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IBM DataPower Gateway vs Mule ESB vs Oracle Service Bus 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 Mule ESB is 20.1%, down from 22.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Service Bus is 11.4%, up from 11.3% 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.
PurbayanSaha - PeerSpot reviewer
Has API-led architecture and provides a unique, user-friendly, and scalable architecture for hosting APIs
There's room for improvement in multi-file transfer functionality. It's not convenient when using MuleSoft, and it should have better capability for handling large amounts of data. For example, applications like GoAnywhere can handle huge chunks of data, so the tool should also have something to facilitate that aspect of integration.
Radhey Rajput - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows seamless integration and connectivity with different types of systems
I would suggest using this solution. Oracle Service Bus is very good. Any organization can use it. So it's very robust and scalable, and its security features are very good. Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten because there are some loopholes in service and support. Sometimes, when we have issues and go to Oracle support, they will not give us solutions. Instead, they will ask for so many log files and emails. The product is good, but the support is not.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Its initial setup was straightforward."
"It's high-speed and it can be remotely administered via an API."
"Since it is a gateway, it provides a lot of security features."
"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."
"It is very easy to set up and configure, even for users with no prior experience."
"The scalability of the solution is good."
"The solution offers multiple deployment options."
"The setup is straightforward."
"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."
"This tool has exceptional API management and integration connectors in addition to multiple out of the box connectors."
"Scalability and load balancing."
"The solution has a good graphical interface."
"The product offers a community edition that is free of cost."
"The most valuable features of Mule ESB are its ease of use, documentation, ease to adapt to newer security and vulnerabilities, and a lot of help available. Additionally, there is a lot of flexibility, many patches available, and they provide APIs. They are a market standard."
"Supports multiple protocol technologies and web services."
"It is lightweight and one can easily integrate with different applications, databases, JMS, or web services through different protocols."
"Overall it is a pretty good solution."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is that you can connect with different applications."
"We've been pleased with the level of technical support."
"API management and defining varying protocols are the most valuable features"
"The communication between applications is already defined, which means that you don't have to redefine your service infrastructure at the lower level."
"The flexibility offered by Oracle Service Bus, especially in the latest versions, includes abstracting underlying processes and enabling drag-and-drop mappings from source to destination."
 

Cons

"The two biggest issues of this solution are the complexity and the maintenance procedures."
"DataPower isn't the most user-friendly tool. It is not an easy tool to use. Some things could use better wizards to guide you through processes."
"Scripting needs improvement. It's hard for our customers."
"Additional documentation needs to be provided for complex automations."
"Making it more user-friendly would be an improvement."
"Its support services could be better."
"I would like the tool to improve its training."
"Small and medium-sized companies might look for cloud-hosted applications due to the cost."
"It would be beneficial if users could navigate the UI easily without extensive training or learning curves."
"Mule ESB is more into the latest REST APIs, not much into the SOAP web services. Developing is all about web services and not easy with Mule."
"The payment system needs improvement."
"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 initial setup could be more straightforward."
"Limitation on external subscribers to listen to the messages on the bus."
"It needs more samples. Also, the dependency on Maven should be removed."
"It would be great to see implementing security modules as a feature."
"This solution should work better with RESTful services."
"It would be ideal if they could optimize it a bit."
"There are times when I select components in composite and they do not appear, and I cannot figure out why."
"The connectivity with the solution is an area that needs to be improved. On occasion, requests are lost due to losing connectivity."
"While I have not used the latest versions, resource efficiency could be optimized, considering past experiences"
"An area for improvement in Oracle Service Bus is the roadmap for its product launch. Currently, it's unclear, so Oracle should develop a roadmap for version 12c, so people can see what's coming out of that version of Oracle Service Bus. Cloud hosting is an additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of Oracle Service Bus."
"There are some loopholes in service and support."
"The initial setup is likely complex for many organizations."
 

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."
"The solution has a return on investment but is a little expensive."
"This product is a bit expensive as IBM products are costly assets. However, for enterprise customers it is a worthwhile investment."
"The product is expensive."
"It's expensive when you compare it with others."
"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."
"The tool's initial costing is expensive for small banks and financial institutions."
"The various features and components for this solution are no longer free."
"The pricing must be improved."
"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."
"The price of the Mule ESB commercial version is expensive. However, they have a free community version."
"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."
"Most of the challenges that I had with this solution were for smaller customers. There is not a good licensing model or pricing model. It is more expensive than other solutions, and that's the downside of MuleSoft. I had to be creative to be able to sell it to the business, but we did. This is something they have to work on because for large companies, it's affordable, but for small and medium businesses, it's very hard to sell."
"Mule ESB is an expensive solution."
"This product is expensive, but it does offer value for money."
"The price of this solution is better than the subscription-based Mule ESB."
"Oracle Service Bus is a bit expensive"
"This is a very expensive product and the price varies depending on factors such as the number of processors and the number of users. Our licensing fees are approximately $300,000."
"We have an unlimited yearly license."
"The pricing is on the higher side."
"I'm not aware of how much Oracle Service Bus costs."
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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
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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 Mule ESB?
The solution's drag-and-drop interface and data viewer helped us quite a lot.
What do you like most about Oracle Service Bus?
The stability is consistently high, with only one notable issue encountered.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Service Bus?
I view both Oracle and IBM products as expensive. There are no significant differences in pricing between these produ...
What needs improvement with Oracle Service Bus?
The main problem could be related to timeout issues. This can happen due to legacy systems that might not allow the u...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity
Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot
MakeMyTrip Ltd., Griffith University, Colab Consulting Pty. Ltd., Pacfico Seguros Generales, IGEPA IT-SERVICE GmbH, Guangzhou Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau, Pacfico Seguros Generales, Bank Audi S.A.L., Rydges Sydney Airport, Intelligent Pathways, Nacional Monte de Piedad IAP
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM, Salesforce, Oracle and others in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). Updated: May 2025.
853,960 professionals have used our research since 2012.