IBM DataPower Gateway vs Mule ESB comparison

IBM and Salesforce are both solutions in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category. IBM is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.3, while Salesforce is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.0. IBM holds a 6.6% mindshare in E, compared to Salesforce’s 17.6% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of Salesforce users who would recommend it.

IBM DataPower Gateway

Read 30 IBM DataPower Gateway reviews

5,383 Views
861 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Mule ESB

Read 52 Mule ESB reviews

3,848 Views
2,886 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

IBM DataPower Gateway

Mule ESB

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 2025

IBM DataPower Gateway and Mule ESB are competing in the integration solutions space, each offering unique strengths. Mule ESB appears to have an edge with superior features and flexibility, enhancing its value for the price.

Features: IBM DataPower Gateway is known for its robust API management, security features, and integration capabilities, making it ideal for secure enterprise environments. Mule ESB stands out with its extensive connectivity options, API-led connectivity approach, and versatile Anypoint Platform, enhancing its ability to meet diverse integration needs.

Room for Improvement: IBM DataPower Gateway could improve with a more user-friendly deployment process and reducing the need for specialized knowledge. Enhanced customization options would benefit users. Mule ESB might enhance its initial cost-effectiveness and streamline licensing options. Better centralized management tools could further simplify user operations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM DataPower Gateway, with its structured deployment model, suits enterprises but requires specialized skills. IBM’s customer service is comprehensive. Mule ESB offers agile, cloud-based deployment solutions, allowing faster implementations. Its customer service excels in providing accessible resources and smoother experiences.

Pricing and ROI: IBM DataPower Gateway offers competitive setup costs with significant ROI in secure, large-scale environments. Mule ESB may involve higher initial expenses but delivers notable long-term ROI, thanks to its flexibility and feature-rich platform.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM DataPower Gateway vs. Mule ESB Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM DataPower Gateway vs. Mule ESB

September 2025

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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)

5th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Infrastructure (12th), SOA Application Gateways (1st), API Management (12th)

Mule ESB

Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

2nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 6.6%, up from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Mule ESB is 17.6%, down from 21.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Mule ESB	17.6%
IBM DataPower Gateway	6.6%
Other	75.8%

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

Featured Reviews

AkshaySawant

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.

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Maharsh-Kapadia

Enterprise Integration Architect at Tata Consultancy

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The performance is good. It's been very stable."

"Its initial setup was straightforward."

"The solution is straightforward and for large organizations, it functions well."

"The most valuable feature is the security appliance, it's very secure."

"I like the tool's security. Also, all functionalities are integrated within on platform."

"I like that it is very stable, and we never experience any downtime."

"I like all of the features in this product and it does what it's supposed to do."

"I like the API Gateway feature."

More IBM DataPower Gateway pros

"Mule ESB helps a lot with our microservice architecture that we're trying to build, and it is still our go-to technology when it comes to that, so it's very promising for us."

"I like that Mule ESB provides fast and good technical support."

"The most beneficial features of Mule ESB are the control plane and runtime plane."

"Mule ESB is a very easy-to-use and user-friendly solution."

"The solution doesn't require much code writing and we can develop APIs very easily."

"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 API management capabilities are exemplary. You can apply security policies to most applications, monitor logs, and get analytical data on request reception, response generation time, associated APIs, endpoints, and inbound and outbound messages."

"Mule Expression Language"

More Mule ESB pros

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."

"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."

"In the next release, I would like to see the product price reduced. It should be cheaper."

"The IBM community does not have much engagement from the IT community in Saudi Arabia and developers for this solution are difficult to find."

"We are always looking for more features wherein it could be easily integrated with cloud applications. We are looking for either a cloud solution or a cloud integration option."

"I would like the tool to improve its training."

"The user interface or the application development perspective and customization of the tool could be a little better."

"They should improve the solution's clustering features."

More IBM DataPower Gateway cons

"I cannot say that installation with Kubernetes needs to be improved to be less tricky, but more information is needed from MuleSoft. They do not help much with Kubernetes, so we should have a person who is well-versed in Kubernetes to handle this."

"In the next release, I would like to see improvement in the generator for the DataWeave language so that it's a little more graphic."

"We would like the ability to use our own code. This would allow us to develop customizations with ease. Additionally, it would be nice to have more analytics or insights on the exchanged information between databases."

"There are some features on the commercial version of the solution that would be great if they were on the community version. Additionally, if they added more authorization features it would be helpful."

"There are limitations with the subscription model that comes with the product."

"From my perspective, Mule ESB is lightweight, but it can be improved when it comes to the agility of the system."

"I would like to see support for BPM in the next release of this solution."

"Mule ESB isn't as secure as IBM. Financial companies go with IBM for that reason."

More Mule ESB cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution has a return on investment but is a little expensive."

"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."

"This product is a bit expensive as IBM products are costly assets. However, for enterprise customers it is a worthwhile investment."

"It's expensive when you compare it with others."

