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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 (14th), Data Warehouse (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of ActiveMQ is 19.8%, down from 26.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Tanzu Data Solutions is 9.3%, up from 4.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Message Queue (MQ) Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ActiveMQ19.8%
VMware Tanzu Data Solutions9.3%
Other70.9%
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 a good solution; it is low cost, high performance, and scalable."
"The most important feature is that it's best for JVM-related languages and JMS integration."
"I fully recommend this product, but you need to have some expertise working with JMS and asynchronous tasks."
"It’s a JMS broker, so the fact that it can allow for asynchronous communication is valuable."
"Reliable message delivery and mirroring."
"I'm impressed, I think that Active MQ is great."
"For us, initial setup was VERY easy since we were using the Apache-provided Docker image for ActiveMQ, which alleviates a lot of the traditional pains involved with installing new software."
"Message broadcasting: There could be a use case sending the same message to all consumers. So as a producer, I broadcast the message to a topic. Then, whichever consumers are subscribed to the topic can consume the same message."
"The reports are running very fast, a matter of minutes instead of hours as it was previously."
"We have never lost a single message with RabbitMQ."
"In general, I think this is a very good platform, particularly as it's open source."
"With VMware Tanzu Greenplum, one can make a huge database table and analyze the queries by adding in the SQL command. Some hint or command for the query goes over the multi-parallel execution."
"MPP (Massive Parallel Processing); processing large amount of data."
"I like the high throughput of 20K messages/sec, and that it supports multiple protocols."
"The most valuable feature for us is horizontal scaling."
"Some of the most valuable features are publish and subscribe, fanout, and queues."
 

Cons

"Distributed message processing would be a nice addition."
"One potential area would be the complexity of the initial setup."
"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."
"I do not recommend ActiveMQ over Apache Kafka partly because I don't know who provides support for the solution."
"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."
"We ran into various stability problems with our implementations over the years."
"Distributed message processing would be a nice addition."
"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."
"ORCA optimizer when turned on is not showing consistency. Some workloads shows improved performance and some workloads became very slow."
"I would like to see improvements in fluent configuration."
"They should add more analytics. Their documentation could also be improved so that I don't have to bother my co-workers and tech support so often."
"The implementation of an upgrade takes a long time."
"Extra filters would be helpful."
"VMware RabbitMQ needs to create a new queue system."
"The High Availability feature is not really reliable."
"Maintenance is time-consuming."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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 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.
What advice do you have for others considering ActiveMQ?
We have not deployed ActiveMQ's flexible clustering as that requirement is not present for us. We only use active-passive configuration. On a scale of one to ten, I rate ActiveMQ a ten out of ten.
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 is your primary use case for VMware RabbitMQ?
We use it to achieve what we call asynchronous processing. Asynchronous processing is where applications need to communicate with each other, but they don't need to rely on failures, maybe network ...
What do you like most about VMware Tanzu GemFire?
The product has been stable and I have never faced any kind of problems with it.
 

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: April 2026.
894,807 professionals have used our research since 2012.