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