
Ask HN: Best API Management Platform? - wslh
We are right now focused on building a specific API for an MVP but don&#x27;t want to spend time building a web portal to manage users, API credentials, and payments. We want to only focus in the back-end.<p>Is there a simple and good API management platform for doing this? I looked at apigee, 3scale, etc but they seem to offer something more complex. I don&#x27;t know if https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cloud.google.com&#x2F;endpoints&#x2F; is just this. I am assuming that third parties can subscribe to my API and pay us through the system as well.
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picsoung
Hi :) Disclaimer: I work for 3scale.

The 3scale solution is pretty easy to install on your existing API.

3scale offers an API Gateway that could cloud-hosted or self-hosted. The API
Gateway will sit in front of your existing API and will enforce the rules you
would have setup in 3scale.

On 3scale backend, you have settings to answer the following questions
regarding your API: \- what's the auth mechanism? API key, a pair of keys,
oAuth? \- what is the rate limiting in place? on the whole API, on a specific
endpoint \- what are the different user personas? Free Hacker plan vs.
Business partner with high SLA \- what is the price to use the API? free, flat
fee, per per request, pay per 1000s requests.. \- How is the Developer
Experience? Having a Developer portal in place.

It's very flexible, and you can go really deep in the configuration. But you
are right, it may seem overwhelming at first. Think big ;) Having this API
management solution in place when you have only one or two people using it,
will help you start of a good base, and when you are ready to grow, everything
will be there already.

Also... think about the amount of time you will spend building a custom
solution vs. the amount of time you should spend improving the API itself.

Feel free to reach out if you want to continue the conversation :)
nicolas@3scale.net

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wslh
Thanks! What about the payment subscription by customers? Is it handled via
3scale?

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picsoung
Yes, users are asked to put their credit card credentials, and then we
generate an invoice, and charge their cards.

We use Stripe, Ogone, Braintree or Adyen as payment providers, and money goes
directly into your account, we don't take any cut.

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wslh
Does 3Scale even support subscriptions/recurrent payments?

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picsoung
yes, if you could define for example that people should be charge X per month.

Create yourself an account on 3scale.net and you should be able to see all the
features, it's free for 30days

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wslh
Will do, thanks! One more thing, is there a plan for startups? The price seems
huge for me and we expect a big use of our APIs. I suggest to talk to the YC
Startup School to add 3Scale as a deal. Our project is part of YC Startup
School.

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picsoung
Let's chat about it over email ;) I am sure we can help.

Also we announced today our on-prem solution
[https://www.3scale.net/2017/04/go-anywhere-api-
management-3s...](https://www.3scale.net/2017/04/go-anywhere-api-
management-3scale-api-management-adds-fully-containerized-premises-version/)

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passenger
Hi,

I've been looking for something similar for a while. My best find so far is
[https://github.com/NREL/api-umbrella](https://github.com/NREL/api-umbrella)

