Kong Gateway Enterprise

What do you like best about the product?

I evaluated Kong Konnect as an API management and gateway solution for our Fulfillment Innovation Technology (FIT) project, which follows a microservice-based architecture. With multiple backend services, managing API routing, authentication, traffic control, and access policies individually in each service can become difficult to maintain. Kong Konnect provides a centralized layer in front of the backend services. It can handle requests coming from clients and route them to the appropriate service based on the configured routes and services. This is useful because the backend Spring Boot services can focus more on business logic instead of implementing the same API management functionality repeatedly. I also found features such as authentication, rate limiting, logging, and plugins useful for a microservice environment. These capabilities can be managed at the gateway level and applied consistently across different APIs. As the number of services increases, having a centralized API management layer makes the overall architecture easier to manage.

What do you dislike about the product?

The main area I think could be improved is the initial learning curve. There are several concepts to understand, including services, routes, plugins, authentication, policies, and configuration. For someone who is new to API gateways, it can take some time to understand how these different components work together. For a project with only a few APIs, Kong Konnect can also feel like more infrastructure than what is necessary. However, for a larger microservice architecture such as FIT, the additional setup can provide more value because there are more APIs and common requirements to manage. I think the onboarding experience could be improved with more beginner-friendly, end-to-end examples. A sample Spring Boot microservice application showing routing, authentication, rate limiting, and plugins together would make it much easier for new users to understand the product.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

One of the main problems Kong Konnect can solve is the complexity of managing APIs across multiple microservices. In a project like FIT, different services may expose different APIs, and managing authentication, routing, traffic limits, and access policies separately can lead to duplicated configuration and logic. Kong provides a centralized place to manage these concerns. For example, routing rules can determine which backend service should receive a request, while authentication can provide a common security layer for APIs. Rate limiting can also help control excessive traffic and protect backend services from unnecessary load. Another benefit is consistency. Instead of implementing similar API-related functionality in every Spring Boot service, common requirements can be handled at the gateway level. This makes the services more focused on their actual business responsibilities and can make the overall system easier to maintain as the number of microservices grows.

What do you like best about the product?

The centralized layer for managing APIs—and handling auth and rate-limiting policies across different services—can be managed at the gateway level. Especially with the AI gateway for MCP servers, it’s good for consistent authentication, traffic control, and isolation across all my apps. The visibility into API traffic is also a great feature; when I’m working with different integrations, troubleshooting becomes much easier.

What do you dislike about the product?

There was a gap in the learning curve when I was getting started. There are a lot of concepts around services, routes, plugins, and consumers, and understanding how all of this fits together takes time. The UI is good overall, but it can feel a tad dense.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

It compares fairly well with integrations managed across different services. For MCP based integrations, having them as part of the same application stack with a common gateway layer makes it easier to apply auth, rate limiting, and monitoring especially for AI usage by individuals. Having a gateway in front of services also provides a common layer that others can reuse, with most of the setup already in place.

What do you like best about the product?

Definitely Kong Gateway, since it’s delivered solid API performance for us at scale. Another standout is the analytics feature, which gives me genuinely useful numbers to bring into client conversations. The integrations also fit smoothly with our existing ecosystem, so it’s been easy to align with what we already use. Support is especially valuable when an account has a more complex setup and needs extra attention. Overall, ROI is much easier to explain and discuss when API usage is clearly visible.

What do you dislike about the product?

It’s a great platform to start with, but over time the UI can feel a bit dense, especially when you’re managing multiple services. Pricing can also be disruptive, since it often requires detailed, account-level discussions to sort out.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

API traffic was starting to raise performance concerns for us, especially during peak usage. Kong Gateway helped by giving us stronger traffic control and clearer visibility, which made it easier to manage those workloads. At the same time, our growing AI services were increasing the number of APIs we needed to monitor. Kong’s AI Gateway gave the team a more structured way to handle those AI integrations, and in the end everything worked out perfectly.

What do you like best about the product?

The UI/UX is very clean and easy to understand. Even a new team member can find services, routes, and plugins without much struggle. The dashboards give a good overview of our APIs in one place, so daily monitoring becomes simple.

Integrations are also a strong point, Kong works nicely with our existing tools and workflow, and its plugin system (authentication, rate limiting, logging, etc.) saves a lot of development time. We don't need to write these things again and again in every service.

Performance is reliable. We have not faced any major slowness or downtime in our usage, and the gateway handles traffic smoothly.

Onboarding was smooth. The documentation is good, and the getting-started guides helped our team to set up quickly. Whenever we had doubts, the support team responded properly and helped us to resolve the issue.

What do you dislike about the product?

Pricing can be a little on the higher side for small teams, so ROI depends on how much API traffic and how many services you manage. For us it is worth it, but a more flexible pricing option would be helpful.

There is also a learning curve for advanced features and plugin configuration. Some documentation examples could be more detailed. On AI and intelligence features, I feel there is still scope for improvement, like smarter insights, anomaly detection, and recommendations inside the analytics.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

We use Kong Konnect daily to manage, secure, and monitor our APIs from a single control plane. It gives us centralized authentication, traffic control, and visibility, which reduces manual work and helps the team to deliver faster. Overall, it improves our productivity and gives confidence in the security and stability of our APIs. I would recommend it to teams looking for a reliable API gateway and management solution.

What do you like best about the product?

I really like Kong Konnect's hybrid deployment model, which allows us to host our FastAPI data planes internally while Kong manages the control plane in the cloud. The out-of-the-box plugins make enforcing strict JWT validation and edge rate-limiting so much easier, which I appreciate because it shields our internal microservices from traffic spikes when our adjusters are syncing heavy files, allowing us to offload authentication overhead and prevent server crashes.

What do you dislike about the product?

Fully automating our API deployments via Kong's declarative configuration tool (decK) in our Azure DevOps pipeline comes with a steep learning curve. Writing the YAML syntax to map complex routing paths and custom plugin logic required a lot of trial and error. Additionally, enterprise tier pricing scales sharply with API call volume, forcing us to strictly monitor monthly throughput to prevent unexpected cost spikes.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Kong Konnect solves our backend stability issues during massive claim upload events. Before this, a surge of adjusters submitting heavy contents inventory spreadsheets-sometimes containing thousands of line items in assignments, ranging from basic Walmart sheets to a $1,099 Sealy Posturepedic mattress-could overwhelm our FastAPI endpoints and trigger downstream OpenAI rate limits. By offloading authentication and enforcing strict API throttling at the edge, Kong ensures our AI-driven architecture remains stable and secure.