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.
"Apigee is a pioneer in the industry and has good features and functionalities. It is a good tool for API management and it has more advancements than all other tools in the market in certain areas."
"Tracing in Apigee is a very good feature."
"The capabilities are very powerful."
"One of the best parts of this solution is the implementation as we did not need to use code or out-of-box policies. When it comes to the cloud-based architecture, there is a high level of reliability."
"Anyone with basic knowledge can build an API."
"We have been using Apigee mostly for proxy FGIs. We also use its security features as well as traffic control features."
"The most important feature is the security capabilities and the way it integrates very quickly with other security providers. We have integrated it with Azure and it integrates quite seamlessly."
"The analytics function and the developer portal are the two valuable features of Apigee. The analytics part is very good, and the developer portal is quite rich in features."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The most valuable features for our business include the ability to monitor and log data transactions and handle multiple request at an enterprise level."
"Its initial setup was straightforward."
"It can look for the various security threats, productions, payload scanning, and perform routing based on the content type."
"It is very easy to set up and configure, even for users with no prior experience."
"The performance is good. It's been very stable."
"The solution is stable."
"I like that it is very stable, and we never experience any downtime."
"An area for improvement would be to provide more information while troubleshooting."
"Areas like traffic handling of incoming requests, security features between third-parties and Apigee, and between Apigee and internal network servers, resources, or JSON areas, etc."
"The solution could add even more functionalities."
"Apigee on premise is quite complex and it is always moving faster."
"The account simplification process can be improved."
"Maintaining and deploying revisions need to be more defined."
"Apigee's user interface could be more straightforward and have more options. Also, it would be nice if it were ready to work out of the box without so much configuration."
"What my clients don't like is that the on-premises solution is not being treated and maintained as well as the cloud solution."
"The user interface or the application development perspective and customization of the tool could be a little better."
"It is a costly product."
"For the workloads that are not too high, appliance is a little bit expensive."
"The initial setup isn't so easy, you need who has experience working with the solution to help."
"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 two biggest issues of this solution are the complexity and the maintenance procedures."
"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."
"Making it more user-friendly would be an improvement."
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.