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IBM DataPower Gateway vs IIS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 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 DataPower Gateway
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (5th), SOA Application Gateways (1st), API Management (12th)
IIS
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
57
Ranking in other categories
Application Server (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Application Infrastructure category, the mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 4.4%, up from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IIS is 11.5%, down from 13.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Infrastructure
 

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.
DanielWildermuth - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides integration with Eggplant but problems with stability
We use Windows Server only for Eggplant Manager. Otherwise, I'm not using it   At the moment, we have big problems with stability, and I'm not very happy at the moment. So, the stability could be improved. I have been using it for a few years.  The initial setup is complex.  We have an…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The MPGW (Multi-Protocol Gateway) is great because it allows you to easily expose services using various protocols – web services, REST (JSON), and others. This flexibility simplifies things."
"It is easy to use, easy to install, and it's resilient for high availability."
"The solution is stable."
"What I like most is the stability."
"The solution is robust."
"The performance is good. It's been very stable."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The product is stable...The product is scalable."
"What I like the most is that it is easy to use."
"Microsoft's technical support has always been very good."
"It's good and offers good usability."
"IIS's most valuable feature is user-friendliness."
"The product is flexible."
"The solution is highly reliable."
"The solution is very simple to use and easy to deploy."
"The most valuable feature of IIS is it does not consume a lot of resources. It does not consume a lot of resources, such as memory."
 

Cons

"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."
"The two biggest issues of this solution are the complexity and the maintenance procedures."
"The initial setup isn't so easy, you need who has experience working with the solution to help."
"Small and medium-sized companies might look for cloud-hosted applications due to the cost."
"The programming language is only supported in XSLT and Gateway script."
"Some pre-packaged connectors for integration with various applications, such as SaaS offerings, would be a useful addition."
"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."
"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."
"Finding different settings can be difficult if you don't know where to look."
"In the next release, the tool should be more easily integrated and configured with other provisions. The pricing should also be made cheaper since it's very expensive now."
"The initial setup could be made easier."
"Having no support for other than a Microsoft environment and programming languages limits the usage of IIS in many cases."
"The visibility feature of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"This solution needs to be easier for cases where you want to have an IIS cluster."
"The areas of this solution that need improvement are monitoring, debugging, and troubleshooting."
"The user interface could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive in comparison to other products."
"The tool's initial costing is expensive for small banks and financial institutions."
"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."
"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."
"Most customers' use case budgets are not inlined with the price of IBM DataPower Gateway. It is too expensive."
"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."
"The product is expensive."
"The appliance is a bit on the expensive side for the workloads that are not too high."
"Users can get a subscription-based license or a perpetual license for IIS."
"IIS's pricing is not expensive."
"There is a license needed for the solution."
"The solution’s pricing is yearly. The pricing is affordable and not high."
"The yearly licensing cost is very high. The solution is very expensive."
"This solution comes included with Windows Server."
"It is licensed with your Windows installation which makes it relatively cheap if you already have a Windows Server sitting around."
"The tool is included with Windows."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Insurance Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

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 – web services, REST (JSON), and others. This flexibility simplifies things.
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 smaller companies. But it is okay for enterprises. So, the price could be more fl...
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 code, it should give recommendations automatically by incorporating AI so I can wri...
Which is better - IIS or NGINX Plus?
IIS is a flexible, secure, and manageable web server to host anything on the web. IIS’s scalable and open architecture can handle the most demanding tasks. From media streaming to web applications,...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IIS?
If you have a Windows license, there is no additional cost for IIS. However, you may need to pay for SSL publishing at times.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower
Windows Server IIS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity
Erste Bank Group, NJVC, Samsung Electronics, Sheraton Hotels and Resorts, Tata Steel Europe, Urban Software Institute
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM DataPower Gateway vs. IIS and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
857,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.