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IBM DataPower Gateway vs Zend PHP Engine comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 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 Application Infrastructure
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (4th), SOA Application Gateways (1st), API Management (7th)
Zend PHP Engine
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Application Infrastructure category, the mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 4.6%, up from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zend PHP Engine is 1.7%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Infrastructure
 

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.
SatyendraGupta - PeerSpot reviewer
The fact that it is available open-source is the best feature
The fact that it is available open-source is the best feature.  A general scripting language should be further developed and should be embedded into it. I have been Zend PHP Engine for nine years.  Multiple people are using the solution.  Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"It's high-speed and it can be remotely administered via an API."
"What I like most is the stability."
"I like the tool's security. Also, all functionalities are integrated within on platform."
"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."
"Support for PCA and non-PCA services is valuable."
"It can look for the various security threats, productions, payload scanning, and perform routing based on the content type."
"The solution is stable."
"Zend PHP Engine is a good tool for developing and collecting data, offering strong performance."
"Zend Engine gives the flexibility to use external modules to easily expand the functionalities you need for your web project."
"​Zend Engine is the core of PHP. It makes PHP fast, efficient, and basically, the language of choice for web applications."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the speed at which it compiles and sends the dynamic cache."
"Scaling up is an important factor for large projects, and with PHP 7 and its performance improvements, this becomes even easier.​"
"It offers good support for various types of classes, along with many open source libraries that we can readily utilize in our application development process. This gives us a lot of options when it comes to custom development solutions, without having to worry about licensing or other programming-related issues."
"The fact that it is available open-source is the best feature."
"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
 

Cons

"The programming language is only supported in XSLT and Gateway script."
"Making it more user-friendly would be an improvement."
"The initial setup isn't so easy, you need who has experience working with the solution to help."
"It is a costly product."
"The two biggest issues of this solution are the complexity and the maintenance procedures."
"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."
"The IBM community does not have much engagement from the IT community in Saudi Arabia and developers for this solution are difficult to find."
"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."
"Although it offers a complete environment to develop and deploy PHP applications, it has some limitations. For example, when the volume of data increased exponentially, I had problems scaling the system."
"The main area that Zend needs to improve is to support asynchronous programming tasks, which is facilitated in PHP 7, but not at the same degree as HHVM.​​"
"A general scripting language should be further developed and should be embedded into it."
"Its object oriented programming language needs improvement."
"The process of installing and configuring the product is a bit complex and could be improved."
"Zend PHP Engine needs to improve the loading time of its libraries and make it faster."
"In terms of improvement, it doesn't support concurrent processing. When we want to process anything on a concurrent basis, we have to divide it into a number of things, like a queue, or we have to run it using Cron jobs. We would like to have the capability to run any thread or process in parallel."
"SQL queries have always been an issue with PHP, especially if you use large tables, which require caution from the side of the developer.​"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Most customers' use case budgets are not inlined with the price of IBM DataPower Gateway. It is too expensive."
"The tool's initial costing is expensive for small banks and financial institutions."
"This product is a bit expensive as IBM products are costly assets. However, for enterprise customers it is a worthwhile investment."
"The appliance is a bit on the expensive side for the workloads that are not too high."
"The solution is expensive in comparison to other products."
"It's expensive when you compare it with others."
"It is an expensive solution."
"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 solution is open source and you just pay for the server cost."
"The Zend PHP engine is open source technology, so there's no need for us to worry about licensing or other costs."
"Its pricing depends on the number of users."
"Zend PHP Engine is not an expensive solution."
"No problem with pricing and licensing, as tools are open source. You have to consider training cost, mindset setup cost, as part of the TCO."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Insurance Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
University
10%
Construction Company
10%
 

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 Zend PHP Engine?
The fact that it is available open-source is the best feature.
What needs improvement with Zend PHP Engine?
Integrating AI tools would make PHP more competitive, as other tools already have AI features.
 

Also Known As

WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower
PHP Engine
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity
Cisco
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM DataPower Gateway vs. Zend PHP Engine and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,963 professionals have used our research since 2012.