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IBM DataPower Gateway vs TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 2025

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)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (6th), SOA Application Gateways (1st), API Management (7th)
TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 6.0%, up from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus is 3.8%, up from 3.7% 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.
Mustofa Yonus - PeerSpot reviewer
A robust product that needs to improve the functionality it offers related to API lifecycle management
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a six to seven out of ten. My company consists of around 7000 employees, and we use the solution as an integrated service in around 300 to 400 systems, both internally and externally, making it a huge number. Our company uses the solution every minute and every second, and we can't function without it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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:"
"Its initial setup was straightforward."
"The solution is very easy to work with."
"It's high-speed and it can be remotely administered via an API."
"It can look for the various security threats, productions, payload scanning, and perform routing based on the content type."
"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."
"The solution is robust."
"I like the API Gateway feature."
"The solution is very stable."
"The most valuable feature is that it is a service-oriented architecture, SOA-based."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that the performance is robust."
"The GUI and IDE features of this solution are easy to work with and to develop. We find application management easy using this solution. It is a stable product"
"The product’s most valuable feature is stability."
"The most attractive and beneficial feature is the ease of development."
"The technology is really easy to learn."
"The stability of this solution is excellent."
 

Cons

"Its support services could be better."
"They should add features to manage API integrations."
"The programming language is only supported in XSLT and Gateway script."
"Scripting needs improvement. It's hard for our customers."
"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 DCDR process should be less complex."
"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."
"Traceability could be improved, especially for business operations. The traceability of the transactions could be an improvement point for DataPower to work on. It would be better if they provided JSON support. JSON protocol data has changed format. It started performing internal transformation to JSONx. This might be an additional complexity."
"The solution is very expensive when you use multiple components, it would b better if this could be reduced."
"In the next release, there should be improvements made to the API manager."
"Migration to cloud solutions or products should be made convenient, transparent, and easily understandable."
"In the configuration, where we need to customize, it takes more time that we expect it to, ideally."
"The initial setup process could be easier."
"Issues with the support, the fees, and the termination of the professional services are reasons we are looking for other solutions."
"Our version does not have cloud capabilities."
"We'd like to see improvements in product support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution has a return on investment but is a little expensive."
"The licensing cost is very expensive."
"The cost is very high and requires all five components in the API management solution."
"The product is 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."
"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."
"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."
"Its licensing cost is considerably high as compared to other ESBs."
"The price is on the higher side. For the same price, if I go to the previous version, I would have got a lot more capacity with similar kinds of features."
"The biggest issue disadvantage of TIBCO is that it is expensive."
"The licensing cost is a challenge for quite a few customers."
"Price-wise, I would say that the product is expensive."
"When it comes to cost, TIBCO is much more competitive than a product like Pega."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Insurance Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
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 – 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 TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus?
The most valuable feature of the solution is that the performance is robust.
What needs improvement with TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus?
I don't like the product's API management platform, as it doesn't offer users enough functionality to help with API lifecycle management, making it a product that is way behind its competitors. The...
 

Also Known As

WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower
ActiveMatrix Service Bus
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity
Colonial Life, CTBC Bank, New World Mobility, QUALCOMM, Swisscom Mobile, T-Mobile USA, Tata Teleservices, Telecom Italia
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM DataPower Gateway vs. TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.