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ActiveMQ vs VMware Tanzu Data Solutions comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 27, 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

ActiveMQ
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Tanzu Data Solutions
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
85
Ranking in other categories
Database Development and Management (5th), Relational Databases Tools (12th), Data Warehouse (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of ActiveMQ is 22.0%, down from 26.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Tanzu Data Solutions is 7.5%, up from 5.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Message Queue (MQ) Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ActiveMQ22.0%
VMware Tanzu Data Solutions7.5%
Other70.5%
Message Queue (MQ) Software
 

Q&A Highlights

Miriam Tover - PeerSpot reviewer
Service Delivery Manager at PeerSpot
Jun 27, 2019
 

Featured Reviews

MD
Software Engineer III at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Integration capabilities enhance message handling without human interaction
With ActiveMQ there should be more options. If you work with other technologies, for example, Java, there are many options. We can integrate the way we want ActiveMQ. We can create partitions and clusters, but AP is not providing such options currently. It only provides time, request response timing, the number of requests that need to be handled, and protocol types. The configuration needs to be broadened inside AP to perform in a better way. Sometimes issues arise in production with ActiveMQ due to the number of requests. For example, if you have configured one thousand requests at a time and it receives one thousand and one messages at a time, it breaks. The configuration aspect is tricky. When configurations are proper, ActiveMQ almost has zero errors.
Karthik Shivaram - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Manager at STI INFOTECH PVT LTD
Improved multi-cloud data management has simplified operations and supports seamless Kubernetes
From my perspective, the biggest challenge with VMware right now is the pricing. To be very honest, in many cases I find myself recommending alternative solutions instead of VMware. Even if those alternatives come with a bit more complexity, customers are often more willing to accept that than the current VMware pricing model. In the past, VMware used a socket-based licensing model, which was easier for customers to understand and budget for. Now the shift to a core-based licensing model has significantly increased costs for many environments, especially for organizations running modern high-core CPUs. One positive aspect of the new model is that VMware has bundled several components together. For example, earlier when deploying vSphere, customers also had to purchase vCenter separately for management. Now multiple components are packaged into a single SKU, which simplifies some aspects of procurement and deployment. While this consolidation has its benefits, the overall licensing and commercial costs remain very high. Pricing is not the only issue. I believe Broadcom also needs to reconsider its strategy in light of the current market conditions. The approach they are taking may be strategic from a business perspective, but from what I see in the field, it is leading to lost opportunities. Many customers who previously relied on VMware are now actively exploring alternative virtualization platforms. I’m not sure where this direction will ultimately lead, but based on my experience, it is already affecting adoption. Since you’ve been trying to reach me for some time—and we also had a discussion a couple of years ago—I hope this feedback helps Broadcom understand the current sentiment in the market and potentially make adjustments. Another important concern is the way features are bundled. In many cases, customers only need basic virtualization and high availability capabilities. However, the current packaging often includes additional features that they may not need. A good analogy is that if a customer only needs an entry-level car, we shouldn’t be forced to sell them a Rolls-Royce. VMware could benefit from adopting a more modular or à la carte licensing model, where customers can choose only the components they truly require. For example, if a customer only needs core virtualization functionality, they should be able to purchase just that. This would allow partners and solution providers to better align solutions with customer requirements and position VMware more competitively in the market. Another challenge I want to highlight is the pricing model based on U.S. dollars and the way multi-year licensing is handled. In many enterprise and government projects, customers prefer to commit to three-year or five-year licenses and pay the full amount upfront. However, in approximately 20% of the deals I work on, we lose opportunities because VMware only provides dollar-based pricing for the first year. When it comes to the following years, the contract requires renewals annually rather than allowing a fixed multi-year upfront payment. This approach is particularly problematic for government and public sector customers. Many of them are ready and willing to pay for three or five years in advance, but the current VMware model does not support that structure effectively. Because pricing is tied to the U.S. dollar and subject to yearly adjustments, VMware does not lock in pricing for the full term. From a customer’s perspective, this introduces uncertainty and makes procurement more complicated. Ideally, if a price is quoted—for example, $100 per year—it should remain consistent across a multi-year agreement. Customers would be comfortable committing to a five-year term if the price were fixed and predictable. Unfortunately, that flexibility is currently not available across VMware products, whether it is vSphere, VMware Tanzu solutions, or other offerings. For large enterprise environments, one-year commitments are usually not practical. Many enterprise customers prefer longer-term agreements for budgeting and procurement reasons. Even when they are willing to accept the higher cost associated with the core-based licensing model, the lack of a clear multi-year upfront option often becomes a deal-breaker.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"ActiveMQ is very lightweight and quick."
"We value ActiveMQ for its performance, throughput, and low latency, especially in handling large volumes of data and sequential management of topics."
"Reliable message delivery and mirroring."
"I'm impressed, I think that Active MQ is great."
"The ability to store the failed events for some time is valuable."
"I am impressed with the tool’s latency. Also, the messages in ActiveMQ wait in a queue. The messages will start to move when the system reopens after getting stuck."
"The initial setup is straightforward and only takes a few minutes."
"I appreciate many features including queue, topic, durable topic, and selectors. I also value a different support for different protocols such as MQTT and AMQP. It has full support for EIP, REST, Message Groups, UDP, and TCP."
"The most valuable feature for me is that it is open source. The licensing costs are really low and they are transparent."
"We chose Greenplum because of the architecture in terms of clustering databases and being able to have, or at least utilize the resources that are sitting on a database."
"The most valuable feature is asynchronous calls, which are easy to configure."
"The loading speed is very good."
"Some of the most valuable features are publish and subscribe, fanout, and queues."
"Scalability is simple because it's an MPP database. If you need more processing power or you need more storage, you just add a few more nodes in the cluster. It works on common commodity hardware. You can use any type of server. You don't need to have proprietary hardware. It's fairly flexible."
"Helps us to achieve large-scale analytics."
"The message routing is the most valuable feature. It is effective and flexible."
 

