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Apiary vs ReadMe.io: What are the differences?
Introduction
Apiary and ReadMe.io are both popular tools used for API documentation. Despite having similar functionalities, there are key differences between the two platforms.
Design and Customization: Apiary focuses more on providing a structured and standardized way to document APIs, with limited customization options for the visual design. On the other hand, ReadMe.io offers extensive customization options, allowing users to style and brand their API documentation to better suit their needs and branding requirements.
Collaboration Features: Apiary excels in collaboration features, offering tools for teams to work together on API documentation, create mock servers, and automate testing. In contrast, ReadMe.io places a stronger emphasis on user engagement, providing features like interactive API consoles, feedback forms, and community forums to enhance the user experience.
Pricing Structure: Apiary follows a subscription-based pricing model, where users pay based on the number of team members and access to advanced features. In contrast, ReadMe.io offers a more flexible pricing structure, allowing users to choose from different plans based on their specific needs and budget.
Integrations: Apiary integrates well with other development tools and platforms like GitHub, JIRA, and Slack, making it easier for developers to incorporate API documentation into their existing workflows. ReadMe.io also offers a wide range of integrations but focuses more on third-party services like Stripe, AWS, and Google Analytics to enhance the functionality of API documentation.
Support and Documentation: Apiary provides comprehensive documentation and support resources for users, including tutorials, FAQs, and a dedicated support team. ReadMe.io also offers robust support options but emphasizes community-driven support through forums, user-generated content, and a knowledge base.
Focus on Developer Experience: While both platforms prioritize user experience, Apiary tends to focus more on providing a developer-friendly environment for creating and managing API documentation. In contrast, ReadMe.io places a stronger emphasis on creating a seamless experience for both developers and end-users, with features like interactive API consoles, code examples, and SDK generation tools.
In Summary, the key differences between Apiary and ReadMe.io lie in their design and customization options, collaboration features, pricing structure, integrations, support resources, and focus on developer experience.
From a StackShare Community member: "I just started working for a start-up and we are in desperate need of better documentation for our API. Currently our API docs is in a README.md file. We are evaluating Postman and Swagger UI. Since there are many options and I was wondering what other StackSharers would recommend?"
I use Postman because of the ease of team-management, using workspaces and teams, runner, collections, environment variables, test-scripts (post execution), variable management (pre and post execution), folders (inside collections, for better management of APIs), newman, easy-ci-integration (and probably a few more things that I am not able to recall right now).
I use Swagger UI because it's an easy tool for end-consumers to visualize and test our APIs. It focuses on that ! And it's directly embedded and delivered with the APIs. Postman's built-in tools aren't bad, but their main focus isn't the documentation and also, they are hosted outside the project.
I recommend Postman because it's easy to use with history option. Also, it has very great features like runner, collections, test scripts runners, defining environment variables and simple exporting and importing data.
Pros of Apiary
- Easy to use29
- Free to use19
- Traffic inspector12
- Free11
- Collaboration10
- Mock API7
- Dashboard4
- Customization3
- 30 Days Trial2
- Access Control2
- Documentation2
- Validate API Documentation2
- API explorer1
- Clean syntax1
- Provisioning1
- Shared API blueprint templates1
- Github integration helps with collaboration1
- Code auto-generation1
Pros of ReadMe.io
- Great UI18
- Easy15
- Customizable10
- Cute mascot10
- Looks great and is fun to use8
- It's friggin awesome5
- Make sample API calls inside the docs3
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Cons of Apiary
Cons of ReadMe.io
- Support is awful4
- No backup and restore capability3
- Important parts of the CSS are locked2
- Document structure is severely restricted2
- Full of bugs2
- No notifications of edits by other users2
- Supports only two documents plus a blog1
- Does not support pre-request scripts1
- Random pages display content of other pages instead1
- Review and comment functionality is hard to work with1
- Navigation in user-facing copy is spotty1
- All admins have full editing rights1
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What is Apiary?
What is ReadMe.io?
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What companies use ReadMe.io?
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What tools integrate with ReadMe.io?
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