IBM DataPower Gateway vs Mule ESB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM DataPower Gateway
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (6th), SOA Application Gateways (3rd), API Management (7th)
Mule ESB
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Market share comparison

As of June 2024, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the market share of IBM DataPower Gateway is 5.9% and it increased by 12.7% compared to the previous year. The market share of Mule ESB is 26.5% and it increased by 15.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
Unique Categories:
Application Infrastructure
2.7%
No other categories found
 

Featured Reviews

Minar Baddireddi - PeerSpot reviewer
May 25, 2023
An easy-to-use solution for security purposes that is stable
We are using the solution for security purposes The solution's security feature is its most valuable feature. It is a costly product. So, it is not an open-source solution, making it costly. In the future, I would like to see an open-source version. I have been using IBM DataPower Gateway since…
it_user1266102 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 26, 2020
Provides excellent connectivity but requires much better stability
We primarily provide services using the Mule ESB. We use it to integrate multiple systems The connectivity the solution provides is excellent. There are often too many systems that we have to integrate and this helps with that. The platform itself is very good. I'm not sure of any areas Mule ESB…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"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."
"Since it is a gateway, it provides a lot of security features."
"The API Connect gateway service and the SQL injection feature is good."
"What I like most is the stability."
"The solution is very easy to work with."
"The solution is robust."
"Support for PCA and non-PCA services is valuable."
"It's high-speed and it can be remotely administered via an API."
"Mule ESB is a very easy-to-use and user-friendly solution."
"I like that Mule ESB provides fast and good technical support."
"The connectors help to connect with a variety of applications."
"The most valuable feature is that it's programmer-friendly, so it's very easy to develop APIs."
"This tool has exceptional API management and integration connectors in addition to multiple out of the box connectors."
"For complex cases, we employ the SSLi engine, whereas for simpler ones like healthcare or response data, such as EDI 270 or 271. We prefer to use an external XRT engine instead of handling it within the ESB for ease of management."
"The most valuable feature for Mule is the number of connectors that are available."
"It's open source, and there are a lot of community resources. Mule ESB makes it easy to connect to other software applications."
 

Cons

"They should improve the solution's clustering features."
"In the next release, I would like to see the product price reduced. It should be cheaper."
"The product should be more adapted to the DevOps process."
"I would like the tool to improve its training."
"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."
"The components that they include in the product that are, in fact, a WTX, really need to be removed from the product because they tend to fail."
"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."
"It would be great to see implementing security modules as a feature."
"There are some issues with both stability and scalability."
"Mule ESB could be more user-friendly. I think users must learn about the architecture before they start coding. The price could be better. In the next release, I would like to see an EDIFACT integration."
"The initial setup is not easy."
"The payment system needs improvement."
"It's not easy to troubleshoot and we still can't make it work."
"It would be beneficial if users could navigate the UI easily without extensive training or learning curves."
"Limitation on external subscribers to listen to the messages on the bus."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As far as I know, they have a perpetual license for this product. They are paying perpetual fees rather than an annual subscription or annual pricing."
"The total cost of IBM DataPower Gateway would depend on the configuration, but in my experience, it can amount to 60,000 Euros per box, even for the virtual version. Usually, customers need high availability and a non-production environment, so the total price for IBM DataPower Gateway can be quite a lot. It can be 200,000 Euros or a similar figure."
"It's expensive when you compare it with others."
"The appliance is a bit on the expensive side for the workloads that are not too high."
"The cost of this product varies from customer to customer and the relationship with IBM, including how many offerings from IBM are already being used."
"IBM DataPower Gateway is quite expensive to get resources to work on this product. If the price could be cheaper, I think that will make it a little bit better and easily accessible to smaller clients. Then it could compete with other solutions that are available in the market. There's a whole lot of other solutions available that work well and are cheaper than IBM's products."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The product is expensive."
"Regarding licensing and pricing, I find it somewhat flexible. They are more flexible with larger customers compared to small and medium ones, as their licensing model depends on ports and other factors. Large customers benefit from more flexibility in implementation and renewal compared to smaller ones."
"The licensing is yearly, and there are additional fees for services."
"I think the price is very high. If you use TIBCO BW, the license is for the CPU usage, then the IPS, and support. I also think the license for the product is a one-time expense."
"Plan your licensing model (cloud or on-premises or hybrid) that will allow seamless integration with new partners."
"This is expensive. In my next project, we had to go to other vendor."
"This product is cheaper than some offered by other vendors, although there is a problem because you have to pay for some third-party adapters."
"The pricing must be improved."
"You will not get any support from Mule ESB's team for the tool's community edition...You can get support with the licensed version of Mule ESB."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
10%
Insurance Company
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM DataPower Gateway?
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM DataPower Gateway?
The pricing was not cheap, it was quite expensive. However, the pricing landscape might be different now. The market is more competitive, with players like F5, Cisco, and Siemens entering the space...
What needs improvement with IBM DataPower Gateway?
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. Also, the SSL key management is a bit convoluted bec...
Migration from IBM Integration Bus to Mulesoft ESB for a large enterprise tech services company
I was previously part of the Oracle SOA/OSB development team. In my current capacity I architected solutions using MuleSoft Anypoint Platform on cloud / on-premises and hybrid modes and on PCE/RTF ...
IBM Integration Bus vs Mule ESB - which to choose?
Our team ran a comparison of IBM’s Integration Bus vs. Mule ESB in order to determine what sort of ESB software was the best fit for our organization. Ultimately we decided to choose IBM Integratio...
What do you like most about Mule ESB?
The solution's drag-and-drop interface and data viewer helped us quite a lot.
 

Also Known As

WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower
No data available
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity
Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM DataPower Gateway vs. Mule ESB and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
787,061 professionals have used our research since 2012.