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WSO2 API Manager vs webMethods.io comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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

webMethods.io
Ranking in API Management
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
92
Ranking in other categories
Business-to-Business Middleware (3rd), Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (3rd), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (10th), Cloud Data Integration (7th), Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (5th)
WSO2 API Manager
Ranking in API Management
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of webMethods.io is 2.1%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WSO2 API Manager is 4.8%, up from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

Michele Illiano - PeerSpot reviewer
Can function as an ESB along with the core product, with decent integration of message protocols
I have noticed that webMethods ActiveTransfer has had problems when handling large files. For example, when we receive (and perform operations on) files that are larger than about 16 MB, the software starts losing performance. This is why, for most customers who have to deal with big files, I suggest that they use a product other than ActiveTransfer. I would like to note that this problem mainly concerns large files that undergo extra operations, such assigning, unassigning, or file translation. When these operations take place on large files, ActiveTransfer will use up a lot of resources. Within the product itself, I also believe that there is room for improvement in terms of optimization when it comes to general performance. I suspect that the issues underlying poor optimization are because it is all developed in Java. That is, all the objects and functions that are used need to be better organized, especially when it comes to big files but also overall. webMethods ActiveTransfer was born as an ESB to handle messages, and these messages were typically very short, i.e. small in size. A message is data that you have to send to an application, where it must be received in real-time and possibly processed or acknowledged elsewhere in the system as well. So, because it was initially designed for small messages, it struggles with performance when presented with very large files. All this to say, I suggest that they have an engineer reevaluate the architecture of the product in order to consider cases where large files are sent, and not only small ones. As for new features, compared to other products in the market, I think Software AG should be more up to date when it comes to extra protocol support, especially those protocols that other solutions have included in their products by default. Whenever we need to add an unsupported protocol, we have to go through the effort of custom development in order to work with it. Also, all the banks are obligated to migrate to the new standards, and big companies are all handling translations and operating their libraries with the new protocol formats. But webMethods ActiveTransfer doesn't seem to be keeping up with this evolution. Thus, they should aim to be more compliant in future, along the lines of their competitors such as IBM and Primeur.
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

"The most valuable aspect of this solution for me has been the configuration-based UI. Once you get the hang of it, it enables you to easily develop an API. In addition, it has many in-built policies that are quite handy."
"The performance is good."
"One valuable feature is that it is event-driven, so when new data is available on the source it can be quickly processed and displayed. Integration is definitely another useful feature, and B2B is one area where webMethods has its own unique thing going, whereby we can do monitoring of transactions, monitoring of client onboarding, and so on."
"They are the building blocks of EAI in SAG products, and they offer a very good platform."
"The product is very stable."
"It's a good tool, and it has a stable messaging broker."
"I feel comfortable using this product with its ease of building interfaces for developers. This is a better integration tool for integrating with various applications like Oracle, Salesforce, mainframes, etc. It works fine in the integration of legacy software as well."
"How simple it is to create new solutions."
"Functionality-wise, I like WSO2 API Manager - Publisher API and WSO2 Enterprise Service Bus."
"WSO2 API Manager is easy to use."
"Based on the information I have, the solution's most valuable feature is its capability of implementing custom solutions."
"It is a scalable solution because it can be scaled horizontally and vertically."
"This is a flexible and versatile API management solution that has the power to integrate with more than just API."
"There are a lot of tools to help the manager. WSO2 is very easy to install. It has all the principal functionalities that you think about when you want to put up the management solution. It's a very friendly tool."
"Its open-source features are very good, especially for your production work."
"Most of the time, we need to install a plug-in without having any lapse in services or restarting the application. The WSO2 platform can do all deployments without any downtime."
 

