We use the solution to manage the event messages by controlling the flow rate, handling error resubmissions, and ensuring the controlled processing of events.
Technology Lead at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Efficiently handles event messages by controlling the flow rate
Pros and Cons
- "It provides the best support services."
- "The solution's stability needs improvement."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The solution provides the best support services. It prevents losing messages with reliable techniques. Also, we can set thresholds for messages using it.
What needs improvement?
The solution's dashboard needs improvement. Presently, we cannot see the actual count of the messages. Also, we encounter downtime issues while queuing messages for third-party systems. They need to improve this particular area.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using the solution for the last six months.
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution's stability needs improvement.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have around 300 applications for the solution.
How are customer service and support?
The solution's technical support is good. Although, it took longer to respond to some of the queries related to licensing and stability.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I used JMS before.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution is less expensive than JMS and Kafka.
What other advice do I have?
I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Director at Tibco
A stable, open-source solution, that is slower than others
Pros and Cons
- "The initial setup is straightforward and only takes a few minutes."
- "The solution can improve the other protocols to equal the AMQ protocol they offer."
What is our primary use case?
The primary use case of this solution is to send messages between applications.
What is most valuable?
In all messaging applications, typically, sending and receiving messages is the most important and critical feature that we see our customers use.
What needs improvement?
The solution can improve the other protocols to equal the AMQ protocol they offer.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for a couple of years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is fairly stable. But we are using it in Development, not in production, so I'm probably not the best judge of stability in general.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We don't see the solution used as much as Apache Kafka by our customers, but it is scalable.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We are supporting almost all the messaging platforms for our connectors. So I have been using other messaging products as well.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is straightforward and only takes a few minutes. We have experience so it doesn't take a whole lot of time.
What about the implementation team?
The implementation was completed in-house.
What was our ROI?
Since we are using the open-source version of the solution we do see a return on investment.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We use the open-source version.
What other advice do I have?
I give the solution a six out of ten.
Our customers would use the solution in any model. We have to test with the on-premise deployments and run on an EC2 cloud.
We have about ten users in our organization.
We do not require any people for deployment or maintenance.
Whenever we need support we get it from the online community.
I do not recommend ActiveMQ over Apache Kafka partly because I don't know who provides support for the solution.
When our clients are looking for AMQ protocol support specifically ActiveMQ is our recommendation.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
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Technical Specialist at APIZone
Lightweight and quick solution for microservices intercommunication
Pros and Cons
- "ActiveMQ is very lightweight and quick."
- "From the TPS point of view, it's like 100,000 transactions that need to be admitted from different devices and also from the different minor small systems. Those are best fit for Kafka. We have used it on the customer side, and we thought of giving a try to ActiveMQ, but we have to do a lot of performance tests and approval is required before we can use it for this scale."
What is our primary use case?
We are using ActiveMQ in our customers' companies, so all of the integrations are there. We use this solution for microservices intercommunication.
What is most valuable?
ActiveMQ is very lightweight and quick.
What needs improvement?
For Kafka, we mainly use it for event sourcing. We have huge concurrent events. From the TPS point of view, it's like 100,000 transactions that need to be admitted from different devices and also from the different minor small systems. Those are best fit for Kafka. We have used it on the customer side, and we thought of giving a try to ActiveMQ, but we have to do a lot of performance tests and approval is required before we can use it for this scale. I think Kafka is best suited for the concurrent high volume of events.
If these capabilities can be incorporated into ActiveMQ, it would be good to not have to use a second product. As a Q technology, everything in ActiveMQ works perfectly. But if that aspect of Kafka can be integrated or be a sub-component of ActiveMQ, it would be really great for enterprise-wide users.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using this solution for three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The product is very stable. We haven't had any issues so far.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's absolutely scalable. We are using the broker technology.
How are customer service and support?
We don't have any subscription because we use the open-source version. But there have been a few queries around it, like if there's any support group that can provide commercial support. We were not able to find any company in the region with the support and upgrade patching, etc.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before using this solution, we worked with IBM MQ more than four years ago. We switched because the first issue was scalability. I'm not sure about the current version, but when our team was working on the older version, scalability was one bottleneck. Second, we had challenges with the upgrades. From version six to seven, it was a challenge.
How was the initial setup?
Initial setup was very easy. We used the containerized version. It took less than 30 seconds or so to boot the containers.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We are using the open-source version, so we have not looked at any pricing.
What other advice do I have?
I would give this solution 10 out of 10.
It's a very easy-to-use product. Documentation is sufficient, and anyone with a bit of knowledge about technology, like Java, can quickly set it up and it could be up and running in minutes.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Senior System Engineer at G&D
A reasonably priced solution for small and medium applications
Pros and Cons
- "Most people or many people recommended using ActiveMQ on small and medium-scale applications."
- "I would like the tool to improve compliance and stability. We will encounter issues while using the central applications. In the solution's future releases, I want to control and set limitations for databases."
What needs improvement?
I would like the tool to improve compliance and stability. We will encounter issues while using the central applications. In the solution's future releases, I want to control and set limitations for databases.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the tool for three years.
How are customer service and support?
I haven't contacted the support till now since I have a second layer support for the solution.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The tool's pricing is reasonable and competitive compared to other solutions.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate the product a nine out of ten. You need to scale the application to interact with other automation and robotic systems. Most people or many people recommended using ActiveMQ on small and medium-scale applications.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Distributor
Solutions Architect at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Stable with a straightforward setup, but better documentation is needed
Pros and Cons
- "I'm impressed, I think that Active MQ is great."
- "This solution could improve by providing better documentation."
What is our primary use case?
We use this solution for messaging.
What is most valuable?
