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IBM API Connect vs Perforce Acana comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 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)
Perforce Acana
Ranking in API Management
27th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of IBM API Connect is 6.3%, up from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Perforce Acana is 0.5%, down from 0.8% 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.
Saurav Krishna - PeerSpot reviewer
Authentication mechanism is easy to implement but improvement is needed in documentation
For API security purposes, we use the tool to host all our APIs. This allows us to take advantage of the security features provided by the platform. With the solution, we can implement rules such as rate limiting and restricting the number of API calls for each user. It acts as a secure gateway…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has all of the tools that are needed for the specific mission."
"The main benefits of IBM API Connect for our API life cycle management are the core API functionalities, the developer's portal, and robust security capabilities. IBM API Connect's security protocols enhance our data protection strategies by offering end-to-end security, mechanisms to counter common attacks like DDoS, and the ability to define policies for API groups to control traffic and prevent unwanted access to our systems."
"The most valuable feature for me is the ability to distribute work among our API developers, so we don't have to do all the work as IBM API Connect administrators and IBM DataPower administrators."
"The most valuable features of the solution stem from the fact that it is very easy to use and is something that is easily configurable."
"The statistics component is easy to use."
"Scalable and stable API platform for creating and managing APIs."
"API Connect is a good product, and everything works fine. All the analytics are good, and it is easy to follow up. I like it in that sense. I'm more focused on following up on analytics by seeing how many API calls we are getting and where we see a lot of problems. I was working on that API level."
"It gives a holistic environment for us to set up the APIs and that's the main value that it adds. It gives end to end for us."
"Good interface, intuitive solution."
"It allowed us to publish and replace pre-essential transactions in one place, with a uniformity in terms of control and policies."
"The tool's authentication mechanism is easy to implement. We had to define a few parameters."
 

Cons

"The only disadvantage I can see is that it requires heavy hardware support."
"It should be cheaper."
"The solution is not scalable."
"Installation is weak."
"The documentation needs to be a bit better."
"The implementation of IBM API Connect is complex, as it's an enterprise solution with many components that require more than one person. It's not a single product that you work on, and this is an area for improvement, but normally, it's good. Having a more structured model for IBM API Connect support is also room for improvement that would help customers better."
"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."
"IBM info-center help documentation also needs improvement. Competitive product like Apigee provide out of the box policies to run Javascript, JAVA and better/flexible logging policies."
"Lacks an integrated billing feature."
"Akana API Management needs to improve its documentation."
"The product has new features that we are going to implement in the next few months, such as API management and analytic reporting."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"API Connect is expensive - I'd rate their pricing five out of ten."
"The price of the solution is expensive. However, there are a lot of customization capabilities."
"The price of the solution is very expensive, it can turn many customers away."
"The price for IBM API Connect is reasonable. It's $20,000 to $30,000 yearly for a subscription, and the pricing could vary around $40,000 per year, per subscription. Its price is reasonable for customers who have around sixty million API calls yearly for unlimited environments."
"There was a need to purchase an upfront license or a one-time license or upfront license, but I cannot remember the details about it clearly."
"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."
"It is a pretty expensive tool."
"It's an expensive product."
"For us, the pricing and licensing policies were for an on-premise installation with a fixed cost structure, that matched our budgeting policies."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
22%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Insurance Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Healthcare Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 Akana API Management?
The tool's authentication mechanism is easy to implement. We had to define a few parameters.
What needs improvement with Akana API Management?
Akana API Management needs to improve its documentation.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Heineken, Tine, Finologee, Axis Bank
British American Tobacco, Credit Suisse, Daimler, eBay, FOX, Liberty Mutual, Marriott, Mayo Clinic, Skandia, Tata communications
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM API Connect vs. Perforce Acana and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
839,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.