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IBM API Connect vs IBM DataPower Gateway comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM API Connect
Ranking in API Management
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (7th)
IBM DataPower Gateway
Ranking in API Management
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (4th), Application Infrastructure (6th), SOA Application Gateways (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of IBM API Connect is 6.4%, up from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 3.9%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

KavitaChavan - PeerSpot reviewer
Quite flexible and provides excellent performance for API gateway
The only disadvantage I can see is that it requires heavy hardware support, which can be considered quite expensive. In terms of new functionality, I think the analytics can be improved in V10. The analytics feature was better in the older version, 2.18. But in V10, it's not as flexible. When exporting analytics as KSP or JSON, it's not well formatted. They can work on enhancing the analytics part. Additionally, they can focus on reducing the hardware cost.
Mehdi El Filahi - PeerSpot reviewer
Security features meets compliance needs and offers MPGW (Multi-Protocol Gateway) that simplifies integration efforts
While I like IBM products, I'm not an evangelist. I work with Java, Microsoft ASP.NET, and various technologies. I'm not tied to any specific vendor. However, I do find IBM to be a bit greedy. It's a large, profit-driven company. The support team is mostly based in India, and they follow a very structured process and protocol. Sometimes, it feels like playing ping pong with them – lots of back and forth before the problem gets escalated. You might even have to get your sales rep involved to push things along. For me, the support it could be better. Indian support teams aren't inherently bad, but with IBM, it feels impersonal. They respond, sure. But if it's a complex technical issue, they might ask you a lot of questions that just seem designed to waste your time. Sometimes it feels like they hope you'll get frustrated and solve the problem yourself.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"This solution is ready to scale and already supports our agile CICD."
"This is a very easy to use solution."
"The solution is very stable."
"Policy configurations are pretty easy."
"One of the most valuable features of this solution is that it protects our backend system. We are exposing services to external parties and using this solution to protect the backend system, and to have a navigation in between."
"The most valuable features are stability and security."
"The solution provides a common place for all APIs, allowing for easy sharing and exchange of information between internal and external stakeholders."
"This product is well integrated with other products. Its ability to interact with IBM Secure Gateway and other integration products is the core feature. Also, the lead time to put it into production is relatively short ."
"The solution is scalable, our customers are mostly South African banks and they handle mostly transactions with this solution."
"What I like most is the stability."
"It can look for the various security threats, productions, payload scanning, and perform routing based on the content type."
"I like the API Gateway feature."
"I like the tool's security. Also, all functionalities are integrated within on platform."
"The performance is good. It's been very stable."
"The most valuable features for our business include the ability to monitor and log data transactions and handle multiple request at an enterprise level."
"If you have an API application in your organization that you want to make safe and secure, in addition to your existing WAF or load balancer, this product comes with all those capabilities:"
 

Cons

"In the next version, I don't know if they've already been included it or not, but the designer and all the tools should be on the cloud. I don't want any external installation or local installation."
"We have asked IBM for scalability and for some other features that we wanted. We had a dialogue with them and in the end, they have agreed to provide us with features related to API setup and security."
"Different versions of the same thing can mean unnecessary duplication."
"The integration of cloud-based services is where we're looking for improvement in this platform."
"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."
"The automation and the simplicity could be improved."
"Understanding the architecture, deployment criteria, and communication methods of the installation can be time-consuming."
"While Azure API Management offers configurable scalability, IBM API Connect relies on Kubernetes clusters. This might seem manual and require defining cluster instances upfront, but it's completely customizable and not on-the-fly scaling. It's completely custom-driven, not on-the-fly scaling, which some may consider cumbersome."
"I would like the tool to improve its training."
"Small and medium-sized companies might look for cloud-hosted applications due to the cost."
"The programming language is only supported in XSLT and Gateway script."
"The product's cost for data appliances or hardware is quite high. It needs improvement."
"It is a costly product."
"DataPower isn't the most user-friendly tool. It is not an easy tool to use. Some things could use better wizards to guide you through processes."
"The two biggest issues of this solution are the complexity and the maintenance procedures."
"The DCDR process should be less complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's an expensive product."
"API Connect is expensive - I'd rate their pricing five out of ten."
"It should be cheaper. It has a yearly licensing."
"The price of the solution is expensive. However, there are a lot of customization capabilities."
"It can be quite expensive. It's okay for large-scale usage but quite expensive for smaller-scale implementations."
"It is a pretty expensive tool."
"I haven't seen anyone go from on-premise to the cloud. In fact, I am seeing people go from the cloud to on-premise because the costs can quickly grow on the cloud."
"This is a licensed product. If your company is looking to obtain a license, you have to work with IBM partners."
"The cost of this product varies from customer to customer and the relationship with IBM, including how many offerings from IBM are already being used."
"It is an expensive solution."
"IBM DataPower Gateway is quite expensive to get resources to work on this product. If the price could be cheaper, I think that will make it a little bit better and easily accessible to smaller clients. Then it could compete with other solutions that are available in the market. There's a whole lot of other solutions available that work well and are cheaper than IBM's products."
"The appliance is a bit on the expensive side for the workloads that are not too high."
"The total cost of IBM DataPower Gateway would depend on the configuration, but in my experience, it can amount to 60,000 Euros per box, even for the virtual version. Usually, customers need high availability and a non-production environment, so the total price for IBM DataPower Gateway can be quite a lot. It can be 200,000 Euros or a similar figure."
"The cost is very high and requires all five components in the API management solution."
"Most customers' use case budgets are not inlined with the price of IBM DataPower Gateway. It is too expensive."
"The solution is expensive in comparison to other products."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
23%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Insurance Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
30%
Insurance Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM API Connect?
Publishers can easily identify, create, and publish APIs on the developer portal, defining plans, packages, and potentially billing rules.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM API Connect?
Price depends on many factors like size of the deal, competitive factors, timing, customer profile or where the pricing for API Calls is very competitive comparing to any of the leader players.
What needs improvement with IBM API Connect?
The only downside where improvements are needed is probably on the licensing side. Scalability is an issue with IBM API Connect, making it an area where improvements are required.
What do you like most about IBM DataPower Gateway?
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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM DataPower Gateway?
I would rate the pricing a two out of ten, with one being high price, and ten being low price. It's high-priced for smaller companies. But it is okay for enterprises. So, the price could be more fl...
What needs improvement with IBM DataPower Gateway?
The DCDR process should be less complex. AI should improve developer efficiency and effort. Whenever I am writing code, it should give recommendations automatically by incorporating AI so I can wri...
 

Also Known As

No data available
WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Heineken, Tine, Finologee, Axis Bank
RBL Bank, Availity
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM API Connect vs. IBM DataPower Gateway and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
847,625 professionals have used our research since 2012.