For any messaging system, I think that messaging, in general, is fundamental to software development.
What needs improvement?
This solution could improve by providing better documentation. IBM MQ has 30 years of experience to build upon and has had 30 years to grow and improve, while ActiveMQ does not have the same kind of heritage that IBM MQ has. In comparison, I find that IBM documentation is better, but it has had a lot more investment behind it.
In the next release, I think that a roadmap would be interesting. If we look at ActiveMQ and the ActiveMQ Artemis which are parallel streams that might merge, but it's not clear on whether it will or when will it happen. That would be useful.
Also, it is not that clear who offers what implementations. ActiveMQ is available as a managed service in AWS, but it is not clear whenever Red Hat AMQ is camping base around Artemis. It helps in terms of selecting why someone would want to use ActiveMQ.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have had experience with ActiveMQ, on and off, for approximately five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have not used it heavily in a production environment, but at the moment, I don't have any issues to report.
I am currently working with some clients to investigate some stability issues they are experiencing, but it could be the result of the way it was implemented.
In terms of performance, I have not any extensive performance tests as a comparison.
I have looked at other messaging providers, and I don't think that it's any worse than any other solution available. I think that it's reasonable.
How are customer service and technical support?
There is a little bit of community support, but when you have 30 years of experience, it is not difficult to work out. With messaging, you pick up on new messaging products and you can fill in the gaps very quickly.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is straightforward.
What other advice do I have?
I have also had experience with IBM MQ for the last 30 years. I am comparing between different products and messaging scenario expertise.
I work in consultancies with many clients who have many different versions.
All messaging whether it's ActiveMQ, Amazon MQ which is Active MQ, or it's IBM MQ, they are all very similar, they all have strengths and weaknesses.
We have clients from small to large enterprises.
I would recommend this solution but it depends on the requirements. For example, what kind of support does the vendor want? What kind of managed services do they want? It is important because you can run ActiveMQ on AWS to get a managed service. It always depends on what their clients are looking for.
I'm impressed, I think that ActiveMQ is great.
I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner
Senior Consultant at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees
It sends large messages at decent speeds.
What is most valuable?
The ability to send large messages at decent speeds.
How has it helped my organization?
It had no impact on the organization. We used it in a solution we built for somebody else.
What needs improvement?
Even though there is support from many open source communities, there is still weakness in ease-of-use and ease-of-configuration for more complex scenarios.
The speed is not the highest ranking, but it's well known by users. They chose ActiveMQ for other features, because they know there are other messaging solutions that can work faster, like RabbitMQ, which is not Java written, but rather Erlang.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using ActiveMQ for one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There were no problems with stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
There were no scalability issues up to the point when I was involved in the project.
How are customer service and technical support?
I didn't use their technical support, just the classical StackOverflow support. That gave me enough information.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We didn't have a previous solution.
How was the initial setup?
The installation was straightforward. The framework we used, Spring, facilitates this integration.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated RabbitMQ.
What other advice do I have?
Make sure you need all the facilities that a message broker offers, as there are other lightweight solutions out there.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Java Technical Lead at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees
I used it to implement a micro-services based architecture.
Pros and Cons
- "The most important feature is that it's best for JVM-related languages and JMS integration."
- "Message Management: Better management of the messages. Perhaps persist them, or put in another queue with another life cycle."
How has it helped my organization?
Most architecture nowadays requires too much performance. We can use products like ActiveMQ to improve our architecture.
I implemented a micro-services based architecture and did some of the communication via queues. I used actors with the Akka framework, and not only threads in Java.
What is most valuable?
The most important feature is that it's best for JVM-related languages and JMS integration.
The product is really straightforward. All the operations that you use are pretty simple and worked fine.
The deal is to write the correct logic.
What needs improvement?
Message Management: Better management of the messages. Perhaps persist them, or put in another queue with another life cycle.
To clarify, it needs some queues in memory with the same abstract logic that ActiveMQ provides. An interesting example could be the embedded Redis framework, or the Derby database for integration tests.
ActiveMQ does not persist the messages in the queue. So it would be fine if active has that feature, or some way to do it. So you can grab that message any time during the application lifecycle.
Apache Kafka has that feature.
The improvement could be the availability to persist the message in the
queue for any time along the app running.
Testing: I did not find a correct way to test the integration using Java, but rather only with manual testing.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We did not encounter any stability issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
There were no scalability issues. With a good strategy, we can scale onto large systems using ActiveMQ.
How is customer service and technical support?
I would give technical support a rating of 10/10. Despite the doubts that I encountered during the development, I could get the answer in the documentation.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is very easy. You don't need to install anything. Just run the start command or put the URL in the browser.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I think the software is free.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated Apache Kafka and also RabbitMQ. The choice was about the better integration with JMS.
What other advice do I have?
I fully recommend this product, but you need to have some expertise working with JMS and asynchronous tasks. You also need a correct strategy, or at least think about one.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Manager, Site Reliability Engineering at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Provides message delivery and mirroring. It does not scale out well.
Pros and Cons
- "Reliable message delivery and mirroring."
- "It does not scale out well. It ends up being very complex if you have a lot of mirror queues."
What is most valuable?
Reliable message delivery and mirroring.
What needs improvement?
It does not scale out well. It ends up being very complex if you have a lot of mirror queues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We did have scalability issues. It does not scale out well.
How are customer service and technical support?
As with a lot of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software), it is what you pay for.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
This is our first foray into the world of messages.
How was the initial setup?
The terminology and configuration took some time to learn. In some ways, it does not do what you think it will do, so be careful.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We looked at RabbitMQ and AWS SQS.
What other advice do I have?
If you are getting started, go with Kafka.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

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