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IBM Integration Bus vs IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs webMethods.io 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM Integration Bus is 22.0%, up from 21.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM WebSphere Message Broker is 3.9%, down from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of webMethods.io is 10.9%, up from 9.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

Featured Reviews

Ashraf Siddiqui - PeerSpot reviewer
Helpful for complex integrations because it has tools and functionality to integrate with other systems
Everything needs to be improved. As far as integration and the cloud are concerned, things are moving to the cloud side. When you use Kubernetes and similar technologies, IBM Integration Bus doesn't greatly facilitate these environments. Maybe I don't know enough about that, but I feel that when it comes to the DevOps environment, the tool needs to be deployed on production in a way that's just like pods. Cloud integration needs to be more facilitated with the DevOps environment. This IBM technology needs to adapt because in the recent world, in the real world, we see that everything is just a cloud pod. Whenever you need to scale anything, you just put some cloud and pod and improve it, make any server and deploy it. But in IBM Integration Bus, there is a problem because we can't do this as easily. In short, IBM needs to more emphasize or more integrate with the cloud environments as well, similar to DevOps. There are limitations in IBM Integration Bus when it comes to DevOps.
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.
Michele Illiano - PeerSpot reviewer
Can function as an ESB along with the core product, with decent integration of message protocols
I have noticed that webMethods ActiveTransfer has had problems when handling large files. For example, when we receive (and perform operations on) files that are larger than about 16 MB, the software starts losing performance. This is why, for most customers who have to deal with big files, I suggest that they use a product other than ActiveTransfer. I would like to note that this problem mainly concerns large files that undergo extra operations, such assigning, unassigning, or file translation. When these operations take place on large files, ActiveTransfer will use up a lot of resources. Within the product itself, I also believe that there is room for improvement in terms of optimization when it comes to general performance. I suspect that the issues underlying poor optimization are because it is all developed in Java. That is, all the objects and functions that are used need to be better organized, especially when it comes to big files but also overall. webMethods ActiveTransfer was born as an ESB to handle messages, and these messages were typically very short, i.e. small in size. A message is data that you have to send to an application, where it must be received in real-time and possibly processed or acknowledged elsewhere in the system as well. So, because it was initially designed for small messages, it struggles with performance when presented with very large files. All this to say, I suggest that they have an engineer reevaluate the architecture of the product in order to consider cases where large files are sent, and not only small ones. As for new features, compared to other products in the market, I think Software AG should be more up to date when it comes to extra protocol support, especially those protocols that other solutions have included in their products by default. Whenever we need to add an unsupported protocol, we have to go through the effort of custom development in order to work with it. Also, all the banks are obligated to migrate to the new standards, and big companies are all handling translations and operating their libraries with the new protocol formats. But webMethods ActiveTransfer doesn't seem to be keeping up with this evolution. Thus, they should aim to be more compliant in future, along the lines of their competitors such as IBM and Primeur.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features of the IBM Integration Bus are the flexibility to easily integrate with other solutions, such as SAP or any other vendors."
"One of the most valuable features is App Connect Enterprise makes it possible to deploy it in the OpenShift cluster, which is very good. Overall the solution is very flexible."
"It is very straightforward. It is very user-friendly integration."
"From a performance point of view, it's very good and it doesn't need very much in terms of CPU resources."
"IBM support is fantastic and quick."
"The error handling and monitoring functionalities of IBM Integration Bus are very good."
"The features I have found most valuable in this solution are transformation and routing."
"IBM Integration Bus's best feature is integration."
"It is a scalable solution...The setup is easy."
"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 has many interfaces and you can connect to any backend source that has another format, and convert it to the desired format."
"Performance-wise, this solution is really good."
"The documentation, performance, stability and scalability of the tool are valuable."
"Straightforward development and deployment."
"The solution has good integration."
"It's reliable for our day-to-day operations, ensuring fast and secure data integration across different systems."
"The Software AG Designer has been great. It's very intuitive."
"Currently, we're using this solution for the integration server which helps us to integrate with the mainframe."
"The tool supports gRPC."
"Clients choose webMethods.io API for its intuitive interface, promoting seamless interaction and quick communication between systems."
"The most valuable feature of webMethods Integration Server is all the capabilities it provides. We leverage most of the features, that they have offered to us. Our vendor has made some additional features on top of the webMethods Integration Server and we use all the features together."
"It integrates well with various servers."
"webMethods Trading Networks is a stable solution."
"Oracle's self-service capabilities, of which we make extensive use, is the most valuable feature."
 

