We performed a comparison between Apigee and IBM Datapower Gateway based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Apigee comes out on top in this comparison. Apigee is flexible and offers excellent customization options. Datapower is less user friendly and offers limited configuration capabilities.
"It is scalable."
"Apigee is a great product with good feedback and recommendations from clients."
"The stability of the solution is good. There aren't issues surrounding bugs or glitches. We don't find that it crashes or freezes. It's pretty reliable."
"The usability is one of the best aspects of the product."
"The use case which I have installed serves the intended purpose."
"The most valuable features are low-code play, quick packaging, and production."
"The most valuable feature of Apigee is its simplicity of deploying an API and restricting access, like rate limit, with the API."
"API/proxy lifecycle workflow for API providers is quite good and one of Apigee's strongest features."
"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."
"Its initial setup was straightforward."
"What I like most is the stability."
"The solution is very easy to work with."
"I like the tool's security. Also, all functionalities are integrated within on platform."
"It is a scalable solution."
"I like that it is very stable, and we never experience any downtime."
"The product is stable...The product is scalable."
"I would like them to add features, such as caching and mediation policies."
"An area for improvement would be to provide more information while troubleshooting."
"When there is an update on a new version or an automatic update, you have to be present and double-check that the update is reflected in the environment with no issues."
"I have heard there maybe be some security issues that need to be addressed. If this is the situation I would encourage taking a look at the security matters."
"The initial setup is not straightforward, particularly for hybrid solutions."
"Apigee is not a solution compatible with public clouds, making it one of its shortcomings where improvements are required."
"Since it is based on various open sourced projects, we might have to depend on the fixes provided by those components rather than Apigee directly fixing the issues."
"I would like to see better integration and some architectural improvements in future releases of the solution."
"The product should be more adapted to the DevOps process."
"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."
"They should improve the solution's clustering features."
"Scripting needs improvement. It's hard for our customers."
"The solution requires a lot of training manuals in order to get to know it better and to be able to use it effectively."
"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."
"They should add features to manage API integrations."
"The user interface or the application development perspective and customization of the tool could be a little better."
Apigee is ranked 2nd in API Management with 82 reviews while IBM DataPower Gateway is ranked 7th in API Management with 27 reviews. Apigee is rated 8.2, while IBM DataPower Gateway is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Apigee writes "Has a robust community and outstanding performance". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM DataPower Gateway writes "Security features meets compliance needs and offers MPGW (Multi-Protocol Gateway) that simplifies integration efforts ". Apigee is most compared with Microsoft Azure API Management, IBM API Connect, WSO2 API Manager, Amazon API Gateway and Axway AMPLIFY API Management, whereas IBM DataPower Gateway is most compared with IBM API Connect, Microsoft Azure API Management, Mule ESB, IBM Integration Bus and Kong Gateway Enterprise. See our Apigee vs. IBM DataPower Gateway report.
See our list of best API Management vendors.
We monitor all API Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
1) Let us start from the base that Google APIGEE is an API Management platform, so it offers more capabilities than a Gateway, therefore we must compare it against IBM API Connect which is the IBM API Management and whose gateways are Datapower machines.
2) An API Management platform consists mainly of three key components:
• Portal: where the catalog of available APIs is discovered.
• Management: where the life cycle of the APIs is managed.
• Gateway: Where the APIs are exposed.
At Management level: Google APIGEE and IBM API Connect
• Manage the life cycle of the API.
• Manage users roles and permissions.
• Manage security in APIs.
• Manage the consumption of APIs.
• Allows traffic policies to be applied.
• Allows you to configure, create and attach custom policies.
At Portal level: Google APIGEE and IBM API Connect
• Display the API documentation
• Test the exposed APIs.
• Register application developers.
• Customize corporate brand.
• Manage community.
• Self-management.
At Gateway level: Google APIGEE and IBM API Connect
• API deployment and execution
• Execution of security policies
• Integration with data sources
• Apply traffic policies.
• Different types of gateways:
• Google APIGEE
o Edge Enterprise Gateway.
o Microgateway (Limited features)
Does not support all OAuth2.0 flows
No Caching
No threat protecction
Basic monitoring.
• IBM API Connect
o Microgateway (Discontinued).
o Gateways:
Datapower Gateway (Compatible with API Connect version 5)
API Gateway (Focused on the 2018 version of API Connect)
At the Deployment level:
• Distributed:
o Google APIGEE:
Edge Enterprise Gateway:
• The complete instance must be taken to each cloud.
• The deployment of each instance requires a license.
Microgateway:
• They connect to the same instance, however, the limited policies of this component must be kept in mind.
• Can only be used by purchasing the full license of the API Management.
o IBM API Connect:
Datapower Gateway (7.6 or <):
• Compatible with version 5.0.8.x
API Gateway (7.7 or> = 2018.4.x):
• Compatible with version 5.0.8.x and 2018 of IBM API Connect.
Both Gateway:
• It is only necessary to deploy the Gateway in each cloud, not the full instance of the product.
• Manages licenses that charge for API Calls generated in the Gateway and includes the deployment of nodes of its components in any cloud.
Both APIGEE and API Connect offer good capabilities to accelerate the deployment of business capabilities such as services or APIs. The decision of which one is better will depend on the conditions of our business and purpose.