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IBM DataPower Gateway vs WSO2 API Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM DataPower Gateway
Ranking in API Management
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (6th), Application Infrastructure (6th), SOA Application Gateways (3rd)
WSO2 API Manager
Ranking in API Management
9th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
8.2
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the API Management category, the mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 3.8%, up from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WSO2 API Manager is 4.7%, up from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

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.
VishalSingh14 - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to deploy APIs and easy to manage CORS configuration
I have used WSO2 Store and WSO2 API Manager at the architecture level. I worked on two versions, namely WSO2 API Manager 2.6.0 and 5.7.0. I have also worked with WSO2 Identity Server versions 5.7 and 5.11. There are certain things that Apigee handles better than WSO2 API Manager. The user interface of WSO2 API Manager is much easier than that of Apigee. The scope of flexibility was much greater in Apigee. In WSO2 API Manager, we had little flexibility and were restricted to a specific software or tool. On the other hand, we had the scope of customization in Apigee.

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."
"The solution is scalable, our customers are mostly South African banks and they handle mostly transactions with this solution."
"The most valuable features for our business include the ability to monitor and log data transactions and handle multiple request at an enterprise level."
"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 most valuable feature is the security appliance, it's very secure."
"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 API Connect gateway service and the SQL injection feature is good."
"This solution is a little bit faster, easier to use, and has better integration than the other solutions I have experienced."
"This is a flexible and versatile API management solution that has the power to integrate with more than just API."
"A complete integration suite and a good platform."
"The main feature — the publication of the API, the management section — is great in general."
"The solution is open-source."
"Based on the information I have, the solution's most valuable feature is its capability of implementing custom solutions."
"It's very scalable, which is one of the best features."
"We could easily deploy APIs on WSO2 API Manager, and CORS configuration was easy to manage."
 

Cons

"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."
"Some pre-packaged connectors for integration with various applications, such as SaaS offerings, would be a useful addition."
"They should improve the solution's clustering features."
"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."
"DataPower isn't the most user-friendly tool. It is not an easy tool to use. Some things could use better wizards to guide you through processes."
"The initial setup isn't so easy, you need who has experience working with the solution to help."
"They should add features to manage API integrations."
"I would like the tool to improve its training."
"The interface needs to be modernized and made more user friendly so the product continues to have a growing community of users."
"The user interface needs to improve, it is a bit outdated."
"In WSO2 API Manager, we had little flexibility and were restricted to a specific software or tool."
"I would like to see improvements in the speed of the solution as it can be a bit slow compared to other platforms along with addressing memory issues would be beneficial."
"From what I have experienced from the versions I have tried, they could improve on the multi-tenant environments to allow some kind of SSO single sign-on between tenant."
"API Manager is not easy to scale because some of its components lack scalability. It's a difficult point. Especially because companies are so cloud-based these days, microservice scalability is a major thing."
"WSO2 API Manager could improve the API approval system."
"I can say that user management is not really flexible. So, if I want to create 1,000 store users, I can't do it as a publisher. You have to register as a store user using the store URL."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is very high and requires all five components in the API management solution."
"The product is expensive."
"It's expensive when you compare it with others."
"The solution has a return on investment but is a little expensive."
"The appliance is a bit on the expensive side for the workloads that are not too high."
"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."
"The licensing cost is very expensive."
"Most customers' use case budgets are not inlined with the price of IBM DataPower Gateway. It is too expensive."
"For our projects, we found the pricing to be a little high."
"We have not opted for the paid version of WSO2 but we have implemented the free and open source WSO2 software to a great extent and it is working as per our expectation."
"I am using the free version."
"The solution costs less than 20,000 euros a year. I'm not sure of the exact number."
"It is costly, around ten thousand per year, per instance"
"WSO2 API Manager is a costly solution, and its pricing is not competitive enough compared to other products."
"It's not expensive, but it could be cheaper."
"WSO2 API Manager is a low-cost solution. It is one of the most affordable solutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
31%
Insurance Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
8%
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 price could be more flexible for different clients.
What do you like most about WSO2 API Manager?
It is possible to scale up and scale down with the solution...I can say that I have not seen any issues related to scalability.
What needs improvement with WSO2 API Manager?
In WSO2 API Manager, we had little flexibility and were restricted to a specific software or tool. The entire API publication or API creation was done using a particular pipeline we had developed. ...
What is your primary use case for WSO2 API Manager?
WSO2 API Manager is a cumulative security-based software, and I had a good experience with it.
 

Also Known As

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

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity
1. eBay 2. StubHub 3. Cisco 4. Verizon 5. T-Mobile 6. Vodafone 7. Orange 8. BT Group 9. Telstra 10. Deutsche Telekom 11. Swisscom 12. AT&T 13. Sprint 14. Telefonica 15. O2 16. British Airways 17. Lufthansa 18. Emirates 19. Qatar Airways 20. Etihad Airways 21. Air France 22. KLM 23. American Express 24. Visa 25. Mastercard 26. PayPal 27. Western Union 28. Citibank 29. HSBC 30. Barclays 31. Santander 32. Goldman Sachs
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM DataPower Gateway vs. WSO2 API Manager and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.