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IBM DataPower Gateway vs WSO2 Enterprise Integrator 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)
WSO2 Enterprise Integrator
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
7th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (25th)
 

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 WSO2 Enterprise Integrator is 5.0%, down from 5.3% 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.
Ritesh_Shah - PeerSpot reviewer
Decreases the development timeframe and costs
The main issue with the product is pricing. It uses core-based pricing for WSO2 Enterprise Integrator and API Manager. It would be best if you had APIM by default. It provides many connectors for easy integration with third-party systems. Often, customers decide to develop using open-source tools like Spring Boot if there aren't many connectors required to avoid increasing costs. They'll develop this way and then deploy using APIM, the bare minimum needed. It is mainly required for very complicated setups with many connectors. In the implementations I've seen, people often used open-source tools because there weren't many third-party systems involved—just their organization's own systems. From WSO2 Enterprise Integrator, I expect them to bring up more and more connectors in the future. That's the main expectation. Having more connectors in various areas will help us when discussing new requirements. I don't have any specific use case right now, so I can't name a particular connector. But, as new technologies emerge, the relevant connectors should be there for those. WSO2 Enterprise Integrator mainly helps with the integration part, which can be simplified only if you have relevant connectors for whatever you're doing.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like that it is very stable, and we never experience any downtime."
"I like the API Gateway feature."
"The most valuable feature is the security appliance, it's very secure."
"The product's most valuable features are AAA policies and security features."
"It can look for the various security threats, productions, payload scanning, and perform routing based on the content type."
"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."
"My company has a good impression of IBM DataPower Gateway. What I like about it is that because it's an appliance, it's a turnkey solution that's very fast and out of the box. Compared to other gateways, I also like that IBM DataPower Gateway is function-rich. For example, for one of the projects, there was a need for specific transformation and security features available in IBM DataPower Gateway out of the box, so my team just needed to configure the appliance. There was no need for separate development, and I found it quite neat. Another valuable feature of IBM DataPower Gateway is that it's easy to integrate with other products."
"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 solution's technical support is very knowledgeable."
"The customer service executives are very responsive."
"The solution has two main parts: integration and transformation. It's very user-friendly and easy to understand for everyone."
"It's a very complete product. It allows us to network security and add more layers of security to the system."
"The productivity is the most valuable feature. It is very easy to write remediations."
"In my opinion, the most valuable aspect of this solution is its extensive range of adaptors and connectors. This feature holds significant importance and provides great value to users."
"The solution basically conforms to our standards."
"It's a consolidated product. It works and it does its job pretty well."
 

Cons

"The IBM community does not have much engagement from the IT community in Saudi Arabia and developers for this solution are difficult to find."
"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."
"One area that could be improved is the integration with Postgres and SQL databases. Currently, IBM DataPower Gateway only integrates with Oracle databases."
"Small and medium-sized companies might look for cloud-hosted applications due to the cost."
"They should add features to manage API integrations."
"They should improve the solution's clustering features."
"Additional documentation needs to be provided for complex automations."
"An area for improvement in IBM DataPower Gateway is its price point because it's a relatively expensive product. Sometimes, when the customer use case is just a very small subset of what's being offered in IBM DataPower Gateway, then the product can be expensive, making my company lose some of the opportunities because of the expensive pricing. A lower price point for IBM DataPower Gateway, even if that results in a less feature-rich version, would be appreciated. In terms of additional features that I'd like to see in the next release of IBM DataPower Gateway, nothing specific comes to mind because IBM constantly improves its standards and provides quarterly updates to the product, so it's quite fine."
"The micro integrator should be improved. There is room for enhancement considering alternative integration components."
"One of the reasons that we are looking for a replacement is their way of defining integration. The language of the XML structures that I use to describe the integrations are not that standard, and it's not easy to find people who are familiar with this approach."
"You cannot include the validation of XPath."
"They should introduce better pricing for small companies."
"The setup can be difficult for those not familiar with the solution."
"In my opinion, the administration model and interface, of Carbon, are lacking in terms of its features and user experience."
"I would like to see better documentation for the open-source version."
"The administration side is complex and could use significant improvements to enhance the solution's functionality."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"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."
"It's expensive when you compare it with others."
"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."
"Most customers' use case budgets are not inlined with the price of IBM DataPower Gateway. It is too expensive."
"The solution has a return on investment but is a little expensive."
"It is a low-cost solution."
"The open-source, unsupported version is available free of charge."
"The cost is better than IBM Cloud Pak."
"The solution costs about 20,000 or 30,000 euros per year, per instance."
"The pricing of WSO2 Enterprise Integrator for enterprise subscriptions can be considered expensive, especially from the perspective of someone who prefers open-source software."
"I rate the product price a six on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Insurance Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Insurance Company
5%
 

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 WSO2 Enterprise Integrator?
WSO2's analytics capability is good, considering the ELC support they provide.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WSO2 Enterprise Integrator?
The product has reasonable and competitive pricing for enterprise customers. It is expensive for small businesses especially. They are using the open-source solution, and they find it expensive sin...
What needs improvement with WSO2 Enterprise Integrator?
The main issue with the product is pricing. It uses core-based pricing for WSO2 Enterprise Integrator and API Manager. It would be best if you had APIM by default. It provides many connectors for e...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity
West
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM DataPower Gateway vs. WSO2 Enterprise Integrator and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.