We performed a comparison between Apigee and IBM Datapower Gateway based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Apigee comes out on top in this comparison. Apigee is flexible and offers excellent customization options. Datapower is less user friendly and offers limited configuration capabilities.
"The most valuable feature of Apigee is its simplicity of deploying an API and restricting access, like rate limit, with the API."
"I like implementing different policies, for example, rate-limiting policy."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"Apigee is a strong-featured solution. It leads in Gartner Quadrant ratings and it is a full-slated API solution that has the features that an API gateway requires."
"A very functional solution."
"I simply like how you can personalize your products and put them into product categories. That's what I like the most."
"The most valuable feature is monetization."
"Apigee makes proxy management very simple."
"It is very easy to set up and configure, even for users with no prior experience."
"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 scalability of the solution is good."
"Its initial setup was straightforward."
"The solution is scalable, our customers are mostly South African banks and they handle mostly transactions with this solution."
"The solution is very easy to work with."
"The product's most valuable features are AAA policies and security features."
"What I like most is the stability."
"The solution is pretty expensive."
"We do not have control over the installation."
"Maintaining and deploying revisions need to be more defined."
"Apigee's user interface could be more straightforward and have more options. Also, it would be nice if it were ready to work out of the box without so much configuration."
"The number one area this solution could be improved is by implementing support. Support is not a part of this solution."
"I have heard there maybe be some security issues that need to be addressed. If this is the situation I would encourage taking a look at the security matters."
"The integration could be improved within the solution. There is a need to pay more attention to this."
"When there is an update on a new version or an automatic update, you have to be present and double-check that the update is reflected in the environment with no issues."
"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."
"For the workloads that are not too high, appliance is a little bit expensive."
"They should improve the solution's clustering features."
"The components that they include in the product that are, in fact, a WTX, really need to be removed from the product because they tend to fail."
"I would like the tool to improve its training."
"Some pre-packaged connectors for integration with various applications, such as SaaS offerings, would be a useful addition."
"The two biggest issues of this solution are the complexity and the maintenance procedures."
"One area that could be improved is the integration with Postgres and SQL databases. Currently, IBM DataPower Gateway only integrates with Oracle databases."
Apigee is ranked 2nd in API Management with 82 reviews while IBM DataPower Gateway is ranked 7th in API Management with 27 reviews. Apigee is rated 8.2, while IBM DataPower Gateway is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Apigee writes "Has a robust community and outstanding performance". 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 ". Apigee is most compared with Microsoft Azure API Management, IBM API Connect, WSO2 API Manager, Amazon API Gateway and Axway AMPLIFY API Management, whereas IBM DataPower Gateway is most compared with IBM API Connect, Microsoft Azure API Management, Mule ESB, IBM Integration Bus and Kong Gateway Enterprise. See our Apigee vs. IBM DataPower Gateway report.
See our list of best API Management vendors.
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1) Let us start from the base that Google APIGEE is an API Management platform, so it offers more capabilities than a Gateway, therefore we must compare it against IBM API Connect which is the IBM API Management and whose gateways are Datapower machines.
2) An API Management platform consists mainly of three key components:
• Portal: where the catalog of available APIs is discovered.
• Management: where the life cycle of the APIs is managed.
• Gateway: Where the APIs are exposed.
At Management level: Google APIGEE and IBM API Connect
• Manage the life cycle of the API.
• Manage users roles and permissions.
• Manage security in APIs.
• Manage the consumption of APIs.
• Allows traffic policies to be applied.
• Allows you to configure, create and attach custom policies.
At Portal level: Google APIGEE and IBM API Connect
• Display the API documentation
• Test the exposed APIs.
• Register application developers.
• Customize corporate brand.
• Manage community.
• Self-management.
At Gateway level: Google APIGEE and IBM API Connect
• API deployment and execution
• Execution of security policies
• Integration with data sources
• Apply traffic policies.
• Different types of gateways:
• Google APIGEE
o Edge Enterprise Gateway.
o Microgateway (Limited features)
Does not support all OAuth2.0 flows
No Caching
No threat protecction
Basic monitoring.
• IBM API Connect
o Microgateway (Discontinued).
o Gateways:
Datapower Gateway (Compatible with API Connect version 5)
API Gateway (Focused on the 2018 version of API Connect)
At the Deployment level:
• Distributed:
o Google APIGEE:
Edge Enterprise Gateway:
• The complete instance must be taken to each cloud.
• The deployment of each instance requires a license.
Microgateway:
• They connect to the same instance, however, the limited policies of this component must be kept in mind.
• Can only be used by purchasing the full license of the API Management.
o IBM API Connect:
Datapower Gateway (7.6 or <):
• Compatible with version 5.0.8.x
API Gateway (7.7 or> = 2018.4.x):
• Compatible with version 5.0.8.x and 2018 of IBM API Connect.
Both Gateway:
• It is only necessary to deploy the Gateway in each cloud, not the full instance of the product.
• Manages licenses that charge for API Calls generated in the Gateway and includes the deployment of nodes of its components in any cloud.
Both APIGEE and API Connect offer good capabilities to accelerate the deployment of business capabilities such as services or APIs. The decision of which one is better will depend on the conditions of our business and purpose.