You could always use an open source gateway like Tyk (https://tyk.io) or API Umbrella (full disclosure: I run Tyk.io, and this news is... disheartening).

Think of it as Amazon validating your business! It's yet another selling point (specially for orgs that can't or don't want to use AWS mind-boggling myriad of products).

Hah! Indeed :-)

Consider this: I actually don't use Amazon because it is mind-boggling. But I'm off to look at Tyk now, just for the fun of it.

Check out Kong, even easier, built on nginx and better docs too: https://github.com/Mashape/kong

The analytics on Tyk look amazing, definitely a step up from the internal tools I've built.

Is Tyk HIPAA compliant? I'd definitely like to use something like Tyk, but I manage an API that transmits health data, so lots of tools have turned out to be off-limits because of HIPAA issues.

I shouldn't see why not. Tyk has a pretty small footprint and supports SSL end-to-end so transmission of data is safe. It obfuscates API keys so they can't be pulled if you keystore is compromised and all analytics also use the obfuscated keys so that security is ensured in log data.

However, we'd probably need to do an audit. Worth a check though.

HIPAA pretty much requires dedicated physical hardware. If my code is running on the same machine as someone else's code then I'm breaking the rules.

It appears to be open source and you can download and run it on your own hardware: https://tyk.io/v1.7/download/

Doesn't running in a web browser pretty much mean that?

I feel your pain friend. I too work in the health care industry. Can't use almost any of these toys! Wah!

Wow, Tyk looks kinda exactly like something we'd use. Thank you so much!

You can always get in touch with me directly on our community site if you have any questions, we're a friendly bunch :-)

have you tried KONG or API Umbrella?

Consider that AWS has always been incredibly expensive. If you can't compete with AWS on price, then sure, it should be disheartening, but then you should take a long hard look at why.

Otherwise let AWS grow the market, and look for opportunities to serve people who don't want to pay the AWS premium and/or to plug feature holes.

Isn't AWS one of the cheapest? Other than DigitalOcean, what else is cheaper?

Hetzner is amazingly cheap, but nowhere near as big. DO is indeed much cheaper. AWS is cheap, but performance varies too. Also, Azure (?)

Azure has tended to be price comparable to AWS, but does offer some compelling options for storage, that I wish other providers did too.

My biggest complaint about MS/Azure is they can't seem to get single signon/off working right... Login to one account for personal email, another for work email, and another still for my personal Azure account... Sometimes gets stuck in a loop, just doesn't work, whatever... I often keep another browser, that I don't mind wiping all cookies on just to get the damned thing to work. Let alone the other day where my payment didn't go through for some reason, and my azure account was locked, as was my live account, that I had to go through a convoluted recovery process that was different because of 2fa, only then to have my email (application password) revoked... grrr.

Despite account issues, I've really liked actually working with Azure.. though I think their node tooling could use some TLC, and better documentation... wound up writing my own wrapper (azure-storage-simple) to have a cleaner interface... also wrote mssql-ng as a friendly abstraction on top of mssql.

or you can use open source api gateways, free. like Kong (https://github.com/mashape/kong) or Tyk.

Thanks for posting this, Tyk actually looks great (and easier to understand than Kong or Amazon API Gateway).

We've been considering building something like this ourselves or looking for a good existing solution, but hadn't found anything yet. I'm definitely checking this out.

why you think it's easier to understand than kong?

HackerNews effect :-( Site is down.

It is? http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/https://tyk.io

Why do you think the lock-in will suck? Lack of flexibility or that you'll eventually want, pricing, or something else?

Flexibility mostly. Pricing you can just bake into you're business model.

Flexibility however is always something you run into with platforms. And while this is a bit different then what folks typically think of as a platform (Django, Rails, Play, Spring) it looks like it would suffer the same problems. As soon as you need to do something weird, you're stuck fighting the platform or porting out instead of making your project better. This is why I prefer platforms that are more a collection of libraries with a preferred way of doing then as opposed to rigid box box style things.

Flexibility and being able to easily add extra functionality is the underlying philosophy of Kong (https://github.com/Mashape/kong), of which I am one of the core contributors.

We are accepting pull-requests from the community for new Plugins (http://getkong.org/plugins), and I can see Kong running on top of the AWS Gateway -> Lambda integration to provide functionality that is not necessarily bound to the AWS realm.

That makes sense. I'm usually a fan of AWS services, but this does look like the kind of thing that could land you in a world of hurt down the line, when there's something you need to do and you just can't without, say, moving completely off the API platform.

Did you guys tried the open source api gateway KONG? (https://github.com/mashape/kong)

Welcome to cognitive dissonance.