"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 cost is very high and requires all five components in the API management solution."

"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."

"The appliance is a bit on the expensive side for the workloads that are not too high."

More IBM DataPower Gateway pricing and cost advice

"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."

"This product is cheaper than some offered by other vendors, although there is a problem because you have to pay for some third-party adapters."

"This is expensive. In my next project, we had to go to other vendor."

"This product is expensive, but it does offer value for money."

"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."

"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."

"The solution is expensive."

More Mule ESB pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

29%

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	16

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	23
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	36

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM DataPower Gateway?

This product is definitely expensive because if any issue occurs in the live environment or production environment, and our organization faces some issue with the IBM DataPower Gateway, then the IB...

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM DataPower Gateway?

I have significant experience with the IBM DataPower Gateway. As a security product, it is very good. However, from the development perspective, it has limitations because it only supports the XSLT...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Mule ESB?

The solution's drag-and-drop interface and data viewer helped us quite a lot.

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM API Connect vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 36% of the time

Apigee vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 10% of the time

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Azure API Management vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 6% of the time

IBM WebSphere Application Server vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 3% of the time

More IBM DataPower Gateway Competitors

IBM Integration Bus vs Mule ESB

Compared 20% of the time

Oracle Service Bus vs Mule ESB

Compared 13% of the time

IBM B2B Integrator vs Mule ESB

Compared 9% of the time

webMethods.io vs Mule ESB

Compared 9% of the time

Red Hat Fuse vs Mule ESB

Compared 5% of the time

More Mule ESB Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM DataPower Gateway

October 2025

Download IBM DataPower Gateway product report

Buyer's Guide

Mule ESB

October 2025

Download Mule ESB product report

Also Known As

WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower

No data available

Overview

IBM DataPower Gateway is a robust, secure next-generation enterprise-grade single multichannel API gateway that supplies dynamic access, integration, control, and outstanding security. The solution is available in a broad range of workload capabilities, including application programming interface (API), service oriented architecture (SOA), B2B, cloud, web, and mobile. These dynamic capabilities ensure users are able to quickly increase the reach of an organization's critical IT resources to new channels, which will provide shareholders, team members, and clients with safe, secure access at all times.

DataPower Gateway is very flexible and is widely available in virtual, cloud, traditional, physical, Docker, and Linux form factors.

IBM DataPower Gateway Features

IBM DataPower Gateway has many value-added features. Some of these features are included below:

Control: The solution provides decision point authorization and authentication for all standards, including Lightweight Direct Access Protocol (LDAP) and Open Authorization (OAuth), which allow for better access control across an organization’s entire network.
DataPower dashboard: The dashboard is specifically designed to enhance performance and determine problematic processes. The solution provides intuitive real-time performance transparency to diagnose operational and performance anomalies and offer repair and restoration recommendations.
Enhanced messaging: Users are able to easily mediate messaging and protocols by incorporating the best of today’s traditional and modern application standards.
Integration: IBM DataPower Gateway offers super fast mainframe connectivity, database connectivity, transport protocol bridging, content-based routing, and any-to-any message transformation, ensuring secure and immediate connect service.

IBM DataPower Gateway Benefits

IBM DataPower Gateway provides many benefits. Some of those benefits include:

Flexibility: The solution is easy to use and configure and provides for a pleasant, intuitive overall user experience. The solution can immediately be used out of the box, which makes overall process management simple.
Protection: The solution provides sturdy continuous service protection and application performance using robust powerful routing and traffic control.
Security: The solution’s enterprise-grade De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) ready gateway enables users to enforce the desired runtime application security across all messaging protocols.
Profitability: The solution’s design ensures significant reduction of development costs in addition to the streamlining of overall operations. Users are able to achieve reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) and experience a near-immediate ROI.

Reviews from Real Users

“My company has a good impression of IBM DataPower Gateway. What I like about it is that because it's an appliance, it's a turnkey solution that's very fast and out of the box. Another valuable feature of IBM DataPower Gateway is that it's easy to integrate with other products.”- Bálint T., Solution Manager at Intalion

“You don't have to have a separate DMC proxy because DataPower Gateway is an appliance and will take care of a lot of security features. These include data validations, encryption, as well as XML or any type of scripting or security threats that are present. From a security point of view, being an appliance in the DMC zone, IBM DataPower Gateway will take care of the entire security angle for the infrastructure.” - Sathyan K., Founder/Director at perfTech Solutions Pvt Ltd

IBM

For companies looking to modernize and unlock the value of existing on-premises systems and applications, an enterprise service bus (ESB) architecture serves as a critical foundation layer for SOA. When deployed as an ESB, the Mule runtime engine of Anypoint Platform combines the power of data and application integration across legacy systems and SaaS applications, with a seamless path to the other capabilities of Anypoint Platform and the full power of API-led connectivity.

Salesforce

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity

Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot

Buyer's Guide

IBM DataPower Gateway vs. Mule ESB

September 2025

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