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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM DataPower Gateway
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (9th), SOA Application Gateways (1st), API Management (12th)
Mule ESB
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 5.9%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Mule ESB is 19.3%, down from 22.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
PurbayanSaha - PeerSpot reviewer
Has API-led architecture and provides a unique, user-friendly, and scalable architecture for hosting APIs
There's room for improvement in multi-file transfer functionality. It's not convenient when using MuleSoft, and it should have better capability for handling large amounts of data. For example, applications like GoAnywhere can handle huge chunks of data, so the tool should also have something to facilitate that aspect of integration.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is very easy to set up and configure, even for users with no prior experience."
"What I like most is the stability."
"I like the API Gateway feature."
"Its initial setup was straightforward."
"The solution is straightforward and for large organizations, it functions well."
"The solution is very easy to work with."
"The product's most valuable features are AAA policies and security features."
"The performance is good. It's been very stable."
"The transformation and the data format are the features that I like the most."
"It's open source, and there are a lot of community resources. Mule ESB makes it easy to connect to other software applications."
"Scalability and load balancing."
"The setup is straightforward."
"This tool has exceptional API management and integration connectors in addition to multiple out of the box connectors."
"Most of our use cases are for Salesforce. So, the connectors for Salesforce have been really helpful. They've made development two times faster."
"The most valuable feature of Mule ESB is data transformation, i.e. our interacting with different systems and orchestrating for our business needs."
"I like that it's user-friendly. Compared to other ESBs, I find it easier to use. I like it better than other ESBs. I like the connectors, which make calling the APIs through the routers easier."
 

Cons

"One area that could be improved is the integration with Postgres and SQL databases. Currently, IBM DataPower Gateway only integrates with Oracle databases."
"The programming language is only supported in XSLT and Gateway script."
"We are always looking for more features wherein it could be easily integrated with cloud applications. We are looking for either a cloud solution or a cloud integration option."
"It is a costly product."
"The product should be more adapted to the DevOps process."
"Some pre-packaged connectors for integration with various applications, such as SaaS offerings, would be a useful addition."
"Small and medium-sized companies might look for cloud-hosted applications due to the cost."
"Additional documentation needs to be provided for complex automations."
"It's not easy to troubleshoot and we still can't make it work."
"MuleSoft is not so strong in method-based integration, so they're not so functional in that regard."
"The solution isn't as stable as we'd like it to be. There are some ongoing issues and therefore Mule has to provide frequent patches. Mule's core IP should be more stable overall."
"Limitation on external subscribers to listen to the messages on the bus."
"Community editions need more attention."
"There are some issues with both stability and scalability."
"It needs more samples. Also, the dependency on Maven should be removed."
"The solution's setup needs to be a bit more straightforward and its support needs to respond faster."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's expensive when you compare it with others."
"This product is a bit expensive as IBM products are costly assets. However, for enterprise customers it is a worthwhile investment."
"The product is expensive."
"The appliance is a bit on the expensive side for the workloads that are not too high."
"The cost is very high and requires all five components in the API management solution."
"The solution has a return on investment but is a little expensive."
"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 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."
"This product is cheaper than some offered by other vendors, although there is a problem because you have to pay for some third-party adapters."
"You will not get any support from Mule ESB's team for the tool's community edition...You can get support with the licensed version of Mule ESB."
"Most of the challenges that I had with this solution were for smaller customers. There is not a good licensing model or pricing model. It is more expensive than other solutions, and that's the downside of MuleSoft. I had to be creative to be able to sell it to the business, but we did. This is something they have to work on because for large companies, it's affordable, but for small and medium businesses, it's very hard to sell."
"The pricing must be improved."
"I think the price is very high. If you use TIBCO BW, the license is for the CPU usage, then the IPS, and support. I also think the license for the product is a one-time expense."
"The price of the Mule ESB commercial version is expensive. However, they have a free community version."
"This product is expensive, but it does offer value for money."
"Regarding licensing and pricing, I find it somewhat flexible. They are more flexible with larger customers compared to small and medium ones, as their licensing model depends on ports and other factors. Large customers benefit from more flexibility in implementation and renewal compared to smaller ones."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
29%
Insurance Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
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...
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: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.