IBM API Connect vs Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services comparison

IBM and Informatica are both solutions in the Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) category. IBM is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.2, while Informatica is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.4. IBM holds a 2.6% mindshare in PaaS, compared to Informatica’s 0.6% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Informatica users who would recommend it.

IBM API Connect

Read 75 IBM API Connect reviews

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299 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Informatica Intelligent Clo...

Read 7 Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services reviews

432 Views
78 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM API Connect

Informatica Intelligent Clo...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 17, 2024

IBM API Connect and Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services are key players in the integration platform space. IBM API Connect often holds the upper hand due to its pricing and user-friendly deployment, whereas Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services is favored for its advanced features that justify its higher cost.

Features: IBM API Connect is noted for robust API management, seamless integration capabilities, and a comprehensive feature set. Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services is valued for its extensive data integration, intelligent cloud services, and powerful capabilities that enhance its overall offering.

Room for Improvement: IBM API Connect could benefit from enhanced analytics, better customization options, and more intuitive user interfaces. Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services needs improved documentation, a more intuitive setup process, and enhanced initial user experience to tackle setup challenges more effectively.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM API Connect is praised for its straightforward deployment process and reliable customer support. Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services faces criticism for its complex deployment and occasional support delays, making IBM's deployment and service more favored by users.

Pricing and ROI: IBM API Connect offers good value with a reasonable setup cost and solid ROI. Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services, while more expensive, delivers a compelling ROI attributed to its advanced features and powerful capabilities. Users find IBM API Connect more cost-effective but recognize the long-term value of Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM API Connect vs. Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM API Connect vs. Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services

March 2025

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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 Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS)

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

API Management (5th)

Informatica Intelligent Clo...

Ranking in Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS)

12th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) category, the mindshare of IBM API Connect is 2.6%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services is 0.6%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS)

Featured Reviews

KavitaChavan

Associate Manager at Baariz

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.

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Argha Das

Senior Associate at Cognizant

Good tool, especially if you're using cloud services and an S3 bucket

There's definitely room for improvement in terms of user-friendliness. One example is that you can't search for jobs directly by file name. You can only search by job name. So, if you want to find a job that works with a specific file, you have to go through each job individually to find the right one. So, I'd like to see a faster search, one where I can search directly by file name. Moreover, the support team could improve by adding things like file transfer status updates. Also, if someone modifies a job and then leaves the company, that shouldn't disrupt the job for active users. It would be better if the job continued to run smoothly regardless of who modified it.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"IBM API Connect is a good product, and their technical support is excellent."

"The functionalities on offer are very good."

"The interface is very nice. It makes the solution easy to use and navigate."

"The solution is very scalable because it's on the cloud."

"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 ."

"Security is well organized and managed within the solution."

"It acts as a central gateway for both external APIs and underlying systems. It's basically a central middleware for hosting APIs to the internet and consuming APIs from internal systems. It provides central governance for any APIs going outside the network, ensuring security and a common contract for API definitions."

"API Connect's most valuable feature is its ability to act as a gateway. It's very easy to configure security and everything else in it. You don't have to kill yourself implementing custom configurations."

More IBM API Connect pros

"The feature I found most valuable in Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services is the mapping. You just drag, and it maps the data. Mapping is very easy, and it's no code. When you migrate data or when the data interaction happens at the source and destination, the challenge is that you'll get different formats. The validation has to be done in the middleware, and the transformation should happen. In Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services, it's very easy to do data validation and transformation compared to any other tool."

"This solution allows you to easily access and make use of information that you have in your on-premises environment."

"The most valuable feature of Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services for me is the availability of connectors."

"Customer service and technical support are excellent."

"I rate the solution's scalability a ten out of ten."

"The data integration and synchronization features in IICS improve the data handling processes."

"Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services offers a wide variety of services, including Cloud Data Integration, which is akin to a replica of PowerCenter on the cloud. I particularly like the mass ingestion service."

Cons

"Debugging could be improved."

"There is room for improvement regarding the connectivity of the DevOps."

"Possible improvement is mainly around having more of the cloud oriented architecture bringing stability in adding new capabilities around security."

"We have encountered challenges with IBM API Connect, particularly during significant upgrades. These upgrades demand substantial labour and financial resources, including consulting services from IBM. I'd like to see increased flexibility, more frequent updates with new features, an efficient upgrade process, and additional AI capabilities for future releases."

"Automation for our Domino applications could be improved."

"Due to bugs in integration, we have to look for workaround on fixing and using DataPower as gateway."

"Like any typical IBM infrastructure setup, you need to learn to set it up yourself. It's not one of those simple zip files or an archive unzip and you're up and running in some few minutes. Knowledge to set it up is key."

"It should be cheaper."

More IBM API Connect cons

"There's definitely room for improvement in terms of user-friendliness. One example is that you can't search for jobs directly by file name. You can only search by job name. So, if you want to find a job that works with a specific file, you have to go through each job individually to find the right one. So, I'd like to see a faster search, one where I can search directly by file name."

"The tool is quite good overall, but sometimes the number of modules can be overwhelming. If the development interface could be optimized to have fewer modules, it would be greatly beneficial."

"In terms of data volume processing, Intelligent Cloud Services does not match the efficiency of Power Center."

