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.
"The ability to convert from language to language using a single tool."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"If you have numerous applications and high traffic, Apigee is a strong choice for its excellent features and outstanding performance."
"Its customer service is good."
"Technical support has been decent."
"Apigee Analytics dashboard is useful to monitor transactions, error percentage, transaction latency, etc."
"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."
"Apigee provides good documentation."
"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."
"The API Connect gateway service and the SQL injection feature is good."
"I like the tool's security. Also, all functionalities are integrated within on platform."
"The product's most valuable features are AAA policies and security features."
"I like that it is very stable, and we never experience any downtime."
"The solution is very easy to work with."
"It is very easy to set up and configure, even for users with no prior experience."
"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."
"The Apigee cloud admin UI could be more user-friendly by adding a few more features."
"I would like to see SOAP services and socket-based connectivity developed."
"There should be an integrated continuous integration and continuous deployment approach with Apigee. Currently, for development at a more integrated level, you have set it up yourself."
"They need to work on the cost of the solution."
"Compared to its competitors, such as Axway AMPLIFY API Management and Layer7 API Management, Apigee could benefit from having more policies to cater to various use cases. This would reduce the need for writing custom JavaScripts. If more features come straight out of the box, we can leverage them instead of writing custom code to achieve the same functionality."
"I don't have any notes for improvement."
"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 company needs to better support webhooks. It used to support webhooks and their policies and they have since stopped. They had some issues in the product and they abandoned the support for them. It's not come back since."
"The programming language is only supported in XSLT and Gateway script."
"The IBM community does not have much engagement from the IT community in Saudi Arabia and developers for this solution are difficult to find."
"They should improve the solution's clustering features."
"The solution requires a lot of training manuals in order to get to know it better and to be able to use it effectively."
"I would like the tool to improve its training."
"It is a costly product."
"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."
"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 "Easy to use, plenty of functionality, but expensive". Apigee is most compared with Microsoft Azure API Management, IBM API Connect, Amazon API Gateway, WSO2 API Manager and Kong Gateway Enterprise, 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.