We performed a comparison between IBM API Connect and IBM Datapower Gateway based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: All other things being equal, IBM Datapower Gateway has a slight edge in this comparison because it received higher marks than IBM API Connect in the service and support category.
"The most valuable features of IBM API Connect are its performance and user-friendliness."
"Policy configurations are pretty easy."
"It is a very scalable solution."
"Scalable and stable API platform for creating and managing APIs."
"API Connect's data gateway is one of the strongest in the market."
"Its speed and performance are valuable."
"The technical support is good. Whenever we need anything, we have our IT team work with IBM to change whatever requirement is needed."
"Security is well organized and managed within the solution."
"My company has a good impression of IBM DataPower Gateway. What I like about it is that because it's an appliance, it's a turnkey solution that's very fast and out of the box. Compared to other gateways, I also like that IBM DataPower Gateway is function-rich. For example, for one of the projects, there was a need for specific transformation and security features available in IBM DataPower Gateway out of the box, so my team just needed to configure the appliance. There was no need for separate development, and I found it quite neat. Another valuable feature of IBM DataPower Gateway is that it's easy to integrate with other products."
"You don't have to have a separate DMC proxy because DataPower Gateway is an appliance and will take care of a lot of security features. These include data validations, encryption, as well as XML or any type of scripting or security threats that are present."
"The solution is robust."
"I like all of the features in this product and it does what it's supposed to do."
"The MPGW (Multi-Protocol Gateway) is great because it allows you to easily expose services using various protocols – web services, REST (JSON), and others. This flexibility simplifies things."
"The product is stable...The product is scalable."
"The solution is straightforward and for large organizations, it functions well."
"It can look for the various security threats, productions, payload scanning, and perform routing based on the content type."
"It would be helpful to have access monitoring."
"Understanding the architecture, deployment criteria, and communication methods of the installation can be time-consuming."
"We ran it on top of the Kubernetes cluster, so it wasn't a standalone service. In the worst-case scenario, API Connect couldn't stay online if all the containers went down. We had to restart all the services. We shut down all the containers automatically one by one."
"It would be nice to have a SaaS solution that can be deployed into the cloud."
"The implementation process could benefit from improvements, as it may take some time to become accustomed to the deployment."
"I would like to see automation of the installation. If there could be a single-click function where you could automate everything, that would be helpful."
"Firstly, the pricing model, when compared to other open sources, is high. Secondly, the availability of resources in the market, specifically the developers available in the market, is not so much."
"Business applications could be exposed to users."
"They should add features to manage API integrations."
"Additional documentation needs to be provided for complex automations."
"The product should be more adapted to the DevOps process."
"They should improve the solution's clustering features."
"Its support services could be better."
"Traceability could be improved, especially for business operations. The traceability of the transactions could be an improvement point for DataPower to work on. It would be better if they provided JSON support. JSON protocol data has changed format. It started performing internal transformation to JSONx. This might be an additional complexity."
"IBM DataPower Gateway is quite big for smaller organizations, looking at different types of clients who are virtually assisted in this, I would say it's not really a good product for smaller firms."
"We are always looking for more features wherein it could be easily integrated with cloud applications. We are looking for either a cloud solution or a cloud integration option."
IBM API Connect is ranked 5th in API Management with 73 reviews while IBM DataPower Gateway is ranked 7th in API Management with 27 reviews. IBM API Connect is rated 8.0, while IBM DataPower Gateway is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of IBM API Connect writes "Good speed and performance, but it's based on a bit dated architecture". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM DataPower Gateway writes "Security features meets compliance needs and offers MPGW (Multi-Protocol Gateway) that simplifies integration efforts ". IBM API Connect is most compared with Apigee, Microsoft Azure API Management, MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager, Amazon API Gateway and 3scale API Management, whereas IBM DataPower Gateway is most compared with Apigee, Microsoft Azure API Management, Mule ESB, IBM Integration Bus and Kong Gateway Enterprise. See our IBM API Connect vs. IBM DataPower Gateway report.
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