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IBM API Connect 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

IBM API Connect
Ranking in API Management
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (7th)
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 IBM API Connect is 6.4%, up from 6.2% 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
 

Featured Reviews

KavitaChavan - PeerSpot reviewer
Quite flexible and provides excellent performance for API gateway
The only disadvantage I can see is that it requires heavy hardware support, which can be considered quite expensive. In terms of new functionality, I think the analytics can be improved in V10. The analytics feature was better in the older version, 2.18. But in V10, it's not as flexible. When exporting analytics as KSP or JSON, it's not well formatted. They can work on enhancing the analytics part. Additionally, they can focus on reducing the hardware cost.
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

"WSRR is a powerful component for getting the endpoints."
"It acts as a central gateway for both external APIs and underlying systems. It's basically a central middleware for hosting APIs to the internet and consuming APIs from internal systems. It provides central governance for any APIs going outside the network, ensuring security and a common contract for API definitions."
"The support is good and active. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten."
"Using API Connect allows us to quickly create proxy APIs and saves time on end-to-end testing, which lets us deliver quickly to clients."
"The solution is very scalable because it's on the cloud."
"It gives a holistic environment for us to set up the APIs and that's the main value that it adds. It gives end to end for us."
"IBM API Connect is a reliable and scalable solution."
"The solution's technical support team is good."
"The performance is good. It's been very stable."
"I like the API Gateway feature."
"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."
"I like the API Gateway feature."
"The scalability of the solution is good."
"The product is stable...The product is scalable."
"The product's most valuable features are AAA policies and security features."
"The solution is scalable, our customers are mostly South African banks and they handle mostly transactions with this solution."
 

Cons

"The automation and the simplicity could be improved."
"Possible improvement is mainly around having more of the cloud oriented architecture bringing stability in adding new capabilities around security."
"It would be nice to have a SaaS solution that can be deployed into the cloud."
"The product's setup phase and its setup for the users in different environments, along with DevOps integration, are areas of concern where there is a need for improvement."
"In the next version, I don't know if they've already been included it or not, but the designer and all the tools should be on the cloud. I don't want any external installation or local installation."
"Firstly, the pricing model, when compared to other open sources, is high. Secondly, the availability of resources in the market, specifically the developers available in the market, is not so much."
"It is expensive within this class of products."
"The new version is very unstable."
"Making it more user-friendly would be an improvement."
"They should add features to manage API integrations."
"The programming language is only supported in XSLT and Gateway script."
"The IBM community does not have much engagement from the IT community in Saudi Arabia and developers for this solution are difficult to find."
"The components that they include in the product that are, in fact, a WTX, really need to be removed from the product because they tend to fail."
"The two biggest issues of this solution are the complexity and the maintenance procedures."
"I would like the tool to improve its training."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is a licensed product. If your company is looking to obtain a license, you have to work with IBM partners."
"API Connect was highly expensive for us, but the decision to switch was made before I joined the company. It seems like the company bought it, but they didn't know how to use it. After two years, they decided to reevaluate and conduct some cost estimates."
"It would be a good idea to bring down the pricing by at least 20 to 30 percent."
"We pay for the IBM API Connect monthly. We only need to pay the standard licensing fee."
"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"API Connect is quite pricey."
"IBM API Connect could be cheaper."
"It's an expensive product."
"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 solution has a return on investment but is a little expensive."
"The cost is very high and requires all five components in the API management solution."
"Most customers' use case budgets are not inlined with the price of IBM DataPower Gateway. It is too expensive."
"The tool's initial costing is expensive for small banks and financial institutions."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
23%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Insurance Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
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

What do you like most about IBM API Connect?
Publishers can easily identify, create, and publish APIs on the developer portal, defining plans, packages, and potentially billing rules.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM API Connect?
Price depends on many factors like size of the deal, competitive factors, timing, customer profile or where the pricing for API Calls is very competitive comparing to any of the leader players.
What needs improvement with IBM API Connect?
The only downside where improvements are needed is probably on the licensing side. Scalability is an issue with IBM API Connect, making it an area where improvements are required.
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

Heineken, Tine, Finologee, Axis Bank
RBL Bank, Availity
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM API Connect vs. IBM DataPower Gateway and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.