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Amazon SNS vs IBM MQ comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Amazon SNS
Ranking in Message Oriented Middleware (MOM)
4th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM MQ
Ranking in Message Oriented Middleware (MOM)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
170
Ranking in other categories
Business Activity Monitoring (1st), Message Queue (MQ) Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) category, the mindshare of Amazon SNS is 5.9%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM MQ is 27.3%, up from 25.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Message Oriented Middleware (MOM)
 

Featured Reviews

Bireshwar Adhikary - PeerSpot reviewer
The best service available with easy message flow and a pay-as-you-go model
Messages easily flow from publisher or application to subscriber. You can also flow messages from publisher to SNS with an https-like mediator. Amazon SQS is there, so message queue services are also there. The message transports to the service provider such as Redshift, the SQ bucket, Teams, Splunk, or any other message service. The solution has no up-front costs. Messages flow much more quickly than in the past. They used to run a bit late after being published.
Md Al-Amin - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable and secure performance consistently enhances message transfer
IBM MQ is more reliable and secure than other software. There is a saying that for the last 30 years IBM MQ has never been hacked. It is more secure and reliable. Whenever the configuration is done, I do not have to touch it again. It works fine, it is stable, and its communication is to the point and accurate. All performance-related aspects are better. Performance-wise, it is scalable, and other features such as DR, DC, replication, and active passive mode are complex to configure, but it remains scalable. The pricing model for IBM MQ could be more flexible for clients.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The integration between the features is excellent."
"The best aspect of this solution is its simplicity. We just have to create topics and can have as many subscriptions as we want under any topic we create."
"The mobile push notifications are the most valuable. Previously, we used to use Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) for this functionality. It is a Google service for sending push notifications. Android did not have a good service for sending push notifications, but now, Amazon SNS integrates with FCM. Under the road, it is actually using FCM, but we can see all the metrics on our AW service itself, which makes it a lot easier instead of using a third-party service for this particular functionality."
"We have found the key feature of this solution to be the simplicity of sending out notifications."
"Push notifications are the most valuable. I have mostly used push notifications for my system. Amazon SNS supports all devices for push notification services. It supports iOS, Android, and Windows notifications. It provides reliable push notification services. We have queues, and we can track which notifications have failed or had some issues. We can then figure out the issue. We can also debug the issue because of which our push notification didn't reach the end users."
"Amazon SNS has SMS notifications as well. Most of the other solutions have only email notifications."
"Stability has been good for us. It is quite high."
"Messages easily flow from publisher or application to subscriber."
"It is stable, reliable, and scalable."
"This solution has improved and influenced the communication between different applications, then standardized that communication."
"The solution allows one to easily configure an IBM MQQueueManager."
"There is no dependency on the end party service's run status."
"Technical support is quite helpful."
"It improves reliability and guarantees that messages are not lost."
"IBM MQ is more reliable and secure than other software."
"The thing that I like about MQ most is its reliability. It's one of those types of products that just works. You don't have to tinker around with it too much."
 

