We performed a comparison between Apigee and IBM Datapower Gateway based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Apigee comes out on top in this comparison. Apigee is flexible and offers excellent customization options. Datapower is less user friendly and offers limited configuration capabilities.
"One of the best parts of this solution is the implementation as we did not need to use code or out-of-box policies. When it comes to the cloud-based architecture, there is a high level of reliability."
"I'm still evaluating, but in terms of overall performance and stability, it's quite good."
"This is a front-layer gateway that helps to improve our overall performance."
"They capture the details of all the incoming and outgoing traffic of your APIs. Based on 300+ default dimensions you can generate beautiful and insightful reports on usage and consumption of APIs."
"API/proxy lifecycle workflow for API providers is quite good and one of Apigee's strongest features."
"The most valuable features of Apigee for me are analytics, security, ease of use, and integration capabilities."
"Technical support has been decent."
"The usability is one of the best aspects of the product."
"Support for PCA and non-PCA services is valuable."
"The performance is good. It's been very stable."
"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."
"It's high-speed and it can be remotely administered via an API."
"The solution is very easy to work with."
"The API Connect gateway service and the SQL injection feature is good."
"Since it is a gateway, it provides a lot of security features."
"The solution is straightforward and for large organizations, it functions well."
"Apigee does not have a testing feature."
"The company needs to better support webhooks. It used to support webhooks and their policies and they have since stopped. They had some issues in the product and they abandoned the support for them. It's not come back since."
"Apigee could improve by integrating with more identity providers and offering a default authentication module."
"The integration could be improved within the solution. There is a need to pay more attention to this."
"Apigee's user interface could be more straightforward and have more options. Also, it would be nice if it were ready to work out of the box without so much configuration."
"The analytical aspect of it could be better. I think it is fair if Apigee lets you configure some of the metrics of the key details you want to monitor in terms of analytics."
"In terms of the functionalities of a typical API gateway, Apigee is actually doing its job, but when it involves integration with backend applications, which some gateways have, I don't believe it has this functionality. You have to do Java or do some other low-level coding before you are able to do the integration. Apigee has a lot of components, which means that management will be a bit difficult. It probably has ten different components, and all of these components leverage open-source utilities, such as NGINX. When those open-source vendors upgrade their utility, Apigee usually lags behind because they need to do a lot of tests and any required development in their own platform. They need to do rigorous testing to make sure that nothing breaks. Because of that, it takes them a while to upgrade whatever components have been upgraded by the open-source vendor that owns the utility. We've been chasing them for a particular upgrade for well over a year and a half, and they have not done that upgrade. It is creating a security risk for us as an enterprise, but that upgrade has not been done, even though the open-source vendor, the owner of the utility, has upgraded it a long time ago."
"They need to work on the cost of the solution."
"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."
"Making it more user-friendly would be an improvement."
"In the next release, I would like to see the product price reduced. It should be cheaper."
"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."
"They should add features to manage API integrations."
"The IBM community does not have much engagement from the IT community in Saudi Arabia and developers for this solution are difficult to find."
"The product's cost for data appliances or hardware is quite high. It needs improvement."
"Some pre-packaged connectors for integration with various applications, such as SaaS offerings, would be a useful addition."
Apigee is ranked 2nd in API Management with 82 reviews while IBM DataPower Gateway is ranked 7th in API Management with 27 reviews. Apigee is rated 8.2, while IBM DataPower Gateway is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Apigee writes "Has a robust community and outstanding performance". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM DataPower Gateway writes "Security features meets compliance needs and offers MPGW (Multi-Protocol Gateway) that simplifies integration efforts ". Apigee is most compared with Microsoft Azure API Management, IBM API Connect, Amazon API Gateway, WSO2 API Manager and Kong Gateway Enterprise, whereas IBM DataPower Gateway is most compared with IBM API Connect, Microsoft Azure API Management, Mule ESB, IBM Integration Bus and Kong Gateway Enterprise. See our Apigee vs. IBM DataPower Gateway report.
See our list of best API Management vendors.
We monitor all API Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
1) Let us start from the base that Google APIGEE is an API Management platform, so it offers more capabilities than a Gateway, therefore we must compare it against IBM API Connect which is the IBM API Management and whose gateways are Datapower machines.
2) An API Management platform consists mainly of three key components:
• Portal: where the catalog of available APIs is discovered.
• Management: where the life cycle of the APIs is managed.
• Gateway: Where the APIs are exposed.
At Management level: Google APIGEE and IBM API Connect
• Manage the life cycle of the API.
• Manage users roles and permissions.
• Manage security in APIs.
• Manage the consumption of APIs.
• Allows traffic policies to be applied.
• Allows you to configure, create and attach custom policies.
At Portal level: Google APIGEE and IBM API Connect
• Display the API documentation
• Test the exposed APIs.
• Register application developers.
• Customize corporate brand.
• Manage community.
• Self-management.
At Gateway level: Google APIGEE and IBM API Connect
• API deployment and execution
• Execution of security policies
• Integration with data sources
• Apply traffic policies.
• Different types of gateways:
• Google APIGEE
o Edge Enterprise Gateway.
o Microgateway (Limited features)
Does not support all OAuth2.0 flows
No Caching
No threat protecction
Basic monitoring.
• IBM API Connect
o Microgateway (Discontinued).
o Gateways:
Datapower Gateway (Compatible with API Connect version 5)
API Gateway (Focused on the 2018 version of API Connect)
At the Deployment level:
• Distributed:
o Google APIGEE:
Edge Enterprise Gateway:
• The complete instance must be taken to each cloud.
• The deployment of each instance requires a license.
Microgateway:
• They connect to the same instance, however, the limited policies of this component must be kept in mind.
• Can only be used by purchasing the full license of the API Management.
o IBM API Connect:
Datapower Gateway (7.6 or <):
• Compatible with version 5.0.8.x
API Gateway (7.7 or> = 2018.4.x):
• Compatible with version 5.0.8.x and 2018 of IBM API Connect.
Both Gateway:
• It is only necessary to deploy the Gateway in each cloud, not the full instance of the product.
• Manages licenses that charge for API Calls generated in the Gateway and includes the deployment of nodes of its components in any cloud.
Both APIGEE and API Connect offer good capabilities to accelerate the deployment of business capabilities such as services or APIs. The decision of which one is better will depend on the conditions of our business and purpose.