IBM DataPower Gateway vs NGINX Plus comparison

IBM and F5 are both solutions in the Application Infrastructure category. IBM is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.3, while F5 is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.0. IBM holds a 4.1% mindshare in AIS, compared to F5’s 9.6% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of F5 users who would recommend it.

IBM DataPower Gateway

Read 30 IBM DataPower Gateway reviews

5,383 Views
592 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

NGINX Plus

Read 31 NGINX Plus reviews

3,981 Views
1,473 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

IBM DataPower Gateway

NGINX Plus

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

IBM DataPower Gateway and NGINX Plus are products that compete in application deployment and management. NGINX Plus has the upper hand due to flexible deployment options and robust features, valuable despite competitive pricing.

Features: IBM DataPower Gateway offers comprehensive security and integration capabilities, recognized for enterprise-level security features. It provides robust application and API protection. NGINX Plus is known for strong load balancing and dynamic application scaling, easily integrating into cloud environments. It is preferred for its versatility, speed, and performance, handling various application types efficiently.

Room for Improvement: IBM DataPower Gateway could improve ease of deployment, requiring significant expertise and time. Cost optimization in terms of initial setup could enhance its appeal. Expanding community support would help users leverage its capabilities. NGINX Plus could enhance its advanced security features to match enterprise needs, address some DNS configuration challenges, and streamline integration for large-scale enterprises to maximize its potential.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NGINX Plus provides a simpler, more streamlined deployment process, benefiting from extensive documentation and community support. It simplifies integration into existing systems. IBM DataPower Gateway, while robust, requires more time and expertise for deployment with significant resources in customer service, favoring complex, secure environments.

Pricing and ROI: NGINX Plus generally offers a more cost-effective solution with quicker ROI due to lower initial setup costs and straightforward licensing. IBM DataPower Gateway has higher initial costs, justified by its detailed feature sets and security, which offer a slower yet impactful ROI in enterprise settings. The economic difference lies primarily in initial costs and time-to-value.

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM DataPower Gateway vs. NGINX Plus

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 Application Infrastructure

12th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (5th), SOA Application Gateways (1st), API Management (12th)

NGINX Plus

Ranking in Application Infrastructure

4th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (7th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Application Infrastructure category, the mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 4.1%, up from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 9.6%, down from 11.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Infrastructure Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
NGINX Plus	9.6%
IBM DataPower Gateway	4.1%
Other	86.3%

Application Infrastructure

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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Michael Olayemi

Senior Software Engineer at Checkit

Enables public access and secure configurations through reverse proxy

The primary valuable feature of NGINX for me is its ability to provide a reverse proxy. I have found that this feature supports our local server, and I am able to connect through our DNS system, making it accessible publicly. Additionally, the integration with SSL certificates and the configuration capabilities make it a valuable solution for my use case. Without NGINX, users would not be able to access our application, which means there is positive ROI from using NGINX as it is crucial for the functioning of my organization.

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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."

"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."

"The solution is robust."

"The solution is scalable, our customers are mostly South African banks and they handle mostly transactions with this solution."

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

"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. Compared to other gateways, I also like that IBM DataPower Gateway is function-rich. For example, for one of the projects, there was a need for specific transformation and security features available in IBM DataPower Gateway out of the box, so my team just needed to configure the appliance. There was no need for separate development, and I found it quite neat. Another valuable feature of IBM DataPower Gateway is that it's easy to integrate with other products."

"Its initial setup was straightforward."

"It is easy to use, easy to install, and it's resilient for high availability."

More IBM DataPower Gateway pros

"The product is resilient."

"Nginx is extremely efficient in terms of the connection rate to the CPU cycles ratio, and in terms of the bandwidth to CPU cycles."

"The load balancing module, which is equivalent to LTM, is the focus of the PSE. So far, the features of both are identical. I believe NGINX has more features for securing these services, but in terms of load balancing, both are massive solutions."

"With NGINX, I appreciate its ability to route traffic geographically."