Cons

"In terms of improvement, it would be better if it adapted quicker to open standards. It took a while for API specification before the last version was available. The spec of version two was rather quick."
"The solution has big instances when deployed under microservices or in a containerized platform. They need to improve that so that it is competitive with other integration solutions, like Redis and Kafka. Deployments under microservices with those solutions are much more lightweight, in the size of the runtime itself, compared with Software AG."
"webMethods.io needs to incorporate ChatGPT to enhance user experience. It can offer a customized user experience."
"With performance, there is room for improvement in regards to if we would like to put another extra layer of security on it, such as SSL. This is affecting their performance quite significantly. They need to improve the process of managing the SSL and other things inside their solutions, so there will not be quite such a significant impact to the performance."
"Upgrades are complex. They typically take about five months from start to finish. There are many packages that plug into webMethods Integration Server, which is the central point for a vast majority of the transactions at my organization. Anytime we are upgrading that, there are complexities within each component that we must understand. That makes any upgrade very cumbersome and complicated. That has been my experience at this company. Because there are many different business units that we are touching, there are so many different components that we are touching. The amount of READMEs that you have to go through takes some time."
"The installation process should be simplified for first time users and be made more user-friendly."
"The price should be reduced to make it more affordable."
"This solution could be improved by offering subscription based licensing."
"From a product perspective, the first thing is that although the documentation provided by WSO2 is good, it could be much better. We're in the middle of a complex migration, moving away from VMs to Kubernetes with the latest version of WSO2 and good documentation is essential to us right now."
"WSO2 API Manager could improve the API approval system."
"We found WSO2 API Manager to be a bit complex."
"WSO2 API Manager could improve by adding external API security features, which is one area where there is room for enhancement. Internally, API security is strong, and all other necessary features are already available. It has a solid marketplace, supports both Docker and standalone setups, and offers great enterprise integration. The developer portal has greatly improved the user experience, making it simple and user-friendly wherever we’ve implemented it. Overall, it’s not as complicated as other API gateways."
"I would like it to be a more stable solution. Maybe in the last version that is approved. For me it would be good if they had a community established version."
"I would like it to be a more convenient development platform with the ability to write orchestrations and so on. Our problem with this product is that in my country, we are the only enterprise that has been using this product. We're missing a lot of knowledge from colleagues to consult with, and we also aren't able to recruit people with relevant skills. It is a big problem. The small team that is maintaining this product is the only team that can actually relate to any technical issue. The support that we're getting from the company is not great. There is also a cultural gap there because they're from Sri Lanka, and it is not easy. They're putting in a lot of effort, but they are not meeting our expectations."
"The stability is pretty good, but it could be improved."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"With our current licensing, it's very easy for us to scale. With our older licensing model, it was very hard. This is definitely something that I would highlight."
"The price is high and I give it a five out of ten."
"I signed a three-year deal with them. It is a yearly locked-in price for the next three years."
"Some of the licensing is "component-ized," which is confusing to new users/customers."
"Pricing has to be negotiated with the local Software AG representative. SAG can always prepare an appropriate pricing model for every client."
"The product is very expensive."
"Based on our team discussions and feedback, it is pretty costly because they charge us for each transmission."
"There are no hidden costs in addition to the standard licensing fees for webMethods. For corporate organizations, it's a very cheap or fairly priced product, but for growing or small businesses, it's quite expensive. These businesses would probably need to consider an enterprise services bus at some point. Thus, from a pricing point, it closes out non-cooperate businesses."
"It is an open-source product."
"WSO2 API Manager is quite an expensive tool. I rate the product's pricing a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is low and ten is high."
"WSO2 API Manager is a low-cost solution. It is one of the most affordable solutions."
"The challenge is the increasing pricing, which has led some customers to consider alternatives, like using Spring Boot solutions instead. The rising costs, especially as cores and usage increase, have been a concern, prompting some to migrate to other products."
"As far as I'm aware, the costs are not minimal but satisfactory."
"I think the other competitors that are providing the same solution are quite expensive. WSO2 API Manager is quite cheap."
"There is a subscription-based pricing structure and also the open-sourced version available."
"My previous company paid about 1.2 million dollars, and my current company pays about 300k. Both companies are at the enterprise level."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Retailer
7%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Built.io Flow?
The tool helps us to streamline data integration. Its BPM is very strong and powerful. The solution helps us manage digital transformation.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Built.io Flow?
webMethods.io is expensive. We have multiple components, and you need to pay for each of them.
What needs improvement with Built.io Flow?
webMethods.io needs to incorporate ChatGPT to enhance user experience. It can offer a customized user experience.
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?
One area for improvement is monitoring. Dashboards for application monitoring of the APIs would be beneficial, allowing us to check for faulty APIs.
What is your primary use case for WSO2 API Manager?
We use WSO2 API Manager for our microservices and our APIs, both internally and externally.
 

Also Known As

Built.io Flow, webMethods Integration Server, webMethods Trading Networks, webMethods ActiveTransfer, webMethods.io API
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cisco, Agralogics, Dreamforce, Cables & Sensors, Sacramento Kings
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 WSO2 API Manager vs. webMethods.io and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.