunction with the Serverless framework and AWS Lambda. It is also great when used as a conventional API gateway that provides authentication and routing over microservices. It would not be useful for exposing a monolithic application.
