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Azul Zulu vs IBM DataPower Gateway comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Azul Zulu
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
AI Customer Experience Personalization (26th), AI Content Creation (12th)
IBM DataPower Gateway
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
13th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (6th), SOA Application Gateways (1st), API Management (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Application Infrastructure category, the mindshare of Azul Zulu is 3.6%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 3.9%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Azul Zulu3.6%
IBM DataPower Gateway3.9%
Other92.5%
Application Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

BasilJiji - PeerSpot reviewer
System engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Standardized our Java estate and have reduced licensing costs while maintaining strong support
Azul Zulu's ability to allow us to standardize our Java estate on a single and well-supported platform stands out as one of its best features. This standardization simplifies our compliance audits and ensures all our applications receive timely security updates.Azul Zulu positively impacts our organization by providing a platform that allows us to standardize Java on a well-supported platform. Without the high cost associated with other proprietary vendors, Azul Zulu provides an excellent platform for running our applications.
AkshaySawant - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager at CSB Bank Ltd
Security features excel but development limitations emerge
We are using the IBM DataPower Gateway for security purposes. As per the development perspective, there are some limitations with IBM DataPower Gateway because it only supports XML and XSLT language, but it does not support the Java language. This is the only limitation of the IBM DataPower Gateway. For the authentication and authorization purpose, we can use the IBM DataPower Gateway. It's a very good product. We are mostly using the IBM DataPower Gateway for security purposes and load balancing purposes. If we are handling the load for a particular server, then we can use the IBM DataPower Gateway. The IBM DataPower Gateway is mostly used for security purposes. If we have some APIs and we are using some security for those APIs, then we can use it. It can also be used as a load balancer. It's also used for certificate management, user management purposes, authentication, and authorization. For routing, the IBM DataPower Gateway has multiple URL-based routing and content-based routing capabilities. If we have multiple URLs, then we can use an XML script. Using the XSLT language, we can configure multiple URLs and implement URL-based routing. Content-based routing means if we have multiple requests, we can route the request to a particular URL. For this, we need to use the XSLT language only. We can't use XML, Java, or other scripting languages. With IBM DataPower Gateway, we are using all the APIs. All APIs have been configured on the gateway. We have configured the particular TLS profile and some TLS client profiles as well. Using that TLS profile, we have configured the APIs and authentication. We have configured some tokens also, including JWT tokens and different types of auth tokens. There is also a rate limiting feature which we use for handling API loads.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We've had no issues with stability."
"I joined this project which had already been underway for approximately six months, and in two months, I refactored the whole project and wrote it, and it is functional."
"We achieved specific outcomes from using Azul Zulu by reducing our Java licensing and support costs by approximately 70% when compared to our previous Oracle contract."
"I recommend this solution; it is a good security application and it incorporates integrations and the latest security controls that are available in the market."
"The support for IBM DataPower Gateway has been exceptional."
"The appliance has great security and reliability."
"The advantages of IBM DataPower Gateway, which I personally appreciate, are the security features that you can manipulate according to your company policies."
"DataPower Gateway is a perfect product, and I would recommend using it because it provides a lot of benefits."
"The whole purpose of this product is to provide high speed and high performance."
"The solution is straightforward and for large organizations, it functions well."
"I like the API Gateway feature."
 

Cons

"Improvements for Azul Zulu could include more automated tools for unused code visibility integrated directly into the standard portal to help further optimize our cloud footprints."
"I think Azul Zulu can be improved by always thinking about productivity, as most languages tend to evolve in that direction."
"It needs a better update daemon. At this time the process is manual and could be an issue on multiple desktop deployments."
"Additional documentation needs to be provided for complex automations."
"I would like the tool to improve its training."
"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."
"Traceability could be improved, especially for business operations. The traceability of the transactions could be an improvement point for DataPower to work on. It would be better if they provided JSON support. JSON protocol data has changed format. It started performing internal transformation to JSONx. This might be an additional complexity."
"Small and medium-sized companies might look for cloud-hosted applications due to the cost."
"An area for improvement in IBM DataPower Gateway is its price point because it's a relatively expensive product."
"API management launched two years back and we consider it quite unstable because we still face a lot of bugs."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The solution is expensive in comparison to other products."
"It's expensive when you compare it with others."
"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."
"The solution has a return on investment but is a little expensive."
"The licensing cost is very expensive."
"The appliance is a bit on the expensive side for the workloads that are not too high."
"The cost is very high and requires all five components in the API management solution."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Construction Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise18
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Azul Zulu?
I think Azul Zulu can be improved by always thinking about productivity, as most languages tend to evolve in that direction. I have two projects that I am working on in parallel, one using Angular ...
What is your primary use case for Azul Zulu?
My main use case for Azul Zulu in the current project is developing the archiving and unarchiving system. I use Azul Zulu on the back end when I created a REST API, which I use together with Java S...
What advice do you have for others considering Azul Zulu?
My advice to others who are thinking about using Azul Zulu is to try to explore as much as possible what it offers, getting away from the conventional paradigm. I would rate this review as a nine o...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM DataPower Gateway?
I don't know if the current licensing cost of IBM DataPower Gateway is high, but I think it's acceptable. I don't have any complaints about it.
What needs improvement with IBM DataPower Gateway?
I noticed that the Gateway Script libraries could be improved, as they are not covering everything I need.
What is your primary use case for IBM DataPower Gateway?
The primary purposes for which IBM DataPower Gateway is used include security purposes, and sometimes you need to put some configurations and mapping into the process.
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft, Kyocera, OKI, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, Voya Financial
RBL Bank, Availity
Find out what your peers are saying about Azul Zulu vs. IBM DataPower Gateway and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,325 professionals have used our research since 2012.