We performed a comparison between IBM API Connect and IBM Datapower Gateway based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: All other things being equal, IBM Datapower Gateway has a slight edge in this comparison because it received higher marks than IBM API Connect in the service and support category.
"This is a very easy to use solution."
"The solution provides a common place for all APIs, allowing for easy sharing and exchange of information between internal and external stakeholders."
"The most valuable features of IBM API Connect are its performance and user-friendliness."
"It acts as a central gateway for both external APIs and underlying systems. It's basically a central middleware for hosting APIs to the internet and consuming APIs from internal systems. It provides central governance for any APIs going outside the network, ensuring security and a common contract for API definitions."
"The gateway is the most valuable aspect of this solution."
"The functionalities on offer are very good."
"DataPower Gateway holds significant value for us as it serves as the cornerstone of our enterprise security controls."
"The solution is very stable."
"The performance is good. It's been very stable."
"I like all of the features in this product and it does what it's supposed to do."
"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 I like most is the stability."
"It can look for the various security threats, productions, payload scanning, and perform routing based on the content type."
"The scalability of the solution is good."
"The solution is robust."
"I like that it is very stable, and we never experience any downtime."
"It's based on a little bit dated architecture. A lot of evolution has happened after that. It's an evolving field. Kong is a Kubernetes-based platform. Kong runs on Kubernetes, but all the other ones are in microservices. So, there's a lot of improvement that can be done."
"The developmental process is not quite user-friendly."
"It would be nice to have a SaaS solution that can be deployed into the cloud."
"Documentation for the CLI is not very complete. Also, the support could be improved, and we have had several problems with backing up and restoring the product."
"The administration of the user interface and the technical documentation are areas of concern in the solution where improvements are required."
"The integration of cloud-based services is where we're looking for improvement in this platform."
"The only disadvantage I can see is that it requires heavy hardware support."
"In the next version, I don't know if they've already been included it or not, but the designer and all the tools should be on the cloud. I don't want any external installation or local installation."
"The user interface or the application development perspective and customization of the tool could be a little better."
"It is a costly product."
"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."
"The solution requires a lot of training manuals in order to get to know it better and to be able to use it effectively."
"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."
"Making it more user-friendly would be an improvement."
"They should improve the solution's clustering features."
"Its support services could be better."
IBM API Connect is ranked 5th in API Management with 73 reviews while IBM DataPower Gateway is ranked 7th in API Management with 27 reviews. IBM API Connect is rated 8.0, while IBM DataPower Gateway is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of IBM API Connect writes "Offers basic API orchestration and provides robust security and governance features". 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 ". IBM API Connect is most compared with Apigee, Microsoft Azure API Management, MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager, Amazon API Gateway and 3scale API Management, whereas IBM DataPower Gateway is most compared with Apigee, Microsoft Azure API Management, Mule ESB, IBM Integration Bus and Kong Gateway Enterprise. See our IBM API Connect vs. IBM DataPower Gateway report.
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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.