IBM DataPower Gateway vs WSO2 Enterprise Integrator comparison

IBM and WSO2 are both solutions in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category. IBM is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.3, while WSO2 is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.0. IBM holds a 6.6% mindshare in E, compared to WSO2’s 5.6% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 76% of WSO2 users who would recommend it.

IBM DataPower Gateway

Read 30 IBM DataPower Gateway reviews

5,383 Views
861 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

WSO2 Enterprise Integrator

Read 20 WSO2 Enterprise Integrator reviews

1,766 Views
795 Comparison Views

76% willing to recommend

IBM DataPower Gateway

WSO2 Enterprise Integrator

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 2025

IBM DataPower Gateway and WSO2 Enterprise Integrator compete in the enterprise integration and gateway space. While IBM offers strong pricing and reliable support, WSO2 is favored for its robust features, justifying its cost and marking it as potentially superior in certain aspects.

Features: IBM DataPower Gateway is noted for its high-speed processing, integrated security features, and multi-protocol gateway capabilities which allow seamless protocol transformations. WSO2 Enterprise Integrator is valued for its extensive adaptability with a wide range of connectors, ease of transformation and mediation capabilities, and user-friendly integration studio offering a no-code solution.

Room for Improvement: IBM DataPower Gateway could enhance flexibility and customization, lower its initial investment costs, and streamline its setup process for quicker deployment. WSO2 Enterprise Integrator might improve performance handling for exceedingly complex systems, refine its support for SOAP environments, and bolster documentation to better assist new users in navigating its features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: WSO2 Enterprise Integrator provides an intuitive deployment model with strong community backing, making its open-source resources advantageous for a cost-effective implementation. IBM DataPower Gateway offers a more structured approach with professional support services to guide enterprise-level setups, leveraging expert assistance for thorough deployment.

Pricing and ROI: IBM DataPower Gateway comes with a higher initial cost which could present a financial barrier but offers stable returns on investment through its secure, reliable services crucial for enterprise operations. WSO2 Enterprise Integrator, being open-source, allows for a more economical setup process, facilitating scalable growth and promising a favourable ROI through low upfront costs and comprehensive integration capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM DataPower Gateway vs. WSO2 Enterprise Integrator Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM DataPower Gateway vs. WSO2 Enterprise Integrator

September 2025

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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

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Infrastructure (12th), SOA Application Gateways (1st), API Management (12th)

WSO2 Enterprise Integrator

Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

7th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Integration (32nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 6.6%, up from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WSO2 Enterprise Integrator is 5.6%, up from 5.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
IBM DataPower Gateway	6.6%
WSO2 Enterprise Integrator	5.6%
Other	87.8%

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

Featured Reviews

AkshaySawant

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.

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Ritesh_Shah

Senior Solution Architect at Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Decreases the development timeframe and costs

The main issue with the product is pricing. It uses core-based pricing for WSO2 Enterprise Integrator and API Manager. It would be best if you had APIM by default. It provides many connectors for easy integration with third-party systems. Often, customers decide to develop using open-source tools like Spring Boot if there aren't many connectors required to avoid increasing costs. They'll develop this way and then deploy using APIM, the bare minimum needed. It is mainly required for very complicated setups with many connectors. In the implementations I've seen, people often used open-source tools because there weren't many third-party systems involved—just their organization's own systems. From WSO2 Enterprise Integrator, I expect them to bring up more and more connectors in the future. That's the main expectation. Having more connectors in various areas will help us when discussing new requirements. I don't have any specific use case right now, so I can't name a particular connector. But, as new technologies emerge, the relevant connectors should be there for those. WSO2 Enterprise Integrator mainly helps with the integration part, which can be simplified only if you have relevant connectors for whatever you're doing.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Since it is a gateway, it provides a lot of security features."

"The solution is scalable, our customers are mostly South African banks and they handle mostly transactions with this solution."

"Support for PCA and non-PCA services is valuable."

"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."

"It is very easy to set up and configure, even for users with no prior experience."

"If you have an API application in your organization that you want to make safe and secure, in addition to your existing WAF or load balancer, this product comes with all those capabilities:"

"Its initial setup was straightforward."

"The solution is stable."

More IBM DataPower Gateway pros

"The learning curve for this solution is very good."

"WSO2's analytics capability is good, considering the ELC support they provide."

"It's a consolidated product. It works and it does its job pretty well."

"The solution's technical support is very knowledgeable."

"It was mostly easy to set up the product."

"The drag-and-drop features for connectors are very valuable."

"The installation process is easy."

"It's a very complete product. It allows us to network security and add more layers of security to the system."

More WSO2 Enterprise Integrator pros

Cons

"IBM DataPower Gateway is quite big for smaller organizations, looking at different types of clients who are virtually assisted in this, I would say it's not really a good product for smaller firms."

"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 is a costly product."

"Making it more user-friendly would be an improvement."

"The product should be more adapted to the DevOps process."

"In the next release, I would like to see the product price reduced. It should be cheaper."

"Small and medium-sized companies might look for cloud-hosted applications due to the cost."

"Scripting needs improvement. It's hard for our customers."

More IBM DataPower Gateway cons

"They should release upgrades more frequently."

"If I have to buy software, then it becomes expensive for me."

"One of the reasons that we are looking for a replacement is their way of defining integration. The language of the XML structures that I use to describe the integrations are not that standard, and it's not easy to find people who are familiar with this approach."

"There are a lot of security settings that when you apply you have to re-apply again every time you modify a setting. It is something that really needs to be enhanced."