"NGINX provides a cost advantage, value addition, and effective support."

"The overall product rating is ten out of ten."

"Application Gateway with application-level firewall tool and load distributor and balancer (also serves for A/B testing)."

"NGINX works much better than HAProxy in our current hardware and architecture for HTTP/HTTPS load balancing. "

More NGINX Plus pros

Cons

"For the workloads that are not too high, appliance is a little bit expensive."

"Its support services could be better."

"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."

"The solution requires a lot of training manuals in order to get to know it better and to be able to use it effectively."

"From the development perspective, it has limitations because it only supports the XSLT language. It does not support multiple languages."

"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."

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

More IBM DataPower Gateway cons

"The biggest room for improvement would be to allow NGINX Core machines to cluster for memory zones in some way with a plug and play module. "

"It would be good if NGINX provided a graphical user interface."

"I would like to see the Grafana integration in NGINX which is already present in HAProxy. Grafana integration will help the solution visualize all the data analytics on the dashboard which is currently not present."

"Only improvement needed that I would point to is scalability. With it, I mean clusterized organisation on a low level. At the moment, the best alternative is RHEL HA."

"Initially, I experienced hiccups whenever I installed the application. As with any application, there were initial issues, however, after receiving support, everything was rectified."

"The scaling should be built into the software rather than configured from an outside source."

"If NGINX brings some features for health check in the open source version, it would be better. "

"The solution's GUI is an area with certain shortcomings that need improvement."

More NGINX Plus cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Most customers' use case budgets are not inlined with the price of IBM DataPower Gateway. It is too expensive."

"The product is 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."

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

"The solution is expensive in comparison to other products."

"The licensing cost is very expensive."

"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."

More IBM DataPower Gateway pricing and cost advice

"There's an open-source version of NGINX that is free."

"Compared to other similar solutions on the market, I think it's over-priced."

"It's an open source solution, so it's free."

"NGINX is a free tool in Brazil. There are some companies which do support it."

"I use the solution's community edition which is free of cost."

"The price is the cost to contract support with a specialized company, usually during consulting hours."

"NGINX Plus is worth it, if you need it. If you do not need the features or support, the free and open source package is more than capable. "

"HAProxy is cheaper than NGINX."

More NGINX Plus 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

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

16%

Government

Manufacturing Company

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	15
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	10

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

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,...

See all answers

What do you like most about NGINX Plus?

It performs very well. That's one of the primary reasons we use NGINX.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX Plus?

My use case involves using the free and open-source version of NGINX, making it cost-effective as I haven't incurred any costs.

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

Layer7 API Management vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 2% of the time

More IBM DataPower Gateway Competitors

IIS vs NGINX Plus

Compared 16% of the time

Apache Web Server vs NGINX Plus

Compared 14% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs NGINX Plus

Compared 10% of the time

NetScaler vs NGINX Plus

Compared 10% of the time

LoadBalancer Enterprise vs NGINX Plus

Compared 2% of the time

More NGINX Plus Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM DataPower Gateway

October 2025

Download IBM DataPower Gateway product report

Buyer's Guide

NGINX Plus

October 2025

Download NGINX Plus product report

Also Known As

WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower

NGINX

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

NGINX Plus is a versatile solution that offers load balancing, caching, proxying, and API deployment capabilities. It can be deployed on private or public clouds and is ideal for building CDN solutions. The solution can also be used to secure web applications and replace web services like Apache.

NGINX has helped organizations improve functioning, reduce downtimes, and offer a DevOps-friendly solution. Its community support and documentation are highly regarded, and its configuration is more straightforward, making it a recommended choice over HAProxy.

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity

Locaweb, AppNexus, Wix, Reliam, Montana Interactive, MuleSoft, Warpwire, Discovery Education, InkaBinka, WordPress.com, Gogo, GOV.UK, NASA

Buyer's Guide

IBM DataPower Gateway vs. NGINX Plus

September 2025

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