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IBM Cloud Pak for Integration vs IBM DataPower Gateway 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

IBM Cloud Pak for Integration
Ranking in API Management
27th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Integration (18th)
IBM DataPower Gateway
Ranking in API Management
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (4th), Application Infrastructure (9th), SOA Application Gateways (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the API Management category, the mindshare of IBM Cloud Pak for Integration is 1.0%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 3.3%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM DataPower Gateway3.3%
IBM Cloud Pak for Integration1.0%
Other95.7%
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

Igor Khalitov - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner/Full Stack Software Engineer at Maraphonic, Inc.
Manages APIs and integrates microservices with redirection feature
IBM Cloud Pak for Integration includes monitoring capabilities to track the performance and health of your integrations. You can quickly roll back to a previous version if an issue arises. Additionally, it supports incremental deployments, allowing you to shift traffic to a new version of an API gradually. For example, you can start by directing 10% of traffic to the new version while the rest continue using the legacy version. If everything works as expected, you can gradually increase the traffic to the new version over time. IBM Cloud Pak for Integration has a client base that includes numerous organizations using AI and machine learning technologies. We leverage an open-source machine learning framework and integrate it with Kafka to help create and manage various products and data retrieval processes. For companies with private data, the framework first retrieves relevant data from a GitHub database, which is then combined with the final request before being sent to a language model like GPT. This ensures that the language model uses your specific data to generate responses. Kafka plays a key role by streaming real-time data from file systems and databases like Oracle and Microsoft SQL. This data is published to Kafka topics, then vectorized and used with artificial intelligence to enhance the overall process. It's like an old-fashioned approach. The best way is to redesign it with products such as Kafka. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
AkshaySawant - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager at CSB Bank Ltd
Security features excel but development limitations emerge
We are using the IBM DataPower Gateway for security purposes. As per the development perspective, there are some limitations with IBM DataPower Gateway because it only supports XML and XSLT language, but it does not support the Java language. This is the only limitation of the IBM DataPower Gateway. For the authentication and authorization purpose, we can use the IBM DataPower Gateway. It's a very good product. We are mostly using the IBM DataPower Gateway for security purposes and load balancing purposes. If we are handling the load for a particular server, then we can use the IBM DataPower Gateway. The IBM DataPower Gateway is mostly used for security purposes. If we have some APIs and we are using some security for those APIs, then we can use it. It can also be used as a load balancer. It's also used for certificate management, user management purposes, authentication, and authorization. For routing, the IBM DataPower Gateway has multiple URL-based routing and content-based routing capabilities. If we have multiple URLs, then we can use an XML script. Using the XSLT language, we can configure multiple URLs and implement URL-based routing. Content-based routing means if we have multiple requests, we can route the request to a particular URL. For this, we need to use the XSLT language only. We can't use XML, Java, or other scripting languages. With IBM DataPower Gateway, we are using all the APIs. All APIs have been configured on the gateway. We have configured the particular TLS profile and some TLS client profiles as well. Using that TLS profile, we have configured the APIs and authentication. We have configured some tokens also, including JWT tokens and different types of auth tokens. There is also a rate limiting feature which we use for handling API loads.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In general, the solution works very, very well."
"Redirection is a key feature. It helps in managing multiple microservices by centralizing control and access."
"The most preferable aspect would be the elimination of the command, which was a significant improvement. In the past, it was a challenge, but now we can proceed smoothly with the implementation of our policies and everything is managed through JCP. It's still among the positive aspects, and it's a valuable feature."
"Cloud Pak for Integration is definitely scalable. That is the most important criteria."
"The most valuable aspect of the Cloud Pak, in general, is the flexibility that you have to use the product."
"It is a stable solution."
"If you are an enterprise customer, I would definitely advise that it is better to go for IBM DataPower, because you won't need to have a proxy or any other security measures required in the DMC, and it is easy to implement and easy to maintain and scale."
"IBM is a huge organization in comparison to most of the competition, it has massive development and offers very high-quality products."
"What I like most is the stability."
"It can look for the various security threats, productions, payload scanning, and perform routing based on the content type."
"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 straightforward and for large organizations, it functions well."
"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."
"The scalability of the solution is good."
 

Cons

"Setting up Cloud Pak for Integration is relatively complex. It's not as easy because it has not yet been fully integrated. You still have some products that are still not containerized, so you still have to run them on a dedicated VM."
"What needs to be improved is the restriction that they have on the product."
"Enterprise bots are needed to balance products like Kafka and Confluent."
"The pricing can be improved."
"The initial setup is not easy."
"Its queuing and messaging features need improvement."
"The solution requires a lot of training manuals in order to get to know it better and to be able to use it effectively."
"The customization of the solution isn't as straightforward as we would like it to be."
"API management launched two years back and we consider it quite unstable because we still face a lot of bugs."
"The initial setup isn't so easy, you need who has experience working with the solution to help."
"Additional documentation needs to be provided for complex automations."
"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."
"In terms of OEM support, it is poor. If I raise a CBRT one, as per the SLA, they should respond in one hour, however, sometimes it takes four or five hours to respond."
"The DCDR process should be less complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an expensive solution."
"The solution's pricing model is very flexible."
"Most customers' use case budgets are not inlined with the price of IBM DataPower Gateway. It is too expensive."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The cost is very high and requires all five components in the API management solution."
"It's expensive when you compare it with others."
"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."
"The product is expensive."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise18
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with IBM Cloud Pak for Integration?
Enterprise bots are needed to balance products like Kafka and Confluent.
What is your primary use case for IBM Cloud Pak for Integration?
It manages APIs and integrates microservices at the enterprise level. It offers a range of capabilities for handling APIs, microservices, and various integration needs. The platform supports thousa...
What advice do you have for others considering IBM Cloud Pak for Integration?
IBM Cloud Pak for Integration includes monitoring capabilities to track the performance and health of your integrations. You can quickly roll back to a previous version if an issue arises. Addition...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM DataPower Gateway?
I don't know if the current licensing cost of IBM DataPower Gateway is high, but I think it's acceptable. I don't have any complaints about it.
What needs improvement with IBM DataPower Gateway?
I noticed that the Gateway Script libraries could be improved, as they are not covering everything I need.
What is your primary use case for IBM DataPower Gateway?
The primary purposes for which IBM DataPower Gateway is used include security purposes, and sometimes you need to put some configurations and mapping into the process.
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CVS Health Corporation
RBL Bank, Availity
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cloud Pak for Integration vs. IBM DataPower Gateway and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,495 professionals have used our research since 2012.