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Azul Zulu vs IBM WebSphere Application Server comparison

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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

Azul Zulu
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
AI Customer Experience Personalization (26th), AI Content Creation (9th)
IBM WebSphere Application S...
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Application Server (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Application Infrastructure category, the mindshare of Azul Zulu is 3.5%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM WebSphere Application Server is 4.6%, down from 8.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM WebSphere Application Server4.6%
Azul Zulu3.5%
Other91.9%
Application Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

BasilJiji - PeerSpot reviewer
System engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Standardized our Java estate and have reduced licensing costs while maintaining strong support
Azul Zulu's ability to allow us to standardize our Java estate on a single and well-supported platform stands out as one of its best features. This standardization simplifies our compliance audits and ensures all our applications receive timely security updates.Azul Zulu positively impacts our organization by providing a platform that allows us to standardize Java on a well-supported platform. Without the high cost associated with other proprietary vendors, Azul Zulu provides an excellent platform for running our applications.
CF
Senior Manager, MW & DB Automation at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Has worked seamlessly in complex clustered environments and supports long-term development efforts
IBM WebSphere Application Server is currently at version 9.0.5.23. In recent months, they released fix 23, as they periodically release fixes. Previously, they frequently increased versions, but now they maintain 9.0.5 with different releases. It's based on Java J2EE 7 and Java SDK 1.8. Oracle announced that 2030 will be the last year when Java SDK 1.8 will be supported. Oracle currently deploys Java 2.x in parallel, with the latest being version 25. The future of IBM WebSphere Application Server remains uncertain since it's based on Java 1.8 and Java 7. I haven't found any white papers or official documentation from IBM outlining their trajectory post-2030.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We achieved specific outcomes from using Azul Zulu by reducing our Java licensing and support costs by approximately 70% when compared to our previous Oracle contract."
"One of the best features Azul Zulu offers is its ability to reduce compile time for byte code loading by almost 40 to 50% during our testing."
"We've had no issues with stability."
"I joined this project which had already been underway for approximately six months, and in two months, I refactored the whole project and wrote it, and it is functional."
"The integration between IBM tools and applications is very well executed, and the support from IBM is quite good, providing a solid support structure."
"Starting with version 8, WAS provides a special folder called monitor deployment. Once you put the .war or .ear file in there, it is deployed automatically without human intervention. This greatly helps us in our continuous integration server. Once the deployment binary is ready, we write a script to copy it to that folder and then, voila! The application is up and running and accessible from its context root."
"Network Deployment is the most useful feature for scalability. It has many features within the standard WebSphere Application Server edition."
"WebSphere Application Server is very stable."
"IBM WAS is the backbone for our enterprise content management suite which delivers the primary processes for our customers. Without a good application server, it would be hard to provide a secure layer of midddleware upon which the other applications run. IBM WAS improves the stability of the entire solution and provides a high quality platform for running web-based solutions."
"The scalability of the product is quite good."
"IBM WAS is extremely scalable. It is easy to add additional servers and to divide the load over servers in all kinds of ways."
"They offer good help to help resolve the issue."
 

Cons

"It needs a better update daemon. At this time the process is manual and could be an issue on multiple desktop deployments."
"Improvements for Azul Zulu could include more automated tools for unused code visibility integrated directly into the standard portal to help further optimize our cloud footprints."
"I think Azul Zulu can be improved by always thinking about productivity, as most languages tend to evolve in that direction."
"I gave it a six because, in my situation, for my company and software, it is not able to fully support our needs, and the claims made about the product were very high while the actual delivery was underwhelming, as I felt the salespeople were too aggressive in their commitments."
"The current trend is to move to Liberty because of the portability of its cloud and its Kubernetes, which containerize the application."
"I think in some moments, the security was a little bit more complex to configure when it was delegated to other systems, making it an area where improvements are required."
"In spite of the solution's robustness, it is expensive and a bit difficult to support, which is why companies nowadays tend to use more lightweight products such as Tomcat or cloud versions of the products."
"In the next release of this solution, I would like to see support for the Arabic language."
"IBM WebSphere Application Server hasn't changed much. It's still a heavyweight for any company compared to what you get. Unless your code base is deeply linked with it, I don't think it's a great idea to go with this solution. The current trend is toward modularity and containerization, and given the product's requirements, containerization will be difficult. There is a memory requirement as well."
"The licensing could be improved, and I would like it to give the longevity of the lifespan of the visions. In the next release, I would like to be able to download and extract the files so that I can just use my application server."
"Some things are very difficult to do, so the interface and usage could be more intuitive for those."
"The solution consumes hardware."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"It is very expensive."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"If your application is just a web app that does not need to scale big, you can obtain a single core license of WAS Express edition, which has almost the same features with limited processing cores. If you manage a very big application farm (i.e. need to run 10 or more WAS servers) it is better to get IBM WAS Hypervisor Edition."
"The pricing is a little expensive."
"When you purchase Maximo, you get WebSphere for free."
"My company is on a perpetual or permanent license agreement with IBM WebSphere Application Server. There's also a pay-per-use option, but customers rarely choose that option. Most of the customers are on the perpetual license deal that's all-inclusive. As the license cost is quite expensive, I'm rating it two out of five."
"Room for improvement would only be in the licensing. As with all IBM products the licensing can be complex and expensive. Bargain well and try to get as much discount as possible. Discounts of 85% are possible. Without the discount, I think the product is overrated."
"The licensing cost is 1,000 of euros for a 30-year table."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Construction Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Retailer
9%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise23
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Azul Zulu?
I think Azul Zulu can be improved by always thinking about productivity, as most languages tend to evolve in that direction. I have two projects that I am working on in parallel, one using Angular ...
What is your primary use case for Azul Zulu?
My main use case for Azul Zulu in the current project is developing the archiving and unarchiving system. I use Azul Zulu on the back end when I created a REST API, which I use together with Java S...
What advice do you have for others considering Azul Zulu?
My advice to others who are thinking about using Azul Zulu is to try to explore as much as possible what it offers, getting away from the conventional paradigm. I would rate this review as a nine o...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM WebSphere Application Server?
At Royal Bank, which is a major IBM customer with mainframes and numerous IBM products, they have a specific agreement regarding pricing. The pricing structure for large enterprise customers differ...
What needs improvement with IBM WebSphere Application Server?
IBM WebSphere Application Server is currently at version 9.0.5.23. In recent months, they released fix 23, as they periodically release fixes. Previously, they frequently increased versions, but no...
What is your primary use case for IBM WebSphere Application Server?
I was part of an application where I integrated IBM WebSphere Application Server with Node.js and Blue Prism. I did a lot of REST applications because at my core, I'm a developer. Currently, I&...
 

Also Known As

No data available
WebSphere Application Server
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft, Kyocera, OKI, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, Voya Financial
TalkTalk, Property management group, E.SUN Bank, Ohio National Financial Services, Aviarc, Cincom Systems, FJA-US, D+H, Staples, Michigan Municipal League
Find out what your peers are saying about Azul Zulu vs. IBM WebSphere Application Server and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.