"The product's pricing is definitely an area where a bit of improvement is needed."

"Synchronicity is an area for improvement in Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services. For example, when you want real-time or immediate response from the solution when multiple technologies are involved, the integration with Informatica Intelligent Cloud isn't seamless, whether it's the MQ, JMS, or BES service, so the connectivity should be improved a bit. The data governance is good, but what's lacking is a demo. For example, if there's a new feature in Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services, the documentation for that new feature is limited, so if Informatica could give a more complete documentation and more demos, that would be better for the users. Right now, there isn't any issue with any of the features of the solution. It's the new feature awareness or user training, and improved connectivity that I'd like to see in the next version of Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services."

"The cloud version of Informatica, although easier and more advanced than PowerCenter, still requires a deep dive to fix bugs."

"This service could be more cost-effective."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is too expensive with IBM. Sometimes, we prefer to go with an open source or something more lightweight."

"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."

"We pay for the IBM API Connect monthly. We only need to pay the standard licensing fee."

"The price of the solution is very expensive, it can turn many customers away."

"This is a licensed product. If your company is looking to obtain a license, you have to work with IBM partners."

"API Connect's license cost could be a little lower. But, unfortunately, there aren't many open-source API gateways. Ideally, some new developers could come up with a minimum-functionality open-source solution."

"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."

"The price of the solution is expensive. However, there are a lot of customization capabilities."

More IBM API Connect pricing and cost advice

"The pricing model is something that can be improved."

"In terms of the licensing for Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services, we had the option of paying based on the number of users and paying based on the volume of data, and we went with the data volume licensing option. Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services isn't as expensive as CIG. The pricing for it is okay, so I'm rating it a four out of five in terms of pricing. We did use the email verification and address validation services which weren't part of the contract, so we had to pay additional fees for those services."

"The solution is expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

23%

Financial Services Firm

18%

Insurance Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Educational Organization

61%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Consumer Goods Company

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.

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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.

See all answers

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.

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What do you like most about Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services?

The data integration and synchronization features in IICS improve the data handling processes.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services?

Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services is affordable for my specific use cases, with the pricing being rated three or four on a scale where one is very cheap. The affordability may vary based on ho...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services?

The tool is quite good overall, but sometimes the number of modules can be overwhelming. If the development interface could be optimized to have fewer modules, it would be greatly beneficial.

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM DataPower Gateway vs IBM API Connect

Compared 26% of the time

Apigee vs IBM API Connect

Compared 20% of the time

Microsoft Azure API Management vs IBM API Connect

Compared 15% of the time

Amazon API Gateway vs IBM API Connect

Compared 6% of the time

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs IBM API Connect

Compared 6% of the time

More IBM API Connect Competitors

No data available

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM API Connect

April 2025

Download IBM API Connect product report

Buyer's Guide

Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services

April 2025

Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services report

Download Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services product report

Also Known As

No data available

Informatica IICS, IICS

Overview

IBM API Connect facilitates API management and integration in the financial sector. Companies use it to expose, secure, and manage APIs for banking, insurance, and fintech, deploying it on-premises, in the cloud, or as a hybrid solution.

IBM API Connect focuses on creating and monetizing APIs while enabling seamless transactions and integration with third-party services. It is vital for compliance with regulations and enhances external communication among institutions. With deployment options suitable for different environments, it supports centralized gateway management, robust security features, and comprehensive API lifecycle management. Users benefit from powerful analytics, user-friendly interfaces, and high performance with capabilities in message transformation and efficient monitoring.

What are the most important features?

Centralized Gateway: Manages all APIs through a single entry point.
Robust Security: Ensures API protection with advanced security measures.
Comprehensive API Lifecycle Management: Covers creation, deployment, and retirement of APIs.
User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies API creation and management tasks.
Powerful Analytics: Provides insights into API usage and performance.
Seamless Integration: Connects easily with third-party services and internal systems.
Flexible Deployment Options: Supports on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments.
High Performance: Optimizes API performance and reduces latency.
Message Transformation: Manipulates and formats messages between different systems.
Visualization Tools: Enables clear and detailed views of API usage statistics.

What benefits or ROI should users look for?

API Monetization: Generates additional revenue streams from APIs.
Enhanced Compliance: Ensures adherence to industry regulations and standards.
Improved External Communication: Facilitates integration and communication among financial institutions.
Technical Support: Benefit from reliable customer support and easy configuration.
Deployment Flexibility: Choose from on-premises, cloud, or hybrid options.

IBM API Connect is extensively implemented in the financial sector, enabling banking, insurance, and fintech services to manage APIs efficiently. Companies use it to ensure secure transactions, integration with third-party services, and compliance with regulatory standards. Its deployment flexibility accommodates different infrastructure needs, making it suitable for a wide range of financial applications.

IBM

Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services is a next generation iPaaS, which is made up of a growing number of data management products. The productivity of the environment is accelerated by a common user experience across all products, the AI/ML-driven intelligence of the CLAIRE™ engine, and a microservices architecture.

Informatica

Sample Customers

Heineken, Tine, Finologee, Axis Bank

2-1-1 San Diego, Hastings, AARP , Ace Hardware

Buyer's Guide

IBM API Connect vs. Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services

March 2025

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