Late in 2024, Rapid (formerly known as RapidAPI), announced their acquisition by telecom infrastructure provider, Nokia. Rapid had established themselves as an API marketplace and enterprise API hub solution.

Closing out a year of many API tooling acquisitions, the API management space is clearly changing. And while choices for organizations might be narrowing, we’re hearing from large enterprises that best-in-class tools that support their API-led initiates are more important than ever. Specifically, those that focus less on the traditional plan, design, build, run aspect of API management, and more on API adoption, governance, and optimization to drive better API reuse, efficiency and risk management, while supporting heterogenous environments.

In this article, we’ll discuss why our ignite Platform is the best alternative for existing users of Rapid’s Enterprise API Hub, as well as those considering Rapid before the acquisition was announced.

Why enterprises are exploring alternatives to the Rapid Enterprise Hub

Rapid’s Enterprise API Hub launched in 2023, providing developers a way to find, test, and connect to existing APIs in their enterprise.

The not-so elephant in the room for enterprises considering or using this offering is of course the announcement that Rapid are being acquired by Nokia. Nokia themselves have undergone big change in the last decade, pivoting from the world’s biggest mobile phone company to a leading provider of telecom infrastructure and services to other carriers.

Nokia specifically phrased the acquisition as a purchase of “Rapid’s technology” as part of their strategy to expand their network API product roadmap, and to help create an API ecosystem in the telecom space.

In addition, it’s only been publicly confirmed that Rapid’s public API marketplace will still be available to users. It’s likely then that the Enterprise Hub offering may well not be available publicly in the very near future and the technology will be absorbed into Nokia’s infrastructure.

Existing Rapid pain points

It’s not just the acquisition announcement that means enterprises may be looking for an alternative to Rapid. Existing pain points for the enterprise offering that have been reported include:

• Rapid’s core focus on the public marketplace part of their platform, not the Enterprise Hub
• A lack of API governance and proper lifecycle management capabilities, as well as the platform being too rigid to tailor to enterprises’ complex use cases
• The product’s sole developer focus, when many enterprises are looking to expand the audience of their APIs in support of business-led and API product initiatives

Key Features of digitalML’s ignite Platform

Enterprise’s searching for API tooling that support Rapid Enterprise Hub’s core USPs, while addressing existing pain points and overcoming uncertainty post acquisition will likely be interested in what our ignite Platform has to offer.

An API Portal of your best APIs

ignite’s Consumer Portals are a next-gen type of API portals, providing everything an API consumer (whether developer or business user) needs to find, understand, evaluate and test, and gain access to the enterprise’s approved APIs.

Unlike other API portals that can quickly become cluttered and out of date, ignite facilitates exposing a curated set of your best APIs, with tailored views depending which role is searching for them. APIs in the portal are kept up to date via the connection to the API catalog. And ignite provides a direct connection between API consumers in the portal to API providers in the catalog, fostering collaboration and improving API roadmaps.

An API Catalog of ALL your APIs

ignite’s Holistic Catalog is a centralized location for all the enterprise’s APIs, not just those exposed for reuse in the portal. APIs can be auto-discovered and populated into the catalog from the enterprise’s repos, while connection to CI/CD pipelines keeps the catalog always in-sync and an accurate source of truth.

ignite sits agnostic of, but connected to existing API gateways, enabling enterprise-grade reporting and metrics across the entire API portfolio. APIs are abstracted and organized into Designs and Specifications, classified against business and technology taxonomies, and easily searchable to ensure effective management and tracking at scale.

Powered by extended API Lifecycle Management and Governance

Extending API lifecycle management and governance practices beyond plan, design, and run is central to ignite. With increased API reuse and consumption comes added complexity to ensure APIs are compliant and well-managed regardless of which version is running where and being consumed by who. To support this, ignite offers an automated and flexible API governance engine, as well as robust versioning, endpoint management, lineage and dependency tracking, and more.

Why ignite is the best alternative to RapidAPI Enterprise Hub

ignite provides a great alternative to Rapid’s Enterprise hub:

• Our core focus has always been supporting enterprises in their API maturity journey. We understand enterprises have complex use cases, and provide a platform that can be tailored to meet these needs.
• The platform is scalable to meet enterprises where they are. We offer 3 tiers; ignite Lite, Enterprise, and Premium Enterprise, providing solutions for those starting out on their API maturity right up to those who are ready to become market leaders with support form our dedicated team of experts.
• ignite is easy to implement and adopt, enabling a quick transition from Rapid for existing users. ignite customers can get their API portal and catalog up and running and fully populated in as little as an hour.
• API lifecycle management and proper API governance are core to the platform, ensuring APIs are high quality and consistent at scale.

ignite Benefits

By switching to ignite, enterprises can realize many efficiency benefits within 3-5 months of purchasing the platform. Here are just a few examples from our customers:

1. 12x API reuse
2. 100% of redundant APIs identified and safely retired
3. 80% of duplicate APIs identified and consolidated
4. Development costs reduced by 41%
5. 90% reduction in the time spent to discover and consume an existing API

Our ignite Platform offers a robust, scalable, and quick to adopt alternative to Rapid’s Enterprise Hub. Nokia’s acquisition of Rapid makes this more timely than ever. Explore more about ignite by downloading our product sheet below.