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IBM BPM vs IBM WebSphere Message Broker comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 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

IBM BPM
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (7th), Process Automation (6th)
IBM WebSphere Message Broker
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
16th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Application Infrastructure category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 3.4%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM WebSphere Message Broker is 1.9%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Kamran - PeerSpot reviewer
Has efficient processes and intuitive workflow with many valuable features
You will have access to make any needed changes. Additionally, the review will be published on PeerSpot.com in written or audio format, available to other people. You can stay anonymous if you wish. Notifications and the use of the review are subject to PeerSpot's terms of use, which you can find at PeerSpot.com/TOS. I would give the solution an overall rating of ten out of ten points.
BrajendraKumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers large-sized business information processing with a time-saving setup and impressive stability
I primarily use two previews of the product for Dev and two for QA as part of the production process. Whatever tools our company is using, the cost of a license in IBM WebSphere Message Broker is about 80% of all these software or tools. The message routing capabilities satisfy workflow efficiency. The product supports message formats of XML, JSON, and SSID, which are around 24 KB to 50 KB in size. The solution supports communication protocols like STTP and TCP. Features like DataGraph need to be introduced in IBM WebSphere Message Broker. Some of the clients of our organization are using an outdated version of IBM WebSphere Message Broker for which the vendor doesn't provide direct support anymore. For the aforementioned version, our company professionals can solve the queries on their own without seeking support from IBM. During the installation of a prior version of IBM WebSphere Message Broker, sometimes I have to configure the failovers through the cluster, where issues arise, and I often seek help from the support team. The solution is being used by some medicine companies in our organization that receive sales orders from the EDR or JDE. I would not recommend the product to others as its becoming obsolete and they can rather choose a middleware solution from Amazon or Azure. But I would overall rate the product a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The system integration layer is valuable because this enables an organization to create a single point where all the key organizational master data is held in different IT applications across different functions, that can be accessed and updated."
"It is easy to take a requirement, put it in the code, and deploy it."
"It provides a very robust environment to build an integration framework or workflow patterns that we have. A lot of changes or modifications have been made to this solution over the past few years. The features that they have added this time have helped developers like us to work on the developmental environment and leverage all the capabilities of the tool. This is what I like about this solution."
"For me, the most important feature is the easy-to-use business process dashboard. It's simple to orchestrate business processes, and the interface is clean and intuitive. Once your workflow is designed on paper, it's easy for the business process manager to implement and follow it. Another IBM product that was good in the past is the IBM Case Manager. I haven't used it for three or four years, so I'm unsure if it's still available, but it was quite effective."
"The most valuable features are the integration capabilities - BPM can connect with almost any legacy or advanced system."
"The solution has helped us automate business processes."
"Responsive Portal + Process Federation Server. This set of solutions offers a unified worklist to our customers."
"I like the APIs and the BPM coach is a good tool. But if I had to pick one, it would be the API."
"Integration and mapping are easy, which is a major advantage."
"The transactions and message queuing are the most valuable features of the solution."
"IBM WebSphere Message Broker is one of the best middleware solutions"
"The solution has good integration."
"The most valuable feature of IBM WebSphere Message Broker is the ability to facilitate communication with legacy systems, offering a multitude of great capabilities. For example, if there is a mainframe system in place with a web service serving as the front end. In that case, the solution enables efficient protocol transformations to convert all request payloads into a format that the legacy systems can accept, rendering the integration and transformation processes seamless and highly effective."
"It's reliable for our day-to-day operations, ensuring fast and secure data integration across different systems."
"Message Broker is valuable because most of the applications are using MQ. Even in my current engagement, the few applications which I audit to onboard the bank are using MQ."
"It has many interfaces and you can connect to any backend source that has another format, and convert it to the desired format."
 

Cons

"I hope IBM uses something from IBM Content Navigator to make the interface easier to navigate."
"We care about technology and support because support is very important and a BPM is not easy to implement."
"It is a rather thick stack because you have to have WebSphere skills, IBM BPM skills, and an understanding of how the product runs on WebSphere. A lot of this will start to get a lot easier as they put it in containers, which will allow the platform to manage itself in some regards."
"When you have to integrate files for enterprise applications."
"I would like to see the front-end support improved because it should be fully integrated and supported."
"New users will need at least six months to get comfortable with IBM BPM, at least initially. So, there's a learning curve."
"The engine itself tends to accumulate a lot of data that needs to be cleaned up, and that's the kind of thing that keeps it from, in some scenarios, scaling as much as it needs to. And then, when you're building solutions, if you're not careful to keep the screens from being associated with too much data, if you're going to just do things the way that a lot of people would just assume that they can do, without having experience of having made those mistakes before, it will accumulate a lot of data, and that will cause it to perform very badly."
"Some of the features are not enough for my business. We need to build custom user management for the many end users affected by BPM."
"Technical support is good but they could have a better response time."
"The product's features are not being upgraded or enhanced by the vendor"
"As our business requirements evolve, we require more dynamic capabilities to adapt and scale our services accordingly."
"There is some lag in the GUI. There have been some performance issues and maybe it's because of the application data."
"The solution can add container engines such as docker."
"Technical support is very slow and needs to be improved."
"The installation configuration is quite difficult."
"It is currently a weighty product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price is on the higher side, and it can be improved. Its licensing is on a yearly basis. There are no additional costs."
"It should provide more flexibility to connect with external systems, and there should be in-built services that can be used to integrate with other systems quickly."
"The product is expensive considering the hardware and software costs."
"The pricing is quite high, I would rate it two out of five."
"The solution is expensive since it is an enterprise application."
"The pricing is very high."
"It is pricey."
"Our customers do see ROI. They'll identify some particularly painful or uncoordinated processes to start with, then build out from there, picking off low hanging fruit."
"This product is more expensive than competing products."
"The price is very high and it's the main reason that we are searching for alternatives."
"IBM software can be costly, but having a contract has helped manage and potentially lower costs over time."
"The solution is expensive."
"The solution is expensive."
"IBM products are generally more stable and have more features, but also come at a greater cost."
"The licensing cost of IBM WebSphere Message Broker needs to be reduced"
"I feel with IBM, when you want certain functions or features, you have to continuously purchase add-ons. There are always additional fees."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
29%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better, IBM BPM or IBM Business Automation Workflow?
We researched both IBM solutions and in the end, we chose Business Automation Workflow. IBM BPM has a good user interface and the BPM coach is a helpful tool. The API is very useful in providing en...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM BPM?
Once it is installed, maintaining it is not a big issue.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM WebSphere Message Broker?
IBM software can be costly, but having a contract has helped manage and potentially lower costs over time.
What needs improvement with IBM WebSphere Message Broker?
There could be greater flexibility and agility in service creation for the product. As our business requirements evolve, we require more dynamic capabilities to adapt and scale our services accordi...
What is your primary use case for IBM WebSphere Message Broker?
We use the product for exposing services at the application level, integrating with various architectures like WebSphere, and handling static service creation.
 

Also Known As

WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
WebSphere Message Broker
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Barclays, EmeriCon, Banca Popolare di Milano, CST Consulting, KeyBank, KPMG, Prolifics, Sandhata Technologies Ltd., State of Alaska, Humana S.A., Saperion, esciris, Banco Espirito Santo
WestJet, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Sharp Corporation, Michelin Tire
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM BPM vs. IBM WebSphere Message Broker and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.