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IBM DataPower Gateway vs Mule ESB 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.9
IBM DataPower Gateway consolidates functions, enhancing security and cost-efficiency, with APIs helping generate income despite perceived high costs.
Sentiment score
5.4
Calculating Mule ESB ROI is challenging, but users report positive returns from licensing, reusability, and microservices efforts.
I can provide some examples of return on investment by saying that we are running different APIs which we are using, and we are charging customers.
Deputy director at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.3
IBM DataPower Gateway's support is efficient and knowledgeable, but fees and delays vary; users suggest faster response times.
Sentiment score
6.3
Mule ESB's support is generally positive but varies by subscription level; users note inconsistencies and prefer external help sometimes.
In terms of OEM support, it is poor.
Middleware Administrator at Pronteff IT Solutions
I would evaluate customer service and technical support as a little bit weak, so I give it a seven out of ten.
Deputy director at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
We have a good relationship with our vendor, and they are ready to help us with any technical issues.
Solutions Architect at Metrobank
The technical support of Mule ESB can be rated from nine to ten.
Senior Specialist at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
The technical support from Salesforce is moderate.
Enterprise integrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.6
IBM DataPower Gateway is highly scalable for enterprises but may be costly for smaller firms using on-premises setups.
Sentiment score
7.5
Mule ESB offers adaptable scalability and performance, ideal for diverse businesses with cloud deployments and large data volumes.
Once you install the product, we can't scale the resources on the IBM DataPower Gateway.
Manager at CSB Bank Ltd
Mule ESB is a scalable solution.
Senior Specialist at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
The adaptability of Mule ESB in supporting multiple messaging patterns is pretty decent and pretty good.
Principal Architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
When it comes to scalability and the ability to expand, I would rate Mule ESB as an eight or nine.
Enterprise integrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
IBM DataPower Gateway is highly stable and reliable, ideal for banks handling heavy transaction volumes in diverse environments.
Sentiment score
7.1
Mule ESB is stable with minor glitches; improvements and proper management enhance reliability, scoring 8-9 out of 10.
IBM DataPower Gateway does not handle all the traffic on a single node.
Manager at CSB Bank Ltd
Mule ESB is a stable product, and I have no doubts about its reliability.
Enterprise integrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Room For Improvement

IBM DataPower Gateway users seek cost reduction, enhanced usability, expanded integration, and improved support and automation features.
Mule ESB requires user-friendly documentation, enhanced stability, better performance, scalability, exception handling, and improved analytics for broader adaptability.
Whenever I am writing code, it should give recommendations automatically by incorporating AI so I can write the code in a few minutes or seconds.
Middleware Administrator at Pronteff IT Solutions
However, from the development perspective, it has limitations because it only supports the XSLT language.
Manager at CSB Bank Ltd
My experience with the pricing of this product is that pricing is too high and should be reduced.
Deputy director at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Points for improvement in Mule ESB definitely include enhancing the analytics capabilities because currently, they rely on external logging tools such as Splunk or ELK, which is lagging behind compared to other tools such as Workato that offer more analytical features.
Enterprise integrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
More information is needed from MuleSoft.
Senior Specialist at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Pricing is one factor that could be improved about Mule ESB; other than that, I'm pretty fine with it.
Principal Architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Setup Cost

IBM DataPower Gateway can be costly, with pricing dependent on licensing, features, and specific customer requirements.
Mule ESB's cost and flexible licensing appeal to enterprises, yet high fees lead smaller businesses to explore alternatives.
 

Valuable Features

IBM DataPower Gateway provides fast performance, strong security, seamless integration, scalability, and efficient management for comprehensive threat handling.
Mule ESB provides flexible, robust integrations with extensive connectors, data transformation, and API management, supported by cloud options and community.
No other Gateway offers this as part of the integration offering.
Middleware Administrator at Pronteff IT Solutions
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.
Manager at CSB Bank Ltd
IBM DataPower Gateway's multi-protocol transformation is important for my integration needs because all the API traffic is coming from this API data gateway.
Deputy director at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
They have their own language called DataWeave, which helps transform data and is efficient enough to handle any kind of transformation.
Senior Specialist at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
It is also reusable, meaning the same service can be used in multiple places simply by adding it, and this comes with the API-led architecture that makes integrations more secure and reliable.
Enterprise integrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The best features of Mule ESB are that it's very robust and solid; I find that even our legacy systems go well with ESB.
Solutions Architect at Metrobank
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM DataPower Gateway
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (7th), SOA Application Gateways (1st), API Management (11th)
Mule ESB
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 5.9%, up from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Mule ESB is 15.0%, down from 21.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Mule ESB15.0%
IBM DataPower Gateway5.9%
Other79.1%
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Srinivas-Kanduri - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise integrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Integration architecture has enabled reliable multi-channel messaging and secure API management but now needs better analytics and simpler development
In my opinion, the real-time analytics part of Mule ESB is not up to the mark for the decision-making process. While there are some analytics features, they lack the standards needed for enterprise use. Compared to other analytics tools such as Power BI, MuleSoft falls short.Points for improvement in Mule ESB definitely include enhancing the analytics capabilities because currently, they rely on external logging tools such as Splunk or ELK, which is lagging behind compared to other tools such as Workato that offer more analytical features. Additionally, issues arise with AI-based use cases due to dependencies on Salesforce tools such as agent force, making development more complicated when it should be more independent. Developing AI-based agents without being tied to Salesforce applications could also enhance functionality.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
29%
Insurance Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise38
 

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?
This product is definitely expensive because if any issue occurs in the live environment or production environment, and our organization faces some issue with the IBM DataPower Gateway, then the IB...
What needs improvement with IBM DataPower Gateway?
The developer portal should be an integrated part of IBM DataPower Gateway to improve it. I think it is fine as is, and maybe no other additional features should be included in the next release. My...
Migration from IBM Integration Bus to Mulesoft ESB for a large enterprise tech services company
I was previously part of the Oracle SOA/OSB development team. In my current capacity I architected solutions using MuleSoft Anypoint Platform on cloud / on-premises and hybrid modes and on PCE/RTF ...
IBM Integration Bus vs Mule ESB - which to choose?
Our team ran a comparison of IBM’s Integration Bus vs. Mule ESB in order to determine what sort of ESB software was the best fit for our organization. Ultimately we decided to choose IBM Integratio...
What do you like most about Mule ESB?
The solution's drag-and-drop interface and data viewer helped us quite a lot.
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity
Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM DataPower Gateway vs. Mule ESB and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.