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

IBM DataPower Gateway vs Mule ESB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 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 Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (12th), SOA Application Gateways (2nd), API Management (12th)
Mule ESB
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 6.0%, up from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Mule ESB is 18.7%, down from 22.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Mule ESB18.7%
IBM DataPower Gateway6.0%
Other75.3%
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.
Maharsh-Kapadia - PeerSpot reviewer
Transforms enterprise integration with comprehensive platform and excellent support
The best features of this solution are that everything we get into a single platform, whether it's integration, API, or data modeling; everything is available in one platform. It's a hybrid, including cloud and on-premise solutions with good connectivity and good connectors. From the benefits of using Mule ESB, we could reduce the manual tasks to 50% in one to two years. The cost is still something we are trying to make lower because we see some advantages when we move from point-to-point integration to API-led connectivity. We have seen a lot of reusable assets, so the cost is reduced. Ultimately, we want to see how it's transformed into business revenue; that's what we are still looking into.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the API Gateway feature."
"I like the tool's security. Also, all functionalities are integrated within on platform."
"The solution is robust."
"The most valuable feature is the security appliance, it's very secure."
"It can look for the various security threats, productions, payload scanning, and perform routing based on the content type."
"The scalability of the solution is good."
"What I like most is the stability."
"The solution is scalable, our customers are mostly South African banks and they handle mostly transactions with this solution."
"What Mule provides out-of-box is a sufficient product."
"Once it is started, we don't see any problems on a day to day basis."
"The most powerful feature is DataWeave, which is a powerful language where data can be transformed from one form into another."
"It is one of the best integration tools in the market."
"The connectors help to connect with a variety of applications."
"The most valuable feature for Mule is the number of connectors that are available."
"I like that it's user-friendly. Compared to other ESBs, I find it easier to use. I like it better than other ESBs. I like the connectors, which make calling the APIs through the routers easier."
"The architecture based on events has several connectors which allow integration from external and internal applications of the company."
 

Cons

"The solution requires a lot of training manuals in order to get to know it better and to be able to use it effectively."
"The DCDR process should be less complex."
"The components that they include in the product that are, in fact, a WTX, really need to be removed from the product because they tend to fail."
"Making it more user-friendly would be an improvement."
"The product should be more adapted to the DevOps process."
"One area that could be improved is the integration with Postgres and SQL databases. Currently, IBM DataPower Gateway only integrates with Oracle databases."
"Its support services could be better."
"Scripting needs improvement. It's hard for our customers."
"MuleSoft is not so strong in method-based integration, so they're not so functional in that regard."
"Community editions need more attention."
"In order to meet the new trend of active metadata management, we need intelligent APIs that can retrieve new data designs and trigger actions over new findings without human intervention."
"From the product perspective, it was sometimes hard to manage the dependencies. When we had to add dependencies on a couple of different packages, it was sometimes confusing. It was hard to update them with Anypoint Studio, as well as with MuleSoft. There were challenges with that. So, that's one of the areas that could be improved."
"The Anypoint platform consumes a lot of memory, and it would be great for developers if it were more lightweight."
"I would like to see support for BPM in the next release of this solution."
"There are limitations with the subscription model that comes with the product."
"We would like to have a built-in logging framework in which we can do auditing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Most customers' use case budgets are not inlined with the price of IBM DataPower Gateway. It is too expensive."
"The product is 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 tool's initial costing is expensive for small banks and financial institutions."
"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."
"This product is a bit expensive as IBM products are costly assets. However, for enterprise customers it is a worthwhile investment."
"The solution is expensive in comparison to other products."
"This product is expensive, but it does offer value for money."
"The solution is expensive."
"The pricing must be improved."
"You will not get any support from Mule ESB's team for the tool's community edition...You can get support with the licensed version of Mule ESB."
"Plan your licensing model (cloud or on-premises or hybrid) that will allow seamless integration with new partners."
"Regarding licensing and pricing, I find it somewhat flexible. They are more flexible with larger customers compared to small and medium ones, as their licensing model depends on ports and other factors. Large customers benefit from more flexibility in implementation and renewal compared to smaller ones."
"Mule ESB is a costly solution. We pay approximately $80,000 annually for the system. The cost of the number of instances, annual subscription, and cloud hosting services are expensive."
"I think the price is very high. If you use TIBCO BW, the license is for the CPU usage, then the IPS, and support. I also think the license for the product is a one-time expense."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) solutions are best for your needs.
865,985 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
29%
Insurance Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise36
 

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...
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 MuleSoft Anypoint Platform on cloud / on-premises and hybrid modes and on PCE/RTF ...
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 the best fit for our organization. Ultimately we decided to choose IBM Integratio...
What do you like most about Mule ESB?
The solution's drag-and-drop interface and data viewer helped us quite a lot.
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity
Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM DataPower Gateway vs. Mule ESB and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,985 professionals have used our research since 2012.