I would like to know the differences between Mashery, WSO2 and 3scale. Someone who has used API Managers before can give his opinion? What are advantages and disadvantages of each one
thanks
cheers
Not sure, but this question might end up flagged as off topic - vendor comparison, but anyway I'll jump in. I work at 3scale (full disclosure) but hopefully this is useful anyway - the three are pretty different. Trying to be as neutral as possible!:
3scale uses NGNIX and/or open source code plugins to enforce all of the API traffic rules and limits (rate limits, key security, oauth, analytics, switching apps on and off etc.) and the traffic always flows directly to your servers (not via the cloud) so you don't have additional latency or privacy concerns. Because it's NGNIX it's also widely supported, very fast and flexible. Then it has a SAAS backend that manages all the analytics, rate limits, policies, developer portal, alerts etc. + synchronizes across all the traffic manager nodes. It's free to use up to nearly 5million API calls per month.
WSO2's system is an additional module to the WSO2 ESB so if you're using that it makes a lot of sense. It runs everything locally with no cloud components - a pro or a con depending on how you see it. It's also been around a lot less time and doesn't have such a large userbase.
Mashery has two systems - the main one with which the API traffic flows through Mashery's cloud systems first and has traffic management applied there. So there is always a latency heavy roundtrip between the users of the API and your servers + it means Mashery is in your API traffic critical path. They also have an on premise traffic manager but it's much less widely used. Both solutions have very significant costs and long term commitments.
As 3scale what we see as the main advantage is you have a tons of control as to how you set up all the traffic flow and never have to route through a third party plus you have the benefit if having all the heavy lifting hosted and synchronized across multiple data centers. We're also committed to having a strong free for ever tier of service since we want to see a lot of APIs out there! http://www.3scale.net/
Good luck with your choice! steve.