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.
"They capture the details of all the incoming and outgoing traffic of your APIs. Based on 300+ default dimensions you can generate beautiful and insightful reports on usage and consumption of APIs."
"I simply like how you can personalize your products and put them into product categories. That's what I like the most."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"It nice and easy for the clients and those using the product to access the product's help resources."
"API/proxy lifecycle workflow for API providers is quite good and one of Apigee's strongest 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."
"It has all the features necessary to work in anything from a basic scenario to advanced applications."
"There are just a lot of security features in general."
"Support for PCA and non-PCA services is valuable."
"I like all of the features in this product and it does what it's supposed to do."
"The performance is good. It's been very stable."
"Since it is a gateway, it provides a lot of security features."
"It is very easy to set up and configure, even for users with no prior experience."
"The most valuable features for our business include the ability to monitor and log data transactions and handle multiple request at an enterprise level."
"It can look for the various security threats, productions, payload scanning, and perform routing based on the content type."
"What I like most is the stability."
"The setup and installation process could be improved with a container-based system."
"Apigee on premise is quite complex and it is always moving faster."
"I would like to see the support improved. I think the time frame should be shorter for responses when it comes to technical support. This is not the ideal situation you want to be in when you need support."
"One feature they have to invest time into is the developer portal they use."
"It needs predictive analysis of consumption."
"It is an expensive solution."
"Proxy versioning seems a bit confusing/buried in the publishing experience, especially for the URI-based versioning approach."
"More documentation on the Open Banking Standard will help."
"DataPower isn't the most user-friendly tool. It is not an easy tool to use. Some things could use better wizards to guide you through processes."
"The user interface or the application development perspective and customization of the tool could be a little better."
"Scripting needs improvement. It's hard for our customers."
"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."
"The two biggest issues of this solution are the complexity and the maintenance procedures."
"It is a costly product."
"One area that could be improved is the integration with Postgres and SQL databases. Currently, IBM DataPower Gateway only integrates with Oracle databases."
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.