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IBM DataPower Gateway vs WSO2 API Manager 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
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (4th), Application Infrastructure (6th), SOA Application Gateways (1st)
WSO2 API Manager
Ranking in API Management
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 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 WSO2 API Manager is 4.8%, up from 4.1% 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.
VishalSingh14 - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to deploy APIs and easy to manage CORS configuration
I have used WSO2 Store and WSO2 API Manager at the architecture level. I worked on two versions, namely WSO2 API Manager 2.6.0 and 5.7.0. I have also worked with WSO2 Identity Server versions 5.7 and 5.11. There are certain things that Apigee handles better than WSO2 API Manager. The user interface of WSO2 API Manager is much easier than that of Apigee. The scope of flexibility was much greater in Apigee. In WSO2 API Manager, we had little flexibility and were restricted to a specific software or tool. On the other hand, we had the scope of customization in Apigee.

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."
"The scalability of the solution is good."
"Its initial setup was straightforward."
"The most valuable feature is the security appliance, it's very secure."
"I like the tool's security. Also, all functionalities are integrated within on platform."
"I like all of the features in this product and it does what it's supposed to do."
"The solution is scalable, our customers are mostly South African banks and they handle mostly transactions with this solution."
"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."
"Functionality-wise, I like WSO2 API Manager - Publisher API and WSO2 Enterprise Service Bus."
"API management lifecycle is the most valuable."
"The product is easy to use."
"WSO2 API Manager's most valuable features are the simple interface that is easy to use and the APIs lifecycle."
"This solution is a little bit faster, easier to use, and has better integration than the other solutions I have experienced."
"There are a lot of tools to help the manager. WSO2 is very easy to install. It has all the principal functionalities that you think about when you want to put up the management solution. It's a very friendly tool."
"Helped us to quickly publish our Microservice APIs and enforcing different policies against them, it comes up with features like Security, Throttling policy and it provides complete access to customize API's which actually saves development effort and time."
"The main feature — the publication of the API, the management section — is great in general."
 

Cons

"I would like the tool to improve its training."
"One area that could be improved is the integration with Postgres and SQL databases. Currently, IBM DataPower Gateway only integrates with Oracle databases."
"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."
"The product's cost for data appliances or hardware is quite high. It needs improvement."
"Making it more user-friendly would be an improvement."
"For the workloads that are not too high, appliance is a little bit expensive."
"The two biggest issues of this solution are the complexity and the maintenance procedures."
"I think they could greatly improve the general UX with their solutions."
"We had some problems with the reverse proxy not being able to invoke fully qualified domain names, so we have to build some custom scripts to solve this issue."
"The user interface needs to improve, it is a bit outdated."
"The user interface could be a bit better."
"Basically, mTLS is a certificate-based communication protocol that WSO2 API Manager doesn't support."
"The product hasn’t been updated for some time."
"I would like to see improvements in the speed of the solution as it can be a bit slow compared to other platforms along with addressing memory issues would be beneficial."
"The professional support and licensing aspects of WSO have been a challenge."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's expensive when you compare it with others."
"The appliance is a bit on the expensive side for the workloads that are not too high."
"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 a bit expensive as IBM products are costly assets. However, for enterprise customers it is a worthwhile investment."
"The licensing cost is very expensive."
"The solution is expensive in comparison to other products."
"The product is expensive."
"WSO2 API Manager is an open-source solution."
"The challenge is the increasing pricing, which has led some customers to consider alternatives, like using Spring Boot solutions instead. The rising costs, especially as cores and usage increase, have been a concern, prompting some to migrate to other products."
"I think the other competitors that are providing the same solution are quite expensive. WSO2 API Manager is quite cheap."
"As far as I'm aware, the costs are not minimal but satisfactory."
"We use the open-source version of WSO2 API Manager, there is no cost."
"I am using the free version."
"WSO2 API Manager is a costly solution, and its pricing is not competitive enough compared to other products."
"We have not opted for the paid version of WSO2 but we have implemented the free and open source WSO2 software to a great extent and it is working as per our expectation."
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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
18%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
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 WSO2 API Manager?
It is possible to scale up and scale down with the solution...I can say that I have not seen any issues related to scalability.
What needs improvement with WSO2 API Manager?
One area for improvement is monitoring. Dashboards for application monitoring of the APIs would be beneficial, allowing us to check for faulty APIs.
What is your primary use case for WSO2 API Manager?
We use WSO2 API Manager for our microservices and our APIs, both internally and externally.
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity
1. eBay 2. StubHub 3. Cisco 4. Verizon 5. T-Mobile 6. Vodafone 7. Orange 8. BT Group 9. Telstra 10. Deutsche Telekom 11. Swisscom 12. AT&T 13. Sprint 14. Telefonica 15. O2 16. British Airways 17. Lufthansa 18. Emirates 19. Qatar Airways 20. Etihad Airways 21. Air France 22. KLM 23. American Express 24. Visa 25. Mastercard 26. PayPal 27. Western Union 28. Citibank 29. HSBC 30. Barclays 31. Santander 32. Goldman Sachs
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM DataPower Gateway vs. WSO2 API Manager and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.