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IBM API Connect vs Perforce Acana comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 8, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

IBM API Connect
Ranking in API Management
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (9th)
Perforce Acana
Ranking in API Management
30th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of IBM API Connect is 6.3%, up from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Perforce Acana is 0.5%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

Shanmugasundaram Shanmuganathan - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers basic API orchestration and provides robust security and governance features
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. Overall, I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. Almost all applications we've been exposing lately go through this middleware, so it's used extensively. There are around sixty applications directly using it, but six Kubernetes clusters serve those applications. It's heavily used for integration, including system-to-system integration and product integrations. Our usage has been increasing year-on-year based on our needs.
Saurav Krishna - PeerSpot reviewer
Authentication mechanism is easy to implement but improvement is needed in documentation
For API security purposes, we use the tool to host all our APIs. This allows us to take advantage of the security features provided by the platform. With the solution, we can implement rules such as rate limiting and restricting the number of API calls for each user. It acts as a secure gateway…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution offers a pretty good SLA."
"The gateway is the most valuable aspect of this solution."
"The services that I consume through IBM API Connect are beneficial. It can handle multiple API management."
"It acts as a central gateway for both external APIs and underlying systems. It's basically a central middleware for hosting APIs to the internet and consuming APIs from internal systems. It provides central governance for any APIs going outside the network, ensuring security and a common contract for API definitions."
"The functionalities on offer are very good."
"One of the most valuable features of this solution is that it protects our backend system. We are exposing services to external parties and using this solution to protect the backend system, and to have a navigation in between."
"Since it runs on top of Datapower, all Datapower based custom policies can be utilized and exported to API connect but its not straightforward/simple process."
"The most valuable features are stability and security."
"The tool's authentication mechanism is easy to implement. We had to define a few parameters."
"Good interface, intuitive solution."
"It allowed us to publish and replace pre-essential transactions in one place, with a uniformity in terms of control and policies."
 

Cons

"We would have more capability to interact with the catalog and inventories, so a more DevOps-friendly solution is needed."
"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 administration of the user interface and the technical documentation are areas of concern in the solution where improvements are required."
"They seem to have left out a feature for microservices and also a certification module for OIDC."
"Components, like caching, should be implemented as policies, not requiring dependency on an external solution."
"The integration of cloud-based services is where we're looking for improvement in this platform."
"I would like to see support for non-Java based services. We struggle a bit to be able to deploy and connect our .NET services because of things like data types. We had to map a couple of things. For one solution provider, we had to move them to .NET Core before we could use it properly. I would like to see more agnostic tool service platforms rather than moving it more towards Java or open source."
"Due to bugs in integration, we have to look for workaround on fixing and using DataPower as gateway."
"The product has new features that we are going to implement in the next few months, such as API management and analytic reporting."
"Lacks an integrated billing feature."
"Akana API Management needs to improve its documentation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It can be quite expensive. It's okay for large-scale usage but quite expensive for smaller-scale implementations."
"The price for IBM API Connect is reasonable. It's $20,000 to $30,000 yearly for a subscription, and the pricing could vary around $40,000 per year, per subscription. Its price is reasonable for customers who have around sixty million API calls yearly for unlimited environments."
"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"I haven't seen anyone go from on-premise to the cloud. In fact, I am seeing people go from the cloud to on-premise because the costs can quickly grow on the cloud."
"It is expensive when compared to other products in this class. There were no extra fees for add-ons or technical support."
"The price of the solution is very expensive, it can turn many customers away."
"It should be cheaper. It has a yearly licensing."
"This is a licensed product. If your company is looking to obtain a license, you have to work with IBM partners."
"For us, the pricing and licensing policies were for an on-premise installation with a fixed cost structure, that matched our budgeting policies."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Insurance Company
12%
Educational Organization
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM API Connect?
Publishers can easily identify, create, and publish APIs on the developer portal, defining plans, packages, and potentially billing rules.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM API Connect?
Pricing depends on how many instances run across environments. I don't deal with licensing, but compared to other IBM products, the licensing is not significantly higher.
What needs improvement with IBM API Connect?
When comparing API Gateway with DataPower Gateway, several features in DataPower Gateway are absent in the APIC layer. Examples include the lack of connectivity to MQ ( /categories/message-queue-mq...
What do you like most about Akana API Management?
The tool's authentication mechanism is easy to implement. We had to define a few parameters.
What needs improvement with Akana API Management?
Akana API Management needs to improve its documentation.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Heineken, Tine, Finologee, Axis Bank
British American Tobacco, Credit Suisse, Daimler, eBay, FOX, Liberty Mutual, Marriott, Mayo Clinic, Skandia, Tata communications
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM API Connect vs. Perforce Acana and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,825 professionals have used our research since 2012.