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IBM DataPower Gateway vs Red Hat Fuse 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)
Red Hat Fuse
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
24
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 Red Hat Fuse is 7.3%, down from 8.3% 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.
Kaushal Kedia - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers a single console for all applications and supports Camel routing
Containerization is one key area where the product can improve, but it probably has already improved in JBOS integration. On a few occasions, our company's production team faced an issue with Red Hat Fuse; the screen displayed that the containers had gone down while, in reality, they were running in the background. The user interface and the back-end code were not in sync in the aforementioned situation, which our organization frequently faced while using Red Hat Fuse. But at our company, we were using an older version of Red Hat Fuse in which we faced the issues. From the JBOS end, the product was very frequently changed from Red Hat, and it was difficult for our clients to keep investing money in every upgrade. Six or seven years back, Red Hat Fuse was one of the best solutions.

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."
"It's high-speed and it can be remotely administered via an API."
"It is easy to use, easy to install, and it's resilient for high availability."
"The most valuable feature is the security appliance, it's very secure."
"The solution is straightforward and for large organizations, it functions well."
"I like the API Gateway feature."
"The solution is scalable, our customers are mostly South African banks and they handle mostly transactions with this solution."
"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:"
"The support training that comes with the product is amazing."
"The features I found most valuable in Red Hat Fuse are the OSB framework, containerization, and the integration of Apache technologies such as the NQ channel, CXF, etc. These are the features that are very prominent in the solution. Red Hat Fuse also offers flexibility, so it's another valuable characteristic of the solution."
"With a premium, one can get support 24 hours."
"The most valuable feature is that it's the same as Apache Camel."
"Red Hat Fuse's best features are that it's very easy to set up and maintain."
"The routing system of the product supports Camel routing"
"This solution's adaptability to our use case has helped us integrate our systems seamlessly."
"We use it because it is easy to integrate with any other application...Scalability-wise, I rate the solution nine out of ten."
 

Cons

"In terms of OEM support, it is poor. If I raise a CBRT one, as per the SLA, they should respond in one hour, however, sometimes it takes four or five hours to respond."
"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."
"They should improve the solution's clustering features."
"The user interface or the application development perspective and customization of the tool could be a little better."
"IBM DataPower Gateway is quite big for smaller organizations, looking at different types of clients who are virtually assisted in this, I would say it's not really a good product for smaller firms."
"The DCDR process should be less complex."
"The two biggest issues of this solution are the complexity and the maintenance procedures."
"In the next release, I would like to see the product price reduced. It should be cheaper."
"I don't know the product last versions. I know they are migrating a microservices concepts. We still didn't get there... but we are in the process."
"Currently, the main point of concern for us is how flexible it is to cater to different requirements. It should be more flexible."
"In the next release, I'd like more stability and more security overall."
"The pricing model could be adjusted. The price should be lower."
"My company doesn't have any experience with other messaging tools, so it's difficult to mention what areas could be improved in Red Hat Fuse, but it could be pricing because I find it expensive."
"Containerization is one key area where the product can improve"
"Red Hat Fuse doesn't have a lot of administrative control like other applications."
"The stability of the solution is an area with a shortcoming that needs to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This product is a bit expensive as IBM products are costly assets. However, for enterprise customers it is a worthwhile investment."
"It is an expensive solution."
"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."
"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."
"It's expensive when you compare it with others."
"The tool's initial costing is expensive for small banks and financial institutions."
"The appliance is a bit on the expensive side for the workloads that are not too high."
"Most customers' use case budgets are not inlined with the price of IBM DataPower Gateway. It is too expensive."
"Our license for Red Hat Fuse is around $27,000 per year, which is very expensive."
"Red Hat Fuse is an expensive tool, though I cannot answer how much it costs as that's confidential."
"You need to pay for the license. It's not free."
"We are paying around $24 million across five years."
"We use the standard license, but you need the container platform in order to run it."
"This is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."
"This is an expensive product. It costs a lot and although it's worth the money, the explanations that we need to give to our top executives are highly complicated."
"My company pays for the license of Red Hat Fuse yearly. At the end of the day, it's a low-cost solution, and its support licenses are still very decently priced versus bigger operators such as IBM, etc. Red Hat Fuse is much more affordable than other solutions. On a scale of one to five, with one being cheap and five being extremely expensive, I'm rating its pricing a one."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Insurance Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
18%
Insurance Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
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 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...
What do you like most about Red Hat Fuse?
The process workflow, where we can orchestrate and design the application by defining different routes, is really useful.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat Fuse?
You need to pay for the license. It's not free. I'm not aware of the exact prices. There are no extra costs in addition to the standard licensing since it is a subscription-based solution.
What needs improvement with Red Hat Fuse?
Containerization is one key area where the product can improve, but it probably has already improved in JBOS integration. On a few occasions, our company's production team faced an issue with Red H...
 

Also Known As

WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower
Fuse ESB, FuseSource
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity
Avianca, American Product Distributors (APD), Kings College Hospital, AMD, CenturyLink, AECOM, E*TRADE
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM DataPower Gateway vs. Red Hat Fuse and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.