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IBM DataPower Gateway vs webMethods.io 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 Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
5th
Ranking in API Management
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (9th), SOA Application Gateways (1st)
webMethods.io
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
3rd
Ranking in API Management
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
Business-to-Business Middleware (3rd), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (9th), Cloud Data Integration (7th), Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 5.9%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of webMethods.io is 10.9%, up from 9.8% 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.
MohanPrasad - PeerSpot reviewer
Smooth integration and enhanced deployment with high licensing cost
webMethods.io was used to integrate APIs through the webMethods.io platform, trigger database events, and connect backend APIs through a Java backend. It was used extensively for integration purposes in my organization Integration became smoother, troubleshooting was easier, and deployment and…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The scalability of the solution is good."
"The solution is robust."
"The product is stable...The product is scalable."
"I like the API Gateway feature."
"Support for PCA and non-PCA services is valuable."
"The solution is scalable, our customers are mostly South African banks and they handle mostly transactions with this solution."
"The performance is good. It's been very stable."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The main assets are its flow language, debugging, and Broker. Flow language is far better and more flexible for debugging."
"The solution is scalable."
"I feel comfortable using this product with its ease of building interfaces for developers. This is a better integration tool for integrating with various applications like Oracle, Salesforce, mainframes, etc. It works fine in the integration of legacy software as well."
"The core product can be used not only for automatic file transfers between applications, but also as an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)."
"Oracle's self-service capabilities, of which we make extensive use, is the most valuable feature."
"It's easy to construct new interfaces like apps and client portals."
"We have found the pricing of the solution to be fair."
"The most valuable feature of webMethods Integration Server is all the capabilities it provides. We leverage most of the features, that they have offered to us. Our vendor has made some additional features on top of the webMethods Integration Server and we use all the features together."
 

Cons

"The product should be more adapted to the DevOps process."
"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."
"Scripting needs improvement. It's hard for our customers."
"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 components that they include in the product that are, in fact, a WTX, really need to be removed from the product because they tend to fail."
"I would like the tool to improve its training."
"For the workloads that are not too high, appliance is a little bit expensive."
"They should improve the solution's clustering features."
"With performance, there is room for improvement in regards to if we would like to put another extra layer of security on it, such as SSL. This is affecting their performance quite significantly. They need to improve the process of managing the SSL and other things inside their solutions, so there will not be quite such a significant impact to the performance."
"The deployment should be simplified."
"Documentation needs tuning. There is a lot of dependency with SoftwareAG. Even with the documentation at hand, you can struggle to implement scenarios without SAG’s help. By contrast, IBM’s documentation is self-explanatory, in my opinion."
"The learning curve is a little steep at first."
"One area that needs improvement is the version upgrade process. Many customers I've worked with encounter challenges when transitioning from their current version, such as x or 9, to a newer version. The process is not smooth, and they must shift their entire website."
"I would like to have a dashboard where I can see all of the communication between components and the configuration."
"We need more dashboards and reporting engines that can provide detailed information for management. In short, we need better analytics."
"There are things that could be improved with the webMethods API gateway. One thing is that it's too attached to the integration service and we'd like it to be a little bit more independent. We would like for them to separate operations so that it doesn't rely on the bulky integration server and so that it can be used everywhere."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 appliance is a bit on the expensive side for the workloads that are not too high."
"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 product is expensive."
"It's expensive when you compare it with others."
"Most customers' use case budgets are not inlined with the price of IBM DataPower Gateway. It is too expensive."
"This product is a bit expensive as IBM products are costly assets. However, for enterprise customers it is a worthwhile investment."
"This is not a cheap solution but, compared to other products such as those offered by IBM, the pricing is similar."
"Based on our team discussions and feedback, it is pretty costly because they charge us for each transmission."
"The pricing and licensing costs for webMethods are very high, which is the only reason that we might switch to another product."
"The product is expensive."
"It is worth the cost."
"The solution's development license is free for three to six months. We have to pay for other things."
"Some who consider this solution often avoid it due to its high price."
"The price of webMethods Integration Server isn't that high from an enterprise context, but open-source ESB solutions will always be the cheapest."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
29%
Insurance Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
13%
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 Built.io Flow?
The tool helps us to streamline data integration. Its BPM is very strong and powerful. The solution helps us manage digital transformation.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Built.io Flow?
webMethods.io is expensive. We have multiple components, and you need to pay for each of them.
What needs improvement with Built.io Flow?
webMethods.io needs to incorporate ChatGPT to enhance user experience. It can offer a customized user experience.
 

Also Known As

WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower
Built.io Flow, webMethods Integration Server, webMethods Trading Networks, webMethods ActiveTransfer, webMethods.io API
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity
Cisco, Agralogics, Dreamforce, Cables & Sensors, Sacramento Kings
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM DataPower Gateway vs. webMethods.io and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,390 professionals have used our research since 2012.