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.
"The centralized management: this provides a management module that can deploy and apply security policies to all APIs, including all the gateways that are deployed on-premises and on any cloud because the gateway component can run at a VMware or in a Kubernetes cluster."
"What's best about IBM API Connect is the excellent administration. The development tool that builds the API is also very simple, and user-friendly, and it doesn't consume too much time. Another valuable feature in IBM API Connect is its good reporting feature, particularly for operations, but the most valuable feature of the solution for the customer is security. IBM API Connect provides a DMZ and a security gateway between the external and internal environment, so you can publish your API safely. IBM API Connect can also integrate with any tool or middleware that works on open standards without the need for development or coding, so integration with the solution is easier."
"The solution is very stable."
"The capabilities are very good."
"The most valuable feature of IBM API Connect is the security of the protocol."
"Policy configurations are pretty easy."
"API Connect is a good product, and everything works fine. All the analytics are good, and it is easy to follow up. I like it in that sense. I'm more focused on following up on analytics by seeing how many API calls we are getting and where we see a lot of problems. I was working on that API level."
"It allows enterprises to expose some of their tech to outside stakeholders."
"The most valuable feature is the security appliance, it's very secure."
"The product's most valuable features are AAA policies and security features."
"It is very easy to set up and configure, even for users with no prior experience."
"Support for PCA and non-PCA services is valuable."
"It is easy to use, easy to install, and it's resilient for high availability."
"What I like most is the stability."
"It is a scalable solution."
"Since it is a gateway, it provides a lot of security features."
"There is room for improvement regarding the connectivity of the DevOps."
"We ran it on top of the Kubernetes cluster, so it wasn't a standalone service. In the worst-case scenario, API Connect couldn't stay online if all the containers went down. We had to restart all the services. We shut down all the containers automatically one by one."
"It should be cheaper."
"It is expensive within this class of products."
"While Azure API Management offers configurable scalability, IBM API Connect relies on Kubernetes clusters. This might seem manual and require defining cluster instances upfront, but it's completely customizable and not on-the-fly scaling. It's completely custom-driven, not on-the-fly scaling, which some may consider cumbersome."
"The integration of cloud-based services is where we're looking for improvement in this platform."
"The automation and the simplicity could be improved."
"The integration of an API gateway that implements the sidecar pattern, which can be deployed in cloud applications, and expose the microservices directly in each pod, this can be more decentralized components."
"The initial setup isn't so easy, you need who has experience working with the solution to help."
"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."
"The two biggest issues of this solution are the complexity and the maintenance procedures."
"For the workloads that are not too high, appliance is a little bit expensive."
"The product should be more adapted to the DevOps process."
"Scripting needs improvement. It's hard for our customers."
"The user interface or the application development perspective and customization of the tool could be a little better."
"In the next release, I would like to see the product price reduced. It should be cheaper."
IBM API Connect is ranked 5th in API Management with 22 reviews while IBM DataPower Gateway is ranked 8th in API Management with 12 reviews. IBM API Connect is rated 7.8, while IBM DataPower Gateway is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of IBM API Connect writes "Simple, user-friendly, secure, and easy to integrate with other tools and the administration is excellent and doesn't take much time". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM DataPower Gateway writes "An out-of-the-box solution that's feature-rich, fast, and easy to integrate with other products". IBM API Connect is most compared with Apigee, Microsoft Azure API Management, MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager, Amazon API Gateway and Kong Enterprise, whereas IBM DataPower Gateway is most compared with Apigee, Microsoft Azure API Management, Mule ESB, IBM Integration Bus and Amazon API Gateway. 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.