No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

IBM DataPower Gateway vs SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Portal [EOL] comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 15, 2026

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
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (4th), Application Infrastructure (7th), SOA Application Gateways (1st), API Management (10th)
SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Po...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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.
reviewer1582677 - PeerSpot reviewer
CTO / Executive Director for Information Technology at a logistics company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Improves business processes, highly stable, and reliable
We are in Serbia and we are providing data center services for other countries, such as Montenegro, Bosnia, and Hercegovina. We are using this solution as an ERP at the moment. This covers all of our business processes, this includes sales, distribution, data management, finance, and compliance…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is stable."
"IBM DataPower Gateway has positively impacted my organization by allowing me to implement rate limits on the different API usage, which is the benefit."
"The support for IBM DataPower Gateway has been exceptional."
"DataPower Gateway is a perfect product, and I would recommend using it because it provides a lot of benefits."
"The performance is good. It's been very stable."
"IBM is a huge organization in comparison to most of the competition, it has massive development and offers very high-quality products."
"Since it is a gateway, it provides a lot of security features."
"The appliance has great security and reliability."
"Internal workflow approval around ESS and MSS leave days, capex approval as well as internal communication to the business have improved the way my organization functions."
"The technical support is good."
"The technical support is good."
"From the use of this solution, we have been able to establish better processes and have greater management of our company."
"From the use of this solution, we have been able to establish better processes and have greater management of our company."
"They integrated it with the SAP router."
"Internal workflow approval around ESS and MSS leave days, capex approval as well as internal communication to the business have improved the way my organization functions."
"Workflow functionality and internal portal capabilities are the most important features."
 

Cons

"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."
"Additional documentation needs to be provided for complex automations."
"Scripting needs improvement. It's hard for our customers."
"Traceability could be improved, especially for business operations. The traceability of the transactions could be an improvement point for DataPower to work on. It would be better if they provided JSON support. JSON protocol data has changed format. It started performing internal transformation to JSONx. This might be an additional complexity."
"The solution requires a lot of training manuals in order to get to know it better and to be able to use it effectively."
"I would like the tool to improve its training."
"The product should be more adapted to the DevOps process."
"It is challenging to understand the solution's design and support skills."
"Our customers expect that a page will open within one second, and I doubt this will happen. Also, opening documentation takes time. Fixing this will help the customer and help to meet their expectations."
"The user interface could be improved by making it more user-friendly."
"Our customers expect that a page will open within one second, and I doubt this will happen. Also, opening documentation takes time."
"Our customers expect that a page will open within one second, and I doubt this will happen. Also, opening documentation takes time."
"We encountered stability issues, especially on external functionality around its RFP capabilities."
"External portal functionality with suppliers and customers needs improvement."
"The cost of this solution is high."
"We encountered stability issues, especially on external functionality around its RFP capabilities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is very high and requires all five components in the API management solution."
"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 appliance is a bit on the expensive side for the workloads that are not too high."
"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 licensing cost is very expensive."
"It's expensive when you compare it with others."
"The product is expensive."
"Most customers' use case budgets are not inlined with the price of IBM DataPower Gateway. It is too expensive."
"​SAP is not for every business. It depends on what is required. SAP is always going to be expensive​."
"The cost of this solution is high."
"Because India is so competitive in the IT world, people will start to move away from SAP's pricing because they have a market monopoly. Soon, they will start losing the monopoly part to open source and other things. I don't think their monopoly will run for more than three to four years because people are getting away from these monopolies."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Infrastructure solutions are best for your needs.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
29%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

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

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 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.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower
NetWeaver Enterprise Portal, SAP Portal
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity
Alliander N.V.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, IBM, F5 and others in Application Infrastructure. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.