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

IBM DataPower Gateway vs SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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
29
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (5th), Application Infrastructure (8th), SOA Application Gateways (1st)
SEEBURGER Business Integrat...
Ranking in API Management
22nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Business-to-Business Middleware (6th), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (13th), Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (12th)
 

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 SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

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.
VARUNKUMAR - PeerSpot reviewer
Great end-to-end integration, data mapping, and communication protocols
At this moment, everything is working fine. When we are talking to them, when we are trying to bring all this mapping in-house, right now, SEEBURGER is doing everything for us. However, when we are thinking of going onto the cloud, so they are not using any of AWS or Azure which are more stable. They have their own private cloud. That's the reason we did not go ahead with managing everything by ourselves or moving into the cloud. They said that they're going to be doing it within the next two years, having access to Azure and AWS. That would be something we would like to see.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is straightforward and for large organizations, it functions well."
"The most valuable feature is the security appliance, it's very secure."
"The API Connect gateway service and the SQL injection feature is good."
"I like the API Gateway feature."
"If you have an API application in your organization that you want to make safe and secure, in addition to your existing WAF or load balancer, this product comes with all those capabilities:"
"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."
"What I like most is the stability."
"It's high-speed and it can be remotely administered via an API."
"In our landscape, we have a lot of AS/400s or iSeries and SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) has a file service listener that allows data to seamlessly be transferred between the SEEBURGER solution and the AS/400."
"When orders come in they go into our ERP system directly, so there is integration there."
"The solution's capabilities in fulfilling our existing B2B integration requirements are brilliant. Among our multiple customers we connect to SAP systems, JDE, all the various ERPs that you can possibly get, Oracle procurement systems, etc. We haven't come across anything yet — and customers are trying to trip us up — that we can't do."
"We rarely get hanged processes."
"The platform has been very consistent and responsive."
"For the tool that we used to have, we had specially trained developers who used to do all the development of EDI maps and the configuration. But with SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) now, we were able to train our EDI analysts, and because the tool has very simple, intuitive mapping capabilities, even our EDI analysts are able to develop all the EDI maps, do all the configurations, and do all the setups for any of the trading partners."
"One valuable feature is the scalability. We have not had to add processing power or hardware since we installed it. Also, we are able to create and deploy maps to migrate from another EDI platform very quickly."
"It is stable and reliable. We have not had any issues."
 

Cons

"Small and medium-sized companies might look for cloud-hosted applications due to the cost."
"I would like the tool to improve its training."
"In the next release, I would like to see the product price reduced. It should be cheaper."
"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."
"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."
"The initial setup isn't so easy, you need who has experience working with the solution to help."
"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 two biggest issues of this solution are the complexity and the maintenance procedures."
"When we got SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS), it was clear that it was going to take more of a technical person. It does take a technically-rooted individual to operate it. It's not something for your everyday guy to do. For what it's doing for us, a dedicated resource is required."
"There might be some improvements they could make to the portal, but they're not anything that stops me from working."
"The initial set up was done by SEEBURGER consulting. It can be complex due to various factors, such as server settings, database settings, and security settings."
"We are a little locked in with understanding the errors that we receive. We are working with their support to prevent these issues when they come into the database. We use a SQL database and believe they can do better when it comes working with large databases. We have had few instances where the system is hanging, which are most likely from the database. We are working with their support to find out the problem and fix their system. We have tried to use their notification system to prevent these issues, but they need to improve their monitoring system."
"I would've liked, from day one, to learn how to do my own mapping. That would have saved a lot of time and effort if that had been brought forward earlier. It's there, I just didn't know about it. Also, some tidier, easier-to-use interfaces would help."
"The speed of development needs improvement. If you acquire any customization, it can be a slightly slow process. I would like to see more flexibility around customizations. The time frame right now depends on the sophistication and customization, but we have to go through a process of getting them to develop, implement, and test it. This might take a couple of weeks. If it was a simpler system to customize, the time could probably be cut by half or down by even 25 percent of what it would normally take."
"In some of the other tools out there in the market, you can create one service and use that service without creating a copy. That kind of capability currently doesn't exist in this solution."
"On the server side, there are a lot of administration and configuration files that you need to go in and do maintenance on. You have to find them in a certain folder so it's very error-prone and it can be a little time consuming unless it's documented. They could pull some of those individual configuration files into the product itself where there's a better user interface for that."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing cost is very expensive."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The solution is expensive in comparison to other products."
"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 cost is very high and requires all five components in the API management solution."
"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 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."
"They need to be more competitively priced. When it comes to training, they need to lower their prices. It shouldn't be so specific. Maybe they should outsource training to another company. From what I can see, their training is pretty expensive, and they don't do anything for free."
"I did a review of other options out there, as we moved into the future and our SAP implementation, that this would be the right solution. It was very comparable to other manage services out there. Thus, there wasn't any clear-cut reason to go in another direction."
"The pricing is cheap. In fact, when I saw the pricing, I thought, "Really? What's the catch?" But the functionality that we get out of it, for the price we pay, is great value."
"We have additional ad hoc development costs, but those vary depending on if we're bringing on another third-party into our systems via the EDI integration. So, that's highly variable."
"The only thing that would be an improvement would be if they had a cost model whereby you could just pay for what you're actually using. Even if it were a minimum monthly charge that they offered, if you're not utilizing all of that then they should consider a lower tier. That way, they could attract more business."
"We pay for a maximum number of setups, then we pay per customer map, and we pay maintenance on each one of those. BIS provides the flexibility to pay as you grow. The price of each customer map is €200 and the hourly rate for maintenance is fairly reasonable."
"There is a standard agreement for the messaging every month. But if we make a change request — a change to a mapping or something like that — then there is a fixed price per hour."
"Sometimes it seems a little pricey, especially when some of the stuff is available through freeware, like SFTP communications... It costs a lot more money to buy this stuff from SEEBURGER but I think it's worth it in the long run."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which API Management solutions are best for your needs.
857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Insurance Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Retailer
6%
 

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...
What do you like most about SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite?
SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite is a highly stable solution that offers rich features for our B2B integration.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite?
Regarding the pricing of SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite, I would rate it as 7 out of 10.
What needs improvement with SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite?
Regarding areas of improvement for SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite, the cloud functionality needs enhancement. The cloud interface is currently too cluttered, especially when creating new tran...
 

Also Known As

WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower
SEEBURGER BIS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity
Altis, Autoliv, Cebi, Cofresco, MoneyGram International, Samsonite Europe, VSP Global, BMW Group, OSRAM, Magna, Lavazza
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM DataPower Gateway vs. SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.