Cons

"There needs to be more documentation on the integration with different platforms."
"There could be more integration with other solutions."
"Messages should flow through a gateway without the need for a mediator."
"A major issue with AWS as a whole is that it has a lot of services that do the same thing, and people get confused about which one to use in which scenario. Previously, we used to use SNS for connecting microservices. SNS has around six types of subscribers. We can subscribe to Lambda, HTTP, HTTPS, SMS, email, and push notifications. We used to use HTTP endpoints and Lambda for connecting to microservice systems. Now we have something called EventBridge, which actually does that for you. For connecting to services, we should just use EventBridge rather than SQS, SNS. I hear a lot of complaints from people wherein they do not understand when to use EventBridge and when to use SQS, SNS. They can remove these features so that it doesn't confuse users about when to use SQS, SNS, or EventBridge."
"We would like to have the option when someone leaves the organization or moves to another team, to remove notifications. Currently this needs to be done manually by the company admin."
"We would like the integration with third party applications to be improved within this solution."
"In terms of improvement, I would like to have better customer support for SNS. We can then manage it very easily."
"I recently worked with Firebase, and it provides an option to create a marketing campaign with a title and a specific image to inform our audience about something. We just design the campaign and then use the push notifications. It would be good if Amazon also adds a similar feature."
"SonicMQ CAA (continuous availability architecture) functionality on auto failover and data persistence should be made available without a shared drive, as it exists in multi-instance queue managers."
"It is expensive. The cost is high. There should be more improvement in the new age of technologies."
"IBM could revamp the interface. The API is huge, but some developers find it limiting because of the cost. They tend to wrap the API course into the JMS, which means they're missing out on some good features. They should work a little bit on the API exposure."
"There could be a better front-end GUI interface for us, where we can see things more easily."
"The product does not allow users to access data from API or external networks since it can only be used in a closed network, making it an area where improvements are required."
"In the next release, I would like for there to be easier monitoring. The UI should be easier for non-technical users to set up appliances and servers."
"We have had scalability issues with some projects in the past."
"The scalability is the one area where IBM has fallen behind. As much as it is used, there is a limit to the number of people who are skilled in MQ. That is definitely an issue. Places have kept their MQ-skilled people and other places have really struggled to get MQ skills. It's not a widely-known skillset."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution has no up-front costs because you pay based on the number of messages you publish."
"Amazon SNS is cheap and I would rate it a three out of ten. The pricing is usage-based."
"Their pricing is competitive. I would rate the cost four out of five."
"It is the cheapest solution in the market. It is on a monthly basis. After a month, you are build based on your usage. There are no additional costs to the standard licensing fees."
"The pricing is very cheap."
"One can use the tool for free."
"The pricing of push notifications and everything is quite fair. If you are using FCM under the hood, it is completely free. When you are using push notification on SMS, it is just a nominal price that you need to pay. SMS services are a lot more costly. It is because we don't have proper providers in India. That's why it gets a lot more costly in terms of SMS. This is the reason why we don't use SMS services from SNS itself. We use other third-party services like SMS Horizon. We use a third-party service for email services. It is almost free. It is just around $1 a month. Configuring Lambda is also quite cheap. You only pay for the Lambda usage. You don't pay for SNS itself."
"99.999 percent availability for less than a penny per message over the past 25 years. IBM MQ is the cheapest software in the IBM software portfolio, and it is one of the best."
"You have to license per application installation and if you expand vertically or horizontally, you will be paying for more licenses. The licenses are approximately $10,000 to $15,000 a license, it can get expensive quite quickly."
"This solution requires a license and we have purchased an enterprise license."
"The price is high."
"We have a special contract with IBM MQ that give us a certain price."
"I think the pricing is reasonable, especially with IIB as a part of it."
"IBM MQ has a flexible license model based on the Processor Value Unit (PVU) and I recommend it."
"The pricing needs improvement."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Media Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
36%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon SNS?
The most valuable feature of Amazon SNS is speed. It's really fast.
What needs improvement with Amazon SNS?
In future releases, I want to see if the platforms that SMS can reach. It would be a good way to improve it. More platforms to be able to use it.
What is MQ software?
Hi As someone with 45+ years of experience in the Transaction and Message Processing world, I have seen many "MQ" solutions that have come into the market place. From my perspective, while each pro...
What are the differences between Apache Kafka and IBM MQ?
Apache Kafka is open source and can be used for free. It has very good log management and has a way to store the data used for analytics. Apache Kafka is very good if you have a high number of user...
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
WebSphere MQ
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PlayOn! Sports, NASA, Change Healthcare, FCBarcelona
Deutsche Bahn, Bon-Ton, WestJet, ARBURG, Northern Territory Government, Tata Steel Europe, Sharp Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon SNS vs. IBM MQ and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,803 professionals have used our research since 2012.