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Apigee vs IBM DataPower Gateway comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 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

Apigee
Ranking in API Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
86
Ranking in other categories
API Testing Tools (8th)
IBM DataPower Gateway
Ranking in API Management
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (4th), Application Infrastructure (6th), SOA Application Gateways (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of Apigee is 14.2%, down from 15.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 3.9%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

Q&A Highlights

Rav Bangalore - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 24, 2019
 

Featured Reviews

ShawkyFoda  - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides high visibility and control with good traffic monitoring
Analytics is one of the areas needing enhancement, specifically more visibility and control over traffic to improve capacity management and high availability. The replication process between Master and Slave for disaster recovery takes too long. Dependencies on analytics impact the performance of the user interface, which should be separate. The complex setup process on-premises, especially with multi-node installations, could also be improved. Additional control in product declarations, based on operations like POST and GET, is needed.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability to convert from language to language using a single tool."
"There is plenty of support documentation available."
"It has all the features necessary to work in anything from a basic scenario to advanced applications."
"Apigee helps with API security and management."
"The most valuable features are low-code play, quick packaging, and production."
"The following features are most valuable: API Management, Analytics, Quota, and the Developer Portal."
"The central monitoring feature is the most valuable. It also provides security for the APIs and high availability for our use cases. Apigee is the best product in the industry in comparison to other API management solutions. It helps in fast development, which is a top point. It also supports a lot of industry standards and has excellent documentation."
"We can customize the dashboard."
"Its initial setup was straightforward."
"The solution is scalable, our customers are mostly South African banks and they handle mostly transactions with this solution."
"The product is stable...The product is scalable."
"It's high-speed and it can be remotely administered via an API."
"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 solution is robust."
"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."
"The performance is good. It's been very stable."
 

Cons

"They should improve the monitoring tools for on-premises environments."
"Google isn't enthusiastic about supporting older versions. Google is now trying to move all of its clients to X within the cloud."
"There should be an integrated continuous integration and continuous deployment approach with Apigee. Currently, for development at a more integrated level, you have set it up yourself."
"What my clients don't like is that the on-premises solution is not being treated and maintained as well as the cloud solution."
"We do not have control over the installation."
"The integration could be improved within the solution. There is a need to pay more attention to this."
"Compared to its competitors, such as Axway AMPLIFY API Management and Layer7 API Management, Apigee could benefit from having more policies to cater to various use cases. This would reduce the need for writing custom JavaScripts. If more features come straight out of the box, we can leverage them instead of writing custom code to achieve the same functionality."
"There is room for improvement in v-logging for each transaction."
"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."
"Some pre-packaged connectors for integration with various applications, such as SaaS offerings, would be a useful addition."
"The user interface or the application development perspective and customization of the tool could be a little better."
"I would like the tool to improve its training."
"The DCDR process should be less complex."
"For the workloads that are not too high, appliance is a little bit expensive."
"They should add features to manage API integrations."
"They should improve the solution's clustering features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a contract for three years. I don't know the cost."
"The cost of the licensing is based on the number of API calls that are made."
"Apigee is a pretty expensive solution."
"If the budget is not a concern then I will choose to go with Apigee over WSA-2, but if it is then I would prefer the latter solution."
"Apigee is subject to licensing fees."
"It is an expensive solution."
"It is more expensive when you compare to open-source products or other vendors."
"Compared to other products, Apigee had higher pricing."
"The solution is expensive in comparison to other products."
"The cost is very high and requires all five components in the API management 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."
"The cost of this product varies from customer to customer and the relationship with IBM, including how many offerings from IBM are already being used."
"The licensing cost is very expensive."
"The tool's initial costing is expensive for small banks and financial institutions."
"It's expensive when you compare it with others."
"The appliance is a bit on the expensive side for the workloads that are not too high."
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Answers from the Community

Rav Bangalore - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 24, 2019
Sep 24, 2019
First, we should not compare data power and Apigee. Both meant for different purpose. Generally, DataPower used for authentication most of uses cases, where Apigee enable digital technologies. In addition, it is establish the connectivity from both external/internal/Omini connectivity. DataPower support internal connectivity with limited support in terms of Digital enablement. Apigee is lates...
See 2 answers
DM
Sep 23, 2019
1) Let us start from the base that Google APIGEE is an API Management platform, so it offers more capabilities than a Gateway, therefore we must compare it against IBM API Connect which is the IBM API Management and whose gateways are Datapower machines. 2) An API Management platform consists mainly of three key components: • Portal: where the catalog of available APIs is discovered. • Management: where the life cycle of the APIs is managed. • Gateway: Where the APIs are exposed. At Management level: Google APIGEE and IBM API Connect • Manage the life cycle of the API. • Manage users roles and permissions. • Manage security in APIs. • Manage the consumption of APIs. • Allows traffic policies to be applied. • Allows you to configure, create and attach custom policies. At Portal level: Google APIGEE and IBM API Connect • Display the API documentation • Test the exposed APIs. • Register application developers. • Customize corporate brand. • Manage community. • Self-management. At Gateway level: Google APIGEE and IBM API Connect • API deployment and execution • Execution of security policies • Integration with data sources • Apply traffic policies. • Different types of gateways: • Google APIGEE o Edge Enterprise Gateway. o Microgateway (Limited features)  Does not support all OAuth2.0 flows  No Caching  No threat protecction  Basic monitoring. • IBM API Connect o Microgateway (Discontinued). o Gateways:  Datapower Gateway (Compatible with API Connect version 5)  API Gateway (Focused on the 2018 version of API Connect) At the Deployment level: • Distributed: o Google APIGEE:  Edge Enterprise Gateway: • The complete instance must be taken to each cloud. • The deployment of each instance requires a license.  Microgateway: • They connect to the same instance, however, the limited policies of this component must be kept in mind. • Can only be used by purchasing the full license of the API Management. o IBM API Connect:  Datapower Gateway (7.6 or <): • Compatible with version 5.0.8.x  API Gateway (7.7 or> = 2018.4.x): • Compatible with version 5.0.8.x and 2018 of IBM API Connect.  Both Gateway: • It is only necessary to deploy the Gateway in each cloud, not the full instance of the product. • Manages licenses that charge for API Calls generated in the Gateway and includes the deployment of nodes of its components in any cloud. Both APIGEE and API Connect offer good capabilities to accelerate the deployment of business capabilities such as services or APIs. The decision of which one is better will depend on the conditions of our business and purpose.
SA
Sep 24, 2019
First, we should not compare data power and Apigee. Both meant for different purpose. Generally, DataPower used for authentication most of uses cases, where Apigee enable digital technologies. In addition, it is establish the connectivity from both external/internal/Omini connectivity. DataPower support internal connectivity with limited support in terms of Digital enablement. Apigee is latest integration deployment software in the form of integration software, SaaS and Cloud.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
30%
Insurance Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Apigee differ from Azure API Management?
Apigee offers both cloud-based and on-prem options while Microsoft Azure API Management currently only offers a cloud-based solution. Both solutions are easy to use. Apigee allows for the ability...
Which is better - Apigee or Amazon API Gateway?
Amazon API Gateway is a platform that supports the creation and publication of API for web applications. The platform can support thousands of simultaneous API calls, and it provides monitoring, ma...
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...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Adobe, advance.net, Amadeus, AT&T, Bechtel, Belly, Burberry, Chegg, Citrix, Dell, eBay, Equifax, GameStop, First Data, Globe, HCSC, Intralinks, Kao, Meredith, Mitchell, Orange, Pearson
RBL Bank, Availity
Find out what your peers are saying about Apigee vs. IBM DataPower Gateway and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
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