Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

IBM DataPower Gateway vs Mule ESB 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 DataPower Gateway
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (6th), SOA Application Gateways (1st), API Management (7th)
Mule ESB
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 5.8%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Mule ESB is 20.6%, down from 22.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
PurbayanSaha - PeerSpot reviewer
Has API-led architecture and provides a unique, user-friendly, and scalable architecture for hosting APIs
There's room for improvement in multi-file transfer functionality. It's not convenient when using MuleSoft, and it should have better capability for handling large amounts of data. For example, applications like GoAnywhere can handle huge chunks of data, so the tool should also have something to facilitate that aspect of integration.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a scalable solution."
"What I like most is the stability."
"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."
"It can look for the various security threats, productions, payload scanning, and perform routing based on the content type."
"I like all of the features in this product and it does what it's supposed to do."
"I like that it is very stable, and we never experience any downtime."
"The most valuable feature is the security appliance, it's very secure."
"The product's most valuable features are AAA policies and security features."
"Scalability and load balancing."
"Mule Expression Language"
"The cloud and integration abilities are most useful allowing us to use applications such as Salesforce and DataWeave."
"Mule ESB is a very easy-to-use and user-friendly solution."
"I like that it's user-friendly. Compared to other ESBs, I find it easier to use. I like it better than other ESBs. I like the connectors, which make calling the APIs through the routers easier."
"The product is very stable."
"The solution doesn't require much code writing and we can develop APIs very easily."
"I like that Mule ESB provides fast and good technical support."
 

Cons

"I would like the tool to improve its training."
"The two biggest issues of this solution are the complexity and the maintenance procedures."
"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."
"The programming language is only supported in XSLT and Gateway script."
"For the workloads that are not too high, appliance is a little bit expensive."
"The user interface or the application development perspective and customization of the tool could be a little better."
"It is a costly product."
"Community editions need more attention."
"Mule ESB could be more user-friendly. I think users must learn about the architecture before they start coding. The price could be better. In the next release, I would like to see an EDIFACT integration."
"The solution's setup needs to be a bit more straightforward and its support needs to respond faster."
"There are some features on the commercial version of the solution that would be great if they were on the community version. Additionally, if they added more authorization features it would be helpful."
"Mule ESB isn't as secure as IBM. Financial companies go with IBM for that reason."
"Lacking some connectors that could be included."
"The current version will not be supported for much longer."
"It needs more samples. Also, the dependency on Maven should be removed."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As far as I know, they have a perpetual license for this product. They are paying perpetual fees rather than an annual subscription or annual pricing."
"This product is a bit expensive as IBM products are costly assets. However, for enterprise customers it is a worthwhile investment."
"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."
"Most customers' use case budgets are not inlined with the price of IBM DataPower Gateway. It is too expensive."
"It's expensive when you compare it with others."
"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 solution is expensive in comparison to other products."
"The appliance is a bit on the expensive side for the workloads that are not too high."
"This product is cheaper than some offered by other vendors, although there is a problem because you have to pay for some third-party adapters."
"I think the price is very high. If you use TIBCO BW, the license is for the CPU usage, then the IPS, and support. I also think the license for the product is a one-time expense."
"Regarding licensing and pricing, I find it somewhat flexible. They are more flexible with larger customers compared to small and medium ones, as their licensing model depends on ports and other factors. Large customers benefit from more flexibility in implementation and renewal compared to smaller ones."
"Most of the challenges that I had with this solution were for smaller customers. There is not a good licensing model or pricing model. It is more expensive than other solutions, and that's the downside of MuleSoft. I had to be creative to be able to sell it to the business, but we did. This is something they have to work on because for large companies, it's affordable, but for small and medium businesses, it's very hard to sell."
"Mule ESB is an expensive solution."
"The price of the Mule ESB commercial version is expensive. However, they have a free community version."
"The pricing must be improved."
"The various features and components for this solution are no longer free."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) solutions are best for your needs.
847,862 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Insurance Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
Migration from IBM Integration Bus to Mulesoft ESB for a large enterprise tech services company
I was previously part of the Oracle SOA/OSB development team. In my current capacity I architected solutions using MuleSoft Anypoint Platform on cloud / on-premises and hybrid modes and on PCE/RTF ...
IBM Integration Bus vs Mule ESB - which to choose?
Our team ran a comparison of IBM’s Integration Bus vs. Mule ESB in order to determine what sort of ESB software was the best fit for our organization. Ultimately we decided to choose IBM Integratio...
What do you like most about Mule ESB?
The solution's drag-and-drop interface and data viewer helped us quite a lot.
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity
Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM DataPower Gateway vs. Mule ESB and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
847,862 professionals have used our research since 2012.