Cons

"For additional functionality, I suggest making it easier to install and monitor the queues, topics, broker status, publisher status, and consumer status. Improved monitoring tools would help avoid needing to manually access the server for monitoring purposes."
"Sometimes issues arise in production with ActiveMQ due to the number of requests. For example, if you have configured one thousand requests at a time and it receives one thousand and one messages at a time, it breaks."
"Needs to focus on a certain facet and be good at it, instead of handling support for most of the available message brokers."
"Message Management: Better management of the messages. Perhaps persist them, or put in another queue with another life cycle."
"Distributed message processing would be a nice addition."
"It does not scale out well. It ends up being very complex if you have a lot of mirror queues."
"It would be great if it is included as part of the solution, as Kafka is doing. Even though the use case of Kafka is different, If something like data extraction is possible, or if we can experiment with partition tolerance and other such things, that will be great."
"The tool needs to improve its installation part which is lengthy. The product is already working on that aspect so that the complete installation gets completed within a month."
"It doesn't have any GUI-based monitoring tools."
"RabbitMQ is clearly better supported on Linux than it is on Windows. There are idiosyncrasies in the Windows version that are not there on Linux."
"The initial deployment was a little difficult."
"It will be very useful if we could communicate with other database types from Greenplum (using a database link)."
"The initial setup is somewhat complex and the out-of-the-box configuration requires optimization."
"I was struggling with installing a few things. It would be good if was somewhat similar to RedHat. There should be more documentation regarding installation troubleshooting."
"The support feature could benefit from some improvement in terms of accessibility and responsiveness."
"I saw some limitation with respect to the column store, and removing this would be an improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"ActiveMQ is open source, so it is free to use."
"We use the open-source version."
"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."
"We are using the open-source version, so we have not looked at any pricing."
"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable and competitive compared to other solutions."
"There are no fees because it is open-source."
"I think the software is free."
"are using the open-source version, which can be used free of cost."
"This is an open source solution."
"It is the best product with best fit for price/performance customer objectives."
"It is an open-source product."
"On a scale of one to five, with five being the most competitive pricing, I would rate this solution as a four."
"The product is available for free use since it is an open-source technology."
"Tanzu Greenplum's pricing is really competitive and gives excellent value for money."
"Pricing is good compared to other products. It's fine."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
29%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise49
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ActiveMQ?
For reliable messaging, the most valuable feature of ActiveMQ for us is ensuring prompt message delivery.
What needs improvement with ActiveMQ?
Pricing is something to consider with ActiveMQ, though cloud pricing is not costly and depends upon the compute selection. Focusing on AI is essential nowadays. AI capabilities require improvement ...
What is your primary use case for ActiveMQ?
In my current organization, I'm only working with ActiveMQ. I previously worked with IBM WebSphere MQ.
How does IBM MQ compare with VMware RabbitMQ?
IBM MQ has a great reputation behind it, and this solution is very robust with great stability. It is easy to use, simple to configure and integrates well with our enterprise ecosystem and protocol...
What do you like most about VMware RabbitMQ?
RabbitMQ provides access to SDKs for development and the ability to raise and log tickets if we encounter issues. We can integrate RabbitMQ using various languages like Java or Python using the pro...
 

Also Known As

AMQ
Greenplum, Pivotal Greenplum, VMware RabbitMQ, VMware Tanzu GemFire, VMware Postgres
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Washington, Daugherty Systems, CSC, STG Technologies, Inc. 
General Electric, Conversant, China CITIC Bank, Aridhia, Purdue University
Find out what your peers are saying about ActiveMQ vs. VMware Tanzu Data Solutions and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,122 professionals have used our research since 2012.