"You cannot include the validation of XPath."

"The micro integrator should be improved. There is room for enhancement considering alternative integration components."

"The administration side is complex and could use significant improvements to enhance the solution's functionality."

"They should introduce better pricing for small companies."

More WSO2 Enterprise Integrator cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"It is an expensive solution."

"This product is a bit expensive as IBM products are costly assets. However, for enterprise customers it is a worthwhile investment."

"The tool's initial costing is expensive for small banks and financial institutions."

"The solution has a return on investment but is a little expensive."

More IBM DataPower Gateway pricing and cost advice

"It is a low-cost solution."

"The pricing of WSO2 Enterprise Integrator for enterprise subscriptions can be considered expensive, especially from the perspective of someone who prefers open-source software."

"The cost is better than IBM Cloud Pak."

"I rate the product price a six on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."

"The open-source, unsupported version is available free of charge."

"The solution costs about 20,000 or 30,000 euros per year, per instance."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

29%

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

15%

Government

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	16

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	11

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM DataPower Gateway?

I have significant experience with the IBM DataPower Gateway. As a security product, it is very good. However, from the development perspective, it has limitations because it only supports the XSLT...

See all answers

What do you like most about WSO2 Enterprise Integrator?

WSO2's analytics capability is good, considering the ELC support they provide.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WSO2 Enterprise Integrator?

The product has reasonable and competitive pricing for enterprise customers. It is expensive for small businesses especially. They are using the open-source solution, and they find it expensive sin...

See all answers

What needs improvement with WSO2 Enterprise Integrator?

Something that could be improved in WSO2 Enterprise Integrator is that the problem is not a lack of capability or functionalities. The problem is that it is a very complex environment. To put your ...

See all answers

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Compared 37% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

Amazon API Gateway vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 14% of the time

IBM Integration Bus vs WSO2 Enterprise Integrator

Compared 11% of the time

Spring Cloud Data Flow vs WSO2 Enterprise Integrator

Compared 8% of the time

webMethods.io vs WSO2 Enterprise Integrator

Compared 8% of the time

OpenESB vs WSO2 Enterprise Integrator

Compared 4% of the time

More WSO2 Enterprise Integrator Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM DataPower Gateway

September 2025

Download IBM DataPower Gateway product report

Buyer's Guide

WSO2 Enterprise Integrator

September 2025

Download WSO2 Enterprise Integrator product report

Also Known As

WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower

No data available

Overview

IBM DataPower Gateway is a robust, secure next-generation enterprise-grade single multichannel API gateway that supplies dynamic access, integration, control, and outstanding security. The solution is available in a broad range of workload capabilities, including application programming interface (API), service oriented architecture (SOA), B2B, cloud, web, and mobile. These dynamic capabilities ensure users are able to quickly increase the reach of an organization's critical IT resources to new channels, which will provide shareholders, team members, and clients with safe, secure access at all times.

DataPower Gateway is very flexible and is widely available in virtual, cloud, traditional, physical, Docker, and Linux form factors.

IBM DataPower Gateway Features

IBM DataPower Gateway has many value-added features. Some of these features are included below:

Control: The solution provides decision point authorization and authentication for all standards, including Lightweight Direct Access Protocol (LDAP) and Open Authorization (OAuth), which allow for better access control across an organization’s entire network.
DataPower dashboard: The dashboard is specifically designed to enhance performance and determine problematic processes. The solution provides intuitive real-time performance transparency to diagnose operational and performance anomalies and offer repair and restoration recommendations.
Enhanced messaging: Users are able to easily mediate messaging and protocols by incorporating the best of today’s traditional and modern application standards.
Integration: IBM DataPower Gateway offers super fast mainframe connectivity, database connectivity, transport protocol bridging, content-based routing, and any-to-any message transformation, ensuring secure and immediate connect service.

IBM DataPower Gateway Benefits

IBM DataPower Gateway provides many benefits. Some of those benefits include:

Flexibility: The solution is easy to use and configure and provides for a pleasant, intuitive overall user experience. The solution can immediately be used out of the box, which makes overall process management simple.
Protection: The solution provides sturdy continuous service protection and application performance using robust powerful routing and traffic control.
Security: The solution’s enterprise-grade De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) ready gateway enables users to enforce the desired runtime application security across all messaging protocols.
Profitability: The solution’s design ensures significant reduction of development costs in addition to the streamlining of overall operations. Users are able to achieve reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) and experience a near-immediate ROI.

Reviews from Real Users

“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. Another valuable feature of IBM DataPower Gateway is that it's easy to integrate with other products.”- Bálint T., Solution Manager at Intalion

“You don't have to have a separate DMC proxy because DataPower Gateway is an appliance and will take care of a lot of security features. These include data validations, encryption, as well as XML or any type of scripting or security threats that are present. From a security point of view, being an appliance in the DMC zone, IBM DataPower Gateway will take care of the entire security angle for the infrastructure.” - Sathyan K., Founder/Director at perfTech Solutions Pvt Ltd

IBM

WSO2 Enterprise Integrator, core to the WSO2 Integration Agile Platform, is an open source Integration product for cloud native and container-native projects. It enables enterprise integration experts to build, scale, and secure sophisticated integration solutions to achieve digital agility. Unlike other integration products, WSO2 Enterprise Integrator already contains integration runtimes, message brokering, business process modeling, analytics and visual tooling capabilities.

WSO2

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity

West

Buyer's Guide

IBM DataPower Gateway vs. WSO2 Enterprise Integrator

September 2025

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