Postman

Postman is an API platform designed to simplify each step of the API lifecycle and streamline collaboration, enabling users to create better APIs faster. Postman’s mission is to empower developers and organizations to build, test, and deploy APIs more efficiently, thereby accelerating digital transformation. Another stated mission for Postman is to create 100 million connected developers and realize the vision of an API-first world. The company aims to be the go-to platform for API development, setting the standard for excellence in the industry.

Postman’s goals revolve around enhancing productivity for developers, ensuring high quality for APIs, and providing robust governance for organizations. Postman strives to simplify API workflows and improve collaboration among team members. The company is focused on being the comprehensive platform for the entire API lifecycle, from design and testing to deployment, monitoring, and discoverability. Postman is widely recognized as a leading API platform, used by millions of developers and a vast number of organizations globally, including a significant portion of Fortune 500 companies. Its market reputation is strong, often cited for its user-friendly interface, robust features, comprehensive documentation, and active community support, which contribute to increased productivity and efficiency in API development.

Offerings, Capabilities, and Integrations

Postman provides a comprehensive API platform designed to simplify the entire API lifecycle, from design and testing to documentation, mocking, and sharing. Its offerings focus on enhancing productivity, quality, and governance in API development. Postman’s capabilities include an API repository, a robust toolset for API development and testing, governance features, low-code workflows, and automated testing. This allows developers to explore, debug, and test APIs for HTTP, REST, SOAP, GraphQL, and WebSockets. Postman’s competitive edge lies in its user-friendly interface, extensive collaboration tools, automation capabilities, and strong community support. The platform facilitates seamless collaboration within and between teams through features like Workspaces, which sync changes in real-time. Postman integrates with a wide array of third-party solutions across development, testing, monitoring, visualization, and documentation, including native support for CI/CD tools and Git. These integrations allow users to connect Postman to their existing API workflows. The company’s reputation is built on providing a platform that streamlines API development, enhances productivity, and fosters an API-first approach for millions of developers and numerous organizations globally.

Products and Services

Postman’s core offering is its API Platform, which supports every stage of the API lifecycle. This platform is considered its flagship product. Key products and services within the platform include:

• API Client: The foundational tool that enables users to easily explore, debug, and test APIs, as well as define complex API requests.
• Postman Collections: Executable descriptions of an API that form the basis for Postman’s built-in tools like mocks, tests, documentation, and monitors. Collections allow users to organize requests for reuse and can be generated from API specifications.
• Workspaces: Collaborative spaces for teams of any size (Personal, Team, Partner, and Public) that enhance workflow and ensure every team member is working with the most up-to-date version of an API. Partner Workspaces provide a shared, secure space for organizations to collaborate with external partners.
• API Testing: Capabilities to create and run automated tests, including integration with CI/CD pipelines through the Postman CLI. This includes features for assertions and viewing build statuses.
• API Documentation: Tools to automatically create web-viewable documentation, making it an integral part of the API workflow.
• Mock Servers: Allows users to set up mock endpoints for APIs that are still under development.
• API Monitoring: Enables the creation of automated tests to monitor APIs for uptime, responsiveness, and correctness.
• API Governance: Features that help developers discover rulesets earlier in the API lifecycle to improve API quality and provide organizations visibility into standards compliance.
• API Security: Tools to help companies provide security guidelines and rules to developers within the platform.
• Private API Network: A central directory for all internal APIs within an organization, enabling faster discovery and reuse.
• Native Git Support: Allows integration with Git source code repositories for multi-user, multi-branch collaboration.
• Postman for gRPC: Native support for gRPC alongside other API frameworks like REST, SOAP, WebSockets, and GraphQL.
• Postbot: An AI-powered assistant to help with API test generation, documentation, debugging, and data visualization. Postman v11, released in May 2024, significantly features these AI capabilities.
• Integrations: Postman integrates with numerous tools across the software development pipeline, such as Slack, GitHub, Jira, and HashiCorp Vault.

Postman offers different plans, including free tiers for individuals and small teams, and paid plans (Pro and Enterprise) for larger organizations needing advanced features like API management, team collaboration, and extended support.

