Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

IBM API Connect vs Workato comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.9
IBM API Connect enhances profitability and efficiency by reducing development time, improving security, and enabling seamless system integration.
Sentiment score
7.8
Workato enhances productivity, saves costs, delivers over 40% ROI, and integrates swiftly, optimizing operations by automating manual tasks.
Reducing development hours from eighty to four for an API was possible due to reusing existing scripts from DataPower.
By replacing multiple legacy systems and teams with a single automated platform, organizations see significant cost savings and improved business operations.
For main recipes, there are charges, so by focusing on creating as many callable recipes as possible based on requirements, we can improve cost efficiency for the business.
In my experience, we have seen a return on investment, with results visible within a week.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.4
IBM API Connect support is proactive and expert but variable in speed, with regional availability challenges noted by users.
Sentiment score
7.8
Workato's support is highly rated for responsiveness, real-time chat, robust infrastructure, and appreciated service credits, despite minor limitations.
Support is excellent when it comes to APIC.
Whenever we faced issues with data volume, the support team helped us by suggesting solutions like breaking the data into chunks.
I reach out to the professional services team or customer success team for technical support, and they provide immediate responses.
Workato's support is robust, featuring first and second-level support.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
IBM API Connect offers excellent scalability through on-premise and cloud solutions, supporting enterprise-level operations and customization features.
Sentiment score
7.3
Workato efficiently scales for diverse needs, managing high transaction volumes and offering flexible licensing despite initial data challenges.
With container versions, scaling up or down the gateways deployed into pods is a two to three-minute task for the operations team.
There are scalability limitations with Workato.
Allows dynamic connection switching at runtime.
Even when clients overutilize the product, Workato allows them to continue without interruption, charging accordingly rather than limiting usage.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
IBM API Connect is generally stable and reliable, especially in government and banking, despite occasional upgrade issues.
Sentiment score
7.4
Workato is praised for its reliability and stability, despite occasional challenges under heavy data loads, scoring highly in reviews.
The runtime engine for the APIC Gateway is still a DataPower component, which has been stable in the industry for about fifteen years.
Once deployed, solutions do not break, making it more reliable than other solutions like Microsoft Power Automate that often disconnect.
During the initial data loads with large volumes, Workato was unable to handle the data effectively, which indicates stability issues under high loads.
To handle more than 50,000 records, I use scripting actions like Python or JavaScript to process large data in chunks.
 

Room For Improvement

IBM API Connect needs better integration, automation, monitoring, documentation, and usability, facing issues in setup, costs, and support.
Workato users seek improved collaboration, flexibility, API management, security, scalability, integration options, and cost-efficiency.
Examples include the lack of connectivity to MQ.
Workato struggles with scalability when handling high volumes of data, such as terabytes, requiring chunking for initial data loads.
One area for improvement is the CI/CD pipeline, which lacks a version control system similar to GitHub for easier deployment.
Currently, there's no way to set breakpoints to stop the process and debug an error as you can in other tools like webMethods.
 

Setup Cost

IBM API Connect offers scalable solutions with high costs, suitable for large enterprises, available in SaaS and on-premise versions.
Workato's flexible pricing is recipe-based, offering cost-effective customization for organizations, with add-on costs based on usage.
Pricing depends on how many instances run across environments.
Higher volume is less expensive, but in general, it is kind of pricey.
While the upfront cost is high due to task-based pricing, the cost is relatively low in terms of development because Workato provides necessary connectors for integration use cases.
Compared to other iPaaS solutions like Boomi, Workato’s pricing model charges per connection step, which increases the cost.
 

Valuable Features

IBM API Connect excels with strong security, integration, usability, analytics, flexibility, and scalability, enhancing API management and monetization.
Workato simplifies automation and integration with a user-friendly, no-code platform, boosting efficiency and project timelines.
It offers significant development efficiency, reducing man-hours from eighty to four when creating APIs.
It allows app-to-app and real-time integrations, which significantly enhance process efficiency.
It comes with pre-built connectors, eliminating the need to write APIs.
The platform's ease of use for connecting to different integrations, like Salesforce and NetSuite, is very beneficial because development isn't necessary, and everything is readily available.
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM API Connect
Ranking in Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS)
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
API Management (4th)
Workato
Ranking in Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS)
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) category, the mindshare of IBM API Connect is 2.8%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Workato is 4.7%, up from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS)
 

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.
Rohit Sircar - PeerSpot reviewer
Great automation and strong workflows useful for integration
The initial setup is quite straightforward. When connecting Workato with your on-premises system, you have to install the Workato agent on your network. It was not complex but a long process to configure and settle. Workato has not gone live for us yet, so only the developers are currently using it. But in terms of users, we will have close to 250 and maybe 30 additional direct users. We are seeing a lot of different use cases where we can add new recipes because we started small, and there are many different areas where we can implement Workato for automation.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) solutions are best for your needs.
857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
19%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Insurance Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Educational Organization
19%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 Workato?
Workato is low code, intuitive, and easy to use.
What needs improvement with Workato?
Currently, Workato is a low-code platform without native programming capabilities. I would appreciate having a dedicated programming language for tasks like transformations and functional programmi...
What is your primary use case for Workato?
I am an integration consultant, and I use Workato ( /products/workato-reviews ) for integration. Recently, one of my clients wanted to migrate from using Workato ( /products/workato-reviews ) to an...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Heineken, Tine, Finologee, Axis Bank
Panera Bread, Berkshire Hathaway, Salesforce, Box, Splunk, ComScore, IBM, Complex Media, Microsoft, Home Depot, Cisco, News Corp, Braille Institute
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM API Connect vs. Workato and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.