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IBM DataPower Gateway vs IBM Integration Bus vs webMethods.io comparison

 

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:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 5.8%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Integration Bus is 22.1%, up from 21.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of webMethods.io is 11.0%, up from 9.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

Featured Reviews

Mehdi El Filahi - PeerSpot reviewer
Security features meets compliance needs and offers MPGW (Multi-Protocol Gateway) that simplifies integration efforts
While I like IBM products, I'm not an evangelist. I work with Java, Microsoft ASP.NET, and various technologies. I'm not tied to any specific vendor. However, I do find IBM to be a bit greedy. It's a large, profit-driven company. The support team is mostly based in India, and they follow a very structured process and protocol. Sometimes, it feels like playing ping pong with them – lots of back and forth before the problem gets escalated. You might even have to get your sales rep involved to push things along. For me, the support it could be better. Indian support teams aren't inherently bad, but with IBM, it feels impersonal. They respond, sure. But if it's a complex technical issue, they might ask you a lot of questions that just seem designed to waste your time. Sometimes it feels like they hope you'll get frustrated and solve the problem yourself.
Ashraf Siddiqui - PeerSpot reviewer
Helpful for complex integrations because it has tools and functionality to integrate with other systems
Everything needs to be improved. As far as integration and the cloud are concerned, things are moving to the cloud side. When you use Kubernetes and similar technologies, IBM Integration Bus doesn't greatly facilitate these environments. Maybe I don't know enough about that, but I feel that when it comes to the DevOps environment, the tool needs to be deployed on production in a way that's just like pods. Cloud integration needs to be more facilitated with the DevOps environment. This IBM technology needs to adapt because in the recent world, in the real world, we see that everything is just a cloud pod. Whenever you need to scale anything, you just put some cloud and pod and improve it, make any server and deploy it. But in IBM Integration Bus, there is a problem because we can't do this as easily. In short, IBM needs to more emphasize or more integrate with the cloud environments as well, similar to DevOps. There are limitations in IBM Integration Bus when it comes to DevOps.
MohanPrasad - PeerSpot reviewer
Smooth integration and enhanced deployment with high licensing cost
webMethods.io was used to integrate APIs through the webMethods.io platform, trigger database events, and connect backend APIs through a Java backend. It was used extensively for integration purposes in my organization Integration became smoother, troubleshooting was easier, and deployment and…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product's most valuable features are AAA policies and security features."
"The scalability of the solution is good."
"Support for PCA and non-PCA services is valuable."
"The solution is robust."
"It's high-speed and it can be remotely administered via an API."
"What I like most is the stability."
"It can look for the various security threats, productions, payload scanning, and perform routing based on the content type."
"The performance is good. It's been very stable."
"Seamlessly integrates your different applications."
"It is very straightforward. It is very user-friendly integration."
"One of the most valuable features is how seamless and easy to use this solution is. This is a fantastic solution and a very measured product."
"It aligns well with containerized environments, which increases its scalability and high availability."
"The product is a user-customized tool so that you can adjust it to your specific needs pretty well with little trouble."
"It is user-friendly and a value-added tool for banks and other verticals."
"I found all features valuable. There are a lot of connectors."
"IBM Integration Bus has been effective in facilitating our messaging and service-oriented architecture (SOA) or bus architecture. So, we're already utilizing it to transform the data from the source it's sending. It converts the data from the format the source sends it into the format the destination system requires. So we are transforming the messages, which are required by the destination system; that's the one way."
"The product is very stable."
"What I found most valuable in webMethods Integration Server is that it's a strong ESB. It also has strong API modules and portals."
"The most valuable feature of the webMethods Integration Server is the built-in monitoring, auditing, RETS, and SOAP services."
"webMethods Trading Networks is a stable solution."
"The core product can be used not only for automatic file transfers between applications, but also as an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)."
"The most valuable feature is stability."
"It is a very stable product."
"It’s fairly easy to view, move, and mange access across different components. Different component types are categorized and can be viewed in a web based administration console."
 

