IBM DataPower Gateway vs Postman comparison

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IBM DataPower Gateway

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

IBM DataPower Gateway and Postman operate in the API management and testing domain. While IBM DataPower offers superior enterprise security features, Postman stands out due to its user-friendly interface and efficient workflow.

Features: IBM DataPower Gateway provides strong security features such as threat protection, API authentication, and comprehensive integration capabilities, making it ideal for enterprises needing high-level data protection. Postman focuses on ease of use in API testing and collaboration with features like automated testing, mock servers, and extensive API documentation.

Room for Improvement: IBM DataPower can improve in areas such as simplifying deployment processes, enhancing user interface designs, and expanding customer support options. Postman could enhance its API automation features, introduce more advanced testing capabilities, and offer better integration with other enterprise tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM DataPower Gateway's deployment is more complex, catering to enterprise-level security configurations, making it suitable for large companies. Postman offers a straightforward deployment process, appreciated for its quick setup and user-friendly nature, with readily available customer support and resources for rapid issue resolution.

Pricing and ROI: IBM DataPower requires a significant investment due to its advanced security and integration features, providing a substantial return on investment for enterprises. Postman, with its free and premium versions, presents a more budget-friendly option, delivering considerable ROI for development teams focused on API testing and collaboration. It appeals to a broader audience with its affordability and efficient feature set.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM DataPower Gateway vs. Postman Report (Updated: June 2025).

IBM DataPower Gateway vs. Postman

June 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 API Management

12th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (5th), Application Infrastructure (8th), SOA Application Gateways (1st)

Postman

Ranking in API Management

10th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

API Monitoring Software (1st), API Testing Tools (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 4.0%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Postman is 0.8%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

API Management

Featured Reviews

Mehdi El Filahi

Co-Founder at tenekit

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.

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Anagha Mahadik

Product Development Manager at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees

Solution simplifies web service testing with impressive speed and accessibility

It is very easy for me to use and I highly prefer it compared to SoapUI and other products for performing its job. It is more handy and faster. It has impacted us very nicely. Postman is used for free by us. I'm not sure if there might be a paid version for multiple users. It is a very good product used for development. It is easy to install, as well as to learn, particularly for new users, even if they are not developers. I taught my business analyst to use it. I just showed them once, and it was easy for them to understand. For example, I gave them the URL and request format and asked them to test independently. They were able to use it on their own and do their testing as well. It was a good experience, especially for generally smart people, like those we usually hire in our company. It is pretty easy to explain, and learning it is not complex.

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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

"Since it is a gateway, it provides a lot of security features."

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

"It is a scalable solution."

"The product's most valuable features are AAA policies and security features."

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

"The API Connect gateway service and the SQL injection feature is good."

"It's high-speed and it can be remotely administered via an API."

"The most valuable features for our business include the ability to monitor and log data transactions and handle multiple request at an enterprise level."

More IBM DataPower Gateway pros

"The initial setup of this solution is straightforward. Postman can be used as an extension in Google Chrome for those who do not wish to install it directly. Deployment took an hour and a half."

"Simple to use and you can easily store your projects."

"It is a scalable solution."

"It's user-friendly. Anybody can learn it within five to seven minutes."

"The most valuable feature is the user interface because it provides a clear space for the URL, headers, body, prerequisites, and tests."

"The user-interface is very good."

"No coding required."

"We can test APIs. We know if they are functional or throwing any errors."

Cons

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

"Additional documentation needs to be provided for complex automations."

"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."

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

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

"The programming language is only supported in XSLT and Gateway script."

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

"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

"Postman quality assurance could improve when doing tests."

"The solution could be more user-friendly."

"One thing which Postman needs to improve is the documentation. The documentation of Postman is not that great when compared to other tools."

"Postman could be improved by providing options for performance testing of APIs."

"Integration of the solution towards Bitbucket, BitHub, and CI pipelines is difficult."

"If we have a certain build on one machine it won't work with another build even if we are using the same URL. It would give us a connection refuse. So developing environment compatibility would make it better."

"I have recently noticed that, for some reason, I am not able to import collections in JSON. It is weird because I was able to do it before. When you create a new collection and documentation, in tests, you usually have to click Save. If you don't click Save, your collections don't sync with other devices, which is something I don't like. It is not clear for the users in a shared workspace, and I usually forget to click Save and end up losing all the collections that I created. I create a lot of routes, and clicking Save all the time isn't efficient. Instead of clicking Save all the time, there should be an option to save everything in one go."

"The request encryption could be one thing on which they can work a little bit. If we don't want to expose our production data but we still want to test our APIs on the production data, there should be a way to do that. It is not only with Postman. I think no tool in the market is doing that right now."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 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."

"The product is expensive."

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

"It is an expensive solution."

"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

"The solution is free for individuals, but for companies that use it across the organization, you have to pay per user."

"I use the tool's free version."

"The solution's price is reasonable."

"I rate the product's price a nine or ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is very expensive. Postman is an expensive tool for Turkey."

"Postman is an open-source product. It is free to download from Google."

"I am using the free option."

"We do not pay any money for Postman."

"Its price is moderate as compared to other competitors. The version that we are using is not open source, so it is not free."

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

30%

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

16%

Insurance Company

Manufacturing Company

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...

How does Postman compare with Apache JMeter?

Postman lets you easily define variables, which then get updated automatically. This is a huge time-saver and makes processes very efficient. We can also export the test cases we create and share t...

What do you like most about Postman?

The product is easy to implement.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Postman?

Postman is much cheaper than the other tools. I am not aware of the current pricing for Postman because that's taken care of by the client; we just pay and they simply create options. On a per-pers...

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Product Reports

Download IBM DataPower Gateway product report

IBM DataPower Gateway

April 2025

Download Postman product report

May 2025

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

Postman's Tools Support Every Stage of the API Lifecycle. Through design, testing and full production, Postman is there for faster, easier API development - without the chaos.

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RBL Bank, Availity

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