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: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.