Target Customers

Cloud Integrations and Marketplaces

Postman offers several integrations with cloud services and maintains a presence on major cloud marketplaces. Postman’s platform can connect with various tools across the software development pipeline to support API-first practices.

• Amazon Web Services (AWS): Postman is an AWS Partner and its platform is available on the AWS Marketplace. This allows for easier billing and deployment for AWS users. Postman integrates with AWS services such as Amazon API Gateway and AWS Secrets Manager to enhance the API lifecycle. AWS Marketplace also offers Postman API Collections to help sellers manage their product listings. AWS is a strategic sponsor of Postman’s annual user conference, POST/CON.
• Microsoft Azure: Postman is available on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace. This allows users to leverage Microsoft Entra ID for managing user access and enabling single sign-on with Postman. Postman also integrates with Azure DevOps and Azure Pipelines, enabling users to sync collections, connect APIs to source code repositories, and view CI/CD information from within Postman. Newman, Postman’s command-line Collection Runner, can be integrated into Azure DevOps as a task.
• Google Cloud Platform (GCP): Postman offers a template for interacting with core Google Cloud services via API, including Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, and Resource Manager. This template provides pre-configured requests for common operations. While a direct listing for the Postman platform itself was not found on the Google Cloud Marketplace based on the provided link and search, Postman can be integrated with Google Cloud services through platforms like Pipedream for automating workflows.

Beyond these major cloud providers, Postman also integrates with a variety of other services for monitoring, alerts, source control, and CI/CD, including Slack, GitHub, GitLab, Jenkins, CircleCI, and Datadog, among others.

Key People

• Founder and CEO: Abhinav Asthana.
• Founder and CTO: Ankit Sobti.
• Co-Founder & CPO: Abhijit Kane.

Key Facts

• Headquarters Location: San Francisco, CA.
• Number of Employees: Approximately 500-750. Forbes states 723. Unify states roughly 630. Other sources show higher numbers (e.g., 2212 or 3K), but the lower figures appear more recent or specific.
• Annual Revenue: Estimated $120 million to $171 million. One source indicates an estimated $171 million in revenue as of 2023. Another source from August 2024 estimates annualized recurring revenue (ARR) of $120-150 million. An older report from January 2024 stated revenue of Rs 173.15 crore (approximately $20.7 million USD) for FY23 for the Bengaluru-based entity. LeadIQ estimates a broader range of $100M – $1B. Growjo estimates $506.1M. Given the more specific recent estimates, the $120M-$171M range seems most plausible for the global entity.
• Parent Company: None. Postman is a privately held company. One source incorrectly states Postman was acquired by Salesforce, but this is not corroborated by other sources and appears to be an error.
• Subsidiary Companies: At least 3, including Akita, Orbit, and Postman K.K. (Japan). Pitchbook mentions 2 subsidiaries: Orbit and another unnamed. Tracxn mentions Postman is associated with Postdot Technologies Private Limited and 5 others.
• Publicly Listed: No. Postman is a privately held company.

Analyst Recognition

Postman has been recognized by Gartner and Forrester for its role in the API (Application Programming Interface) space.

• Gartner: Postman was named a Visionary in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for API Management in 2023 for the third consecutive year. This recognition also occurred in 2022 when Gartner recognized the Postman API Platform as a Visionary in the Magic Quadrant for Full Lifecycle API Management. Additionally, Postman was recognized as a Customers’ Choice in the 2023 Gartner Peer Insights Voice of the Customer for Full Life Cycle API Management Report.
• Forrester: Forrester Consulting conducted a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study on the Postman API Platform, finding that for every $1 spent with Postman, enterprise customers get back $4.39 in benefits, adding up to a net present value of $8.17 million over three years.

There is no specific mention in the provided search results of Postman being included in recent reports or specific categories by IDC or Everest Group in the context of their main analyst reports like MarketScapes or PEAK Matrix assessments for API management or related categories. One search result mentions “Postman recognition” in the context of a company called Talon.One leading an “API revolution,” but this does not indicate a formal recognition of Postman by IDC itself in a comparative vendor assessment.