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

IBM DataPower Gateway vs Mule ESB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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)
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (9th), SOA Application Gateways (1st), API Management (11th)
Mule ESB
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 6.0%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Mule ESB is 25.5%, up from 24.9% 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

"The most valuable features for our business include the ability to monitor and log data transactions and handle multiple request at an enterprise level."
"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 performance is good. It's been very stable."
"It can look for the various security threats, productions, payload scanning, and perform routing based on the content type."
"The solution is scalable, our customers are mostly South African banks and they handle mostly transactions with this solution."
"Support for PCA and non-PCA services is valuable."
"The API Connect gateway service and the SQL injection feature is good."
"It was pretty fast to develop APIs on this platform, which is something I liked about it. So, the time to value was pretty good."
"What Mule provides out-of-box is a sufficient product."
"The product is very stable."
"Mule ESB is a very easy-to-use and user-friendly solution."
"The most valuable feature is the Salesforce integration."
"The most valuable feature of Mule ESB is data transformation, i.e. our interacting with different systems and orchestrating for our business needs."
"Mule Expression Language"
"The most valuable features of Mule ESB are its ease of use, documentation, ease to adapt to newer security and vulnerabilities, and a lot of help available. Additionally, there is a lot of flexibility, many patches available, and they provide APIs. They are a market standard."
 

Cons

"Scripting needs improvement. It's hard for our customers."
"One area that could be improved is the integration with Postgres and SQL databases. Currently, IBM DataPower Gateway only integrates with Oracle databases."
"The initial setup isn't so easy, you need who has experience working with the solution to help."
"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."
"We are always looking for more features wherein it could be easily integrated with cloud applications. We are looking for either a cloud solution or a cloud integration option."
"The solution requires a lot of training manuals in order to get to know it better and to be able to use it effectively."
"The product's cost for data appliances or hardware is quite high. It needs improvement."
"In India, particularly in the banking sector, clients do not prefer cloud solutions due to regulatory and compliance requirements."
"MuleSoft isn't as mature as some other integration technologies out there like IBM WebSphere. There's room for growth, and MuleSoft is working toward that."
"I would like to see support for BPM in the next release of this solution."
"Lacking some connectors that could be included."
"The current version will not be supported for much longer."
"Mule ESB is more into the latest REST APIs, not much into the SOAP web services. Developing is all about web services and not easy with Mule."
"It should have some amount of logging."
"From an improvement perspective, there should be fewer coding challenges for users in Mule ESB."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing cost is very expensive."
"The solution has a return on investment but is a little expensive."
"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 appliance is a bit on the expensive side for the workloads that are not too high."
"This product is a bit expensive as IBM products are costly assets. However, for enterprise customers it is a worthwhile investment."
"The tool's initial costing is expensive for small banks and financial institutions."
"It is an expensive solution."
"This product is expensive, but it does offer value for money."
"This is expensive. In my next project, we had to go to other vendor."
"The price of the Mule ESB commercial version is expensive. However, they have a free community version."
"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."
"The solution is expensive."
"Mule ESB is an expensive solution."
"Mule ESB is a costly solution. We pay approximately $80,000 annually for the system. The cost of the number of instances, annual subscription, and cloud hosting services are expensive."
"The licensing is yearly, and there are additional fees for services."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) solutions are best for your needs.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
31%
Insurance Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
 

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 price could be more flexible for different clients.
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
 

Learn More

 

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: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.