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IBM DataPower Gateway vs TIBCO Cloud API Management 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 DataPower Gateway
Ranking in API Management
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (6th), Application Infrastructure (7th), SOA Application Gateways (1st)
TIBCO Cloud API Management
Ranking in API Management
28th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 3.9%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO Cloud API Management is 0.9%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

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.
Amitava Roy - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers pre-built packages for quick and easy onboarding of APIs but configuration is not that easy
The configuration is not that easy. It's not that user-friendly, and security-wise when you try to implement the security layer on top of it, it's not that easy either. There are certain things where the performance is not that great. When the traffic is huge, we see some lag in performance.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the security appliance, it's very secure."
"I like that it is very stable, and we never experience any downtime."
"My company has a good impression of IBM DataPower Gateway. What I like about it is that because it's an appliance, it's a turnkey solution that's very fast and out of the box. Compared to other gateways, I also like that IBM DataPower Gateway is function-rich. For example, for one of the projects, there was a need for specific transformation and security features available in IBM DataPower Gateway out of the box, so my team just needed to configure the appliance. There was no need for separate development, and I found it quite neat. Another valuable feature of IBM DataPower Gateway is that it's easy to integrate with other products."
"I like all of the features in this product and it does what it's supposed to do."
"Its initial setup was straightforward."
"The solution is scalable, our customers are mostly South African banks and they handle mostly transactions with this solution."
"The scalability of the solution is good."
"Support for PCA and non-PCA services is valuable."
"We can completely manage the APIs at the org level and BU (business unit) level."
"Conversion to RESTful and SOAP protocols and management console (can manage individually throttled settings to manage our service levels for customers)."
"The reason why we selected the solution originally was because of its ability to have a gateway both on-premise and in the cloud. This is the most valuable aspect of the solution for us."
"It has something called packages. In that way, it's good because we have some pre-built packages. So, if you want to onboard different APIs, we can just add them to the package, and it's there."
"The most valuable aspect of Mashery is its stability."
"The control that we have and the security features are very valuable. With regard to API implementation or API orchestration, it works very well in the cloud because as soon as you create an API with one click, you can actually expose your APIs."
"Very few outages or SLA issues."
"When we did the product evaluation, we saw that TIBCO Mashery offers end-to-end API life cycle management. It provides all API features that are required for managing the complete life cycle. It includes the developer portal and tools for API monitorization. The out-of-box security features that TIBCO Mashery provides are enterprise-grade, which gives it an edge over other API products."
 

Cons

"The solution requires a lot of training manuals in order to get to know it better and to be able to use it effectively."
"In the next release, I would like to see the product price reduced. It should be cheaper."
"For the workloads that are not too high, appliance is a little bit expensive."
"The product should be more adapted to the DevOps process."
"The IBM community does not have much engagement from the IT community in Saudi Arabia and developers for this solution are difficult to find."
"They should add features to manage API integrations."
"Making it more user-friendly would be an improvement."
"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."
"It's not that user-friendly, and security-wise when you try to implement the security layer on top of it, it's not that easy either."
"The security needs improvement, specifically, propagation of security to an API. Calling other APIs is something that is missing in the product and that makes us think about going to a competitor."
"We observed delays under heavy load conditions, and without proper tuning, changes could take an extended period to filter and become effective."
"The management console of API and customers' applications are not the most intuitive."
"Monetization is not that great in API management. You need customization. Improvements are needed with sandbox local as well as with monetization. Those features are missing."
"The way agile life cycle is working needs improvement. I also want to see more support for open API standards. I want to see some improvement on the protocol transformation. That is quite missing now. These are the three main issues."
"It lacks many features at the API gateway compared to other solutions."
"I'd like to see TIBCO integrate authentication and security features into Mashery."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution has a return on investment but is a little expensive."
"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 product is expensive."
"This product is a bit expensive as IBM products are costly assets. However, for enterprise customers it is a worthwhile investment."
"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."
"It is an expensive solution."
"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."
"It's expensive when you compare it with others."
"We have secured terms on which we have been happy to renew for a number of years."
"Licensing is quite flexible."
"TIBCO Cloud API Management is not an expensive solution."
"Its price is pretty reasonable. There are some lightweight API options available in the market, but given the feature set that TIBCO provides, its price is really reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Insurance Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
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...
What do you like most about TIBCO Cloud API Management?
The platform's most valuable features are its capabilities to support security measures such as tokenization, token refresh, throttling, and enforcement of payloads.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TIBCO Cloud API Management?
My primary role was to assess the solution from a capability perspective. So, there are some issues with the licensing cost.
What needs improvement with TIBCO Cloud API Management?
The configuration is not that easy. It's not that user-friendly, and security-wise when you try to implement the security layer on top of it, it's not that easy either. There are certain things whe...
 

Also Known As

WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower
Mashery API Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity
uShip, Sabre, TouchTunes, Best Buy, Cisco, Comcast, athenahealth, Coca-Cola Enterprises, CentralIndex.com, Constant Contact, Edmunds.com, FoodEssentials, Getty Images, Klout, Rovi, Rotten Tomatoes, Sportradar, TomTom, ACTIVE.com
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM DataPower Gateway vs. TIBCO Cloud API Management and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.