Cons

"The two biggest issues of this solution are the complexity and the maintenance procedures."
"The product should be more adapted to the DevOps process."
"The user interface or the application development perspective and customization of the tool could be a little better."
"For the workloads that are not too high, appliance is a little bit expensive."
"The IBM community does not have much engagement from the IT community in Saudi Arabia and developers for this solution are difficult to find."
"In terms of OEM support, it is poor. If I raise a CBRT one, as per the SLA, they should respond in one hour, however, sometimes it takes four or five hours to respond."
"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."
"Scripting needs improvement. It's hard for our customers."
"One drawback that I have found is that there are issues with using the Java connector."
"IBM Integration Bus isn't particularly user-friendly and has a big learning curve."
"They could integrate AI technologies with the product. Additionally, ongoing developments and enhancements in integration technologies could be beneficial."
"I think security should be more simplified."
"We decided to move away from IBM Integration Bus for IT technical refreshments."
"They need to come up with Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS). It should also have a feature for integrating with those applications that are on the cloud."
"Its licensing or subscription model should be improved for more flexible adoption. There should also be more ease of use."
"It provides all the features that are required for day-to-day work. So far, I haven't seen any major issues that impact our work. I have been told that IBM App Connect Enterprise, which is the next version of IIB, is really good. It is better than IIB, and it gives you more coverage in terms of application integration."
"The deployment should be simplified."
"I have noticed that webMethods ActiveTransfer has had problems when handling large files. For example, when we receive (and perform operations on) files that are larger than about 16 MB, the software starts losing performance."
"In terms of improvements, maybe on the API monetization side, having users able to create separate consumption plans and throttle all those consumption plans towards the run time could be better."
"Upgrades are complex. They typically take about five months from start to finish. There are many packages that plug into webMethods Integration Server, which is the central point for a vast majority of the transactions at my organization. Anytime we are upgrading that, there are complexities within each component that we must understand. That makes any upgrade very cumbersome and complicated. That has been my experience at this company. Because there are many different business units that we are touching, there are so many different components that we are touching. The amount of READMEs that you have to go through takes some time."
"webMethods.io lacks advanced monitoring and analytics capabilities, so my customers need to use something additional."
"I am not satisfied with the solution because it takes too much effort to migrate and add new information. The migration could be easier."
"t doesn't represent OOP very well, just a method and proprietary interface called IData."
"I would like the solution to provide bi-weekly updates."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The solution has a return on investment but is a little expensive."
"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."
"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 appliance is a bit on the expensive side for the workloads that are not too high."
"The solution is expensive in comparison to other products."
"This product is a bit expensive as IBM products are costly assets. However, for enterprise customers it is a worthwhile investment."
"It is a highly-priced solution."
"IBM Integration Bus is expensive."
"The maintenance and support of the product are very expensive."
"Pricing is on par with its competition."
"It is not cheap. It has its cost. It is one of the high-cost solutions."
"For small companies, First of all, there are a lot of free products that could be used for integration. It can use the cloud or new implementation in the past. But if the tool is IBM, the official box in your company, you can make your submission and also publish the cloud to the work file. But let’s say, if you are working with premises, then you have to buy a reasonable main full support and gain experience with your product."
"The pricing of the solution is high."
"The price of the IBM Integration Bus is expensive. If you compare the price to the cloud version you can purchase what you need but the on-premise version price is flat."
"Initialy good pricing and good, if it comes to Enterprise license agreements."
"The pricing is a yearly license."
"webMethods.io is expensive. We have multiple components, and you need to pay for each of them."
"Pricing is the number-one downfall. It's too expensive. They could make more money by dropping the price in half and getting more customers. It's the best product there is, but it's too expensive."
"It's a good deal for the money that we pay."
"Some of the licensing is "component-ized," which is confusing to new users/customers."
"webMethods Trading Networks is a bit costly compared to others solutions."
"With our current licensing, it's very easy for us to scale. With our older licensing model, it was very hard. This is definitely something that I would highlight."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Insurance Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Retailer
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 – ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM DataPower Gateway?
I would rate the pricing a two out of ten, with one being high price, and ten being low price. It's high-priced for s...
What needs improvement with IBM DataPower Gateway?
The DCDR process should be less complex. AI should improve developer efficiency and effort. Whenever I am writing cod...
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 Mu...
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 t...
What do you like most about IBM Integration Bus?
The message queue, like, message queue connectors. Then they have a built in connectors for most of the systems, like...
What do you like most about Built.io Flow?
The tool helps us to streamline data integration. Its BPM is very strong and powerful. The solution helps us manage d...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Built.io Flow?
webMethods.io is expensive. We have multiple components, and you need to pay for each of them.
What needs improvement with Built.io Flow?
webMethods.io needs to incorporate ChatGPT to enhance user experience. It can offer a customized user experience.
 

Also Known As

WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower
IBM WebSphere ESB
Built.io Flow, webMethods Integration Server, webMethods Trading Networks, webMethods ActiveTransfer, webMethods.io API
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity
Salesbox, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Road Buddy, Swiss Federal Railways, Electricity Supply Board, The Hartree Centre, ESB Networks
Cisco, Agralogics, Dreamforce, Cables & Sensors, Sacramento Kings
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM, Salesforce, Oracle and others in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). Updated: May 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.