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IBM App Connect vs Qlik Compose 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

IBM App Connect
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Integration (13th)
Qlik Compose
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (34th)
 

Featured Reviews

Emirhan Guven - PeerSpot reviewer
Transforms data efficiently and navigates licensing challenges with ease
The transition between version 12 and version 13 presents some challenges. While version 12 had approximately 10 features, version 13 includes around 200 features with cloud platform compatibility. The learning curve for developers moving from version 12 to 13 could be smoother. When using new components, better context explanations would be beneficial. In version 13, accessing new features requires connecting through a web browser, which can be challenging to understand. The explanation of new features could be more user-friendly.
Sahil Taneja - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy matching and reconciliation of data
The initial setup was easy for the data warehousing concept. But for a person who is new to ETL and warehousing concepts, it may take some time. If someone is familiar with these concepts, they could understand and learn the tool quickly. However, compared to other tools, the UI is complex. It would be helpful to have a better UI and documentation for new users. As of now, there is a challenge in learning the Compose tool for new users altogether. Qlik Compose was deployed on-premises. But the servers, like the SQL servers were maintained on the cloud—the managed instances.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There is a friendly interface for configuration, and integration is made easy."
"I would say that the most valuable feature is the array of connectors and integration tools."
"I like the adapters. The adapters help us achieve scalability. If you want to connect to SAP, there's an adapter. Salesforce? There's an adapter. You want to connect to another system? There's likely an adapter for that."
"It's stable to use, connect with the cloud, and to deploy."
"We use IBM App Connect for the integration between the applications."
"I recommend IBM App Connect Enterprise to everyone."
"It can handle API conversions with mapping and transformation rules, simplifying the development process."
"It has an efficient design flow."
"I like modeling and code generation. It has become a pretty handy tool because of its short ideation to delivery time. From the time you decide you are modeling a data warehouse, and once you finish the modeling, it generates all the code, generates all the tables. All you have to do is tick a few things, and you can produce a fully functional warehouse. I also like that they have added all the features I have asked for over four years."
"There were many valuable features, such as extracting any data to put in the cloud. For example, Qlik was able to gather data from SAP and extract SAP data from the platforms."
"It can scale."
"The technical support is very good. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"I have found it to be a very good, stable, and strong product."
"Qlik Compose is good enough. It is user-friendly and intuitive."
"One of the most valuable features was the ability to integrate multiple source systems that mainly used structured IDBMS versions."
"It's a stable solution."
 

Cons

"It is not easy to deploy. It requires someone with a high level of knowledge in the solution to deploy it, not just anyone can do it."
"The product should improve its support."
"They reply in one or two hours at most, but they could be better."
"IBM needs to enhance and have a stronger offering for the event streaming part because this is the future needed for the containerization and the new integration requirement."
"Plugins for the repositories are difficult to find."
"IBM App Connect is scalable. From the administration side, they need to improve the RBAC model, as well as the clustering of this product. It will be good if we can start up the cluster, via IBM Connect Console. Some other products like MuleSoft, are providing this type of administration. MuleSoft is easy to use and user friendly."
"Finding developers for the product is difficult since it is a niche solution. I know the OpenShift environment is running well for the microservice environment. We had some issues with the other environment we tried to implement. It can be easily implemented internally, but we have some problems in practice."
"IBM App Connect should improve security features."
"It could enhance its capabilities in the realm of self-service options as currently, it is more suited for individuals with technical proficiency who can create pages using it."
"There could be more customization options."
"For more complex work, we are not using Qlik Compose because it cannot handle very high volumes at the moment. It needs the same batching capabilities that other ETL tools have. We can't batch the data into small chunks when transforming large amounts of data. It tries to do everything in one shot and that's where it fails."
"The solution has room for improvement in the ETL. They have an ETL, but when it comes to the monitoring portion, Qlik Compose doesn't provide a feature for monitoring."
"It would be better if the first level of technical support were a bit more technically knowledgeable to solve the problem. I think they could also improve the injection of custom scripts. It is pretty difficult to add additional scripts. If the modeling doesn't give you what you want, and you want to change the script generated by the modeling, it is a bit more challenging than in most other products. It is very good with standard form type systems, but if you get a more complicated data paradigm, it tends to struggle with transforming that into a model."
"There is some scope for improvement around the documentation, and a better UI would definitely help."
"When processing data from certain tables with a large volume of data, we encounter significant delays. For instance, when dealing with around one million records, it typically takes three to four hours. To address this, I aim to implement performance improvements across all tables, ensuring swift processing similar to those that are currently complete within seconds. The performance issue primarily arises when we analyze the inserts and updates from the source, subsequently dropping the table. While new insertions are handled promptly, updates are processed slowly, leading to performance issues. Despite consulting our Qlik vendors, they were unable to pinpoint the exact cause of this occurrence. Consequently, I am seeking ways to optimize performance within Qlik Compose, specifically concerning updates."
"My issues with the solution's stability are owing to the fact that it has certain bugs causing issues in some functionalities that should be working."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Initially, App Connect was quite expensive because the cost was based on the number of processors we used. However, it's now based on containers, which means we can be more specific about our consumption and get a better price."
"The price could be better."
"It is very expensive if we want to scale."
"The cost depends upon the consumer."
"IBM App Connect's pricing is high compared to other products."
"The solution's pricing isn't cheap, but you can get good discounts based on your competitive deal."
"The licensing cost for IBM App Connect is very high."
"App Connect is not cheap."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is very expensive, I rate the solution a six."
"While they outperform Tableau, there's room for improvement in Qlik's pricing structures, especially for corporate clients like us."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM App Connect?
I like the adapters. The adapters help us achieve scalability. If you want to connect to SAP, there's an adapter. Salesforce? There's an adapter. You want to connect to another system? There's like...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM App Connect?
Configuration time varies by implementation. For insurance companies with simple JDBC connections, the process is straightforward. However, companies requiring multiple configurations for ODBC, JDB...
What is your primary use case for IBM App Connect?
I am a developer specializing in IBM App Connect. We have a customer interested in comparing ESB tools, such as webMethods, which was previously owned by Software AG company before IBM acquired the...
Which ETL tool would you recommend to populate data from OLTP to OLAP?
There are two products I know about * TimeXtender : Microsoft based, Transformation logic is quiet good and can easily be extended with T-SQL , Has a semantic layer that generates metat data for cu...
What do you like most about Qlik Compose?
The most valuable is its excellence as a graphical data representation tool and the versatility it offers, especially with drill-down capabilities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qlik Compose?
While they outperform Tableau, there's room for improvement in Qlik's pricing structures, especially for corporate clients like us.
 

Also Known As

IBM Cast Iron
Compose, Attunity Compose
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

United Way of Allegheny County, Saint-Gobain CPS, Ricoh, SunTrust Banks Inc.
Poly-Wood
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM App Connect vs. Qlik Compose and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,484 professionals have used our research since 2012.