Cons

"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"The solution is too expensive for smaller companies."
"Its licensing or subscription model should be improved for more flexible adoption. There should also be more ease of use."
"The solution needs instruction or guidance."
"IBM does not support orchestration, which is how they designed it, and other BPM tools in the market support orchestration. If they merged the BPM capability into this product, then it would be a better solution."
"They need to come up with Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS). It should also have a feature for integrating with those applications that are on the cloud."
"IBM Integration Bus isn't particularly user-friendly and has a big learning curve."
"There are a couple of things I want improved, but I think they have already touched upon all those things in the most recent version. I'm not using the most recent version—I use a version older than the most recent—but I'm sure that if I looked into and explored it, I would see more support on the CI/CD and more support for unit testing automation. I've read that they released all these things in the new version of App Connect. Once I explore the new version of this tool, I'll probably have a better idea of suggested improvements."
"Stability and pricing are areas with shortcomings that need improvement."
"The product's features are not being upgraded or enhanced by the vendor"
"There is some lag in the GUI. There have been some performance issues and maybe it's because of the application data."
"I know that Message Broker was a very tightly copied product with another IBM product, that is, IBM MQ. I would like to have a little bit more decoupling from the IBM MQ because it should not be a prerequisite for IBM WebSphere Message Broker usage."
"The solution can add container engines such as docker."
"As our business requirements evolve, we require more dynamic capabilities to adapt and scale our services accordingly."
"It is currently a weighty product."
"The installation configuration is quite difficult."
"The orchestration is not as good as it should be."
"Scalability and connectors to different cloud applications is lacking."
"The deployment should be simplified."
"The logging capability has room for improvement. That way, we could keep a history of all the transactions. It would be helpful to be able to get to that without having to build a standalone solution to do so."
"Technical support is an area where they can improve."
"Business monitoring (BAM) needs improvement because the analytics and prediction module very often has performance problems."
"wM SAP Adapter User Guide - Example, like Message Broker setup was unclear, leading to issues during Testing and we had refer the internet forums to understand that there is a Message Broker Cleanup utility and that needs to be setup as well."
"webMethods Integration Server needs to add more adapters."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not cheap. It has its cost. It is one of the high-cost solutions."
"The pricing of the solution is high."
"The pricing could be improved to make it more competitive."
"Support costs are high compared to the competition. Otherwise, the support is good."
"The price of the license could be cheaper."
"IBM Integration Bus solution is expensive and this is one of the reasons we are looking for an alternative, such as MuleSoft."
"Pricing is on par with its competition."
"The licensing model of IBM Integration Bus is good. It's a yearly subscription. However, the price is depending on the model that you choose. If it's a Cloud version, then you can pay per month or you can pay it annually upfront. There are three-year options available, but it depends on what deployment you have."
"The licensing cost of IBM WebSphere Message Broker needs to be reduced"
"IBM software can be costly, but having a contract has helped manage and potentially lower costs over time."
"This product is more expensive than competing products."
"The solution is expensive."
"The solution is expensive."
"The price is very high and it's the main reason that we are searching for alternatives."
"IBM products are generally more stable and have more features, but also come at a greater cost."
"I feel with IBM, when you want certain functions or features, you have to continuously purchase add-ons. There are always additional fees."
"Based on our team discussions and feedback, it is pretty costly because they charge us for each transmission."
"webMethods Integration Server is expensive, and there's no fixed price on it because it has a point pricing model. You can negotiate, which makes it interesting."
"There are no hidden costs in addition to the standard licensing fees for webMethods. For corporate organizations, it's a very cheap or fairly priced product, but for growing or small businesses, it's quite expensive. These businesses would probably need to consider an enterprise services bus at some point. Thus, from a pricing point, it closes out non-cooperate businesses."
"Currently, the licensing solution for this product is pretty straightforward. The way that Software AG has moved in their licensing agreements is very understandable. It is very easy for you to see where things land. Like most vendors today, they are transaction based. Therefore, just having a good understanding of how many transactions that you are doing a year would be very wise. Luckily, there are opportunities to work with the vendor to get a good understanding of how many transactions you have and what is the right limit for you to fall under."
"I don’t have much idea about prices, but webMethods API Portal is not something cheaper."
"Sometimes we don't have a very clear idea what the licensing will entail at first, because it can be very customizable. On one hand, this can be a good thing, because it can be tailored to a specific customer's needs. But on the other hand it can also be an issue when some customer asks, "What's the cost?" and we can't yet give them an accurate answer."
"I am not involved in the licensing side of things."
"Always plan five years ahead and don’t jeopardize the quality of your project by dropping items from the bill of materials."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Migration from IBM Integration Bus to Mulesoft ESB for a large enterprise tech services company
I was previously part of the Oracle SOA/OSB development team. In my current capacity I architected solutions using Mu...
IBM Integration Bus vs Mule ESB - which to choose?
Our team ran a comparison of IBM’s Integration Bus vs. Mule ESB in order to determine what sort of ESB software was t...
What do you like most about IBM Integration Bus?
The message queue, like, message queue connectors. Then they have a built in connectors for most of the systems, like...
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 evol...
What do you like most about Built.io Flow?
The tool helps us to streamline data integration. Its BPM is very strong and powerful. The solution helps us manage d...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Built.io Flow?
webMethods.io is expensive. We have multiple components, and you need to pay for each of them.
What needs improvement with Built.io Flow?
webMethods.io needs to incorporate ChatGPT to enhance user experience. It can offer a customized user experience.
 

Also Known As

IBM WebSphere ESB
WebSphere Message Broker
Built.io Flow, webMethods Integration Server, webMethods Trading Networks, webMethods ActiveTransfer, webMethods.io API
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Salesbox, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Road Buddy, Swiss Federal Railways, Electricity Supply Board, The Hartree Centre, ESB Networks
WestJet, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Sharp Corporation, Michelin Tire
Cisco, Agralogics, Dreamforce, Cables & Sensors, Sacramento Kings
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM, Salesforce, Oracle and others in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). Updated: April 2025.
849,963 professionals have used our research since 2012.