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IBM Integration Bus vs IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs WSO2 Enterprise Integrator 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 September 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM Integration Bus is 21.0%, down from 22.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM WebSphere Message Broker is 4.1%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WSO2 Enterprise Integrator is 5.6%, up from 5.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Integration Bus21.0%
WSO2 Enterprise Integrator5.6%
IBM WebSphere Message Broker4.1%
Other69.3%
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.
Ritesh_Shah - PeerSpot reviewer
Decreases the development timeframe and costs
The main issue with the product is pricing. It uses core-based pricing for WSO2 Enterprise Integrator and API Manager. It would be best if you had APIM by default. It provides many connectors for easy integration with third-party systems. Often, customers decide to develop using open-source tools like Spring Boot if there aren't many connectors required to avoid increasing costs. They'll develop this way and then deploy using APIM, the bare minimum needed. It is mainly required for very complicated setups with many connectors. In the implementations I've seen, people often used open-source tools because there weren't many third-party systems involved—just their organization's own systems. From WSO2 Enterprise Integrator, I expect them to bring up more and more connectors in the future. That's the main expectation. Having more connectors in various areas will help us when discussing new requirements. I don't have any specific use case right now, so I can't name a particular connector. But, as new technologies emerge, the relevant connectors should be there for those. WSO2 Enterprise Integrator mainly helps with the integration part, which can be simplified only if you have relevant connectors for whatever you're doing.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's easy to develop things, and it's easy to handle."
"The error handling and monitoring functionalities of IBM Integration Bus are very good."
"Web interface, REST API for viewing services, admin, stats, and deployment are premium features, which makes IIB stand among its competition."
"We use IBM Integration Bus for document conversions."
"The integration with other tools is excellent. It integrates well with batch issues."
"Content is easily infiltrated in the eclipse infrastructure."
"The product is usually very easy to deploy."
"Having the solution come from IBM you know you are receiving a product of quality in components and in the services, it is very good."
"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."
"Performance-wise, this solution is really good."
"Straightforward development and deployment."
"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."
"Integration and mapping are easy, which is a major advantage."
"We only use the basic features, but the most valuable one for us is the Publish-subscribe pattern."
"The installation process is easy."
"The solution's customer service is good."
"The productivity is the most valuable feature. It is very easy to write remediations."
"WSO2's analytics capability is good, considering the ELC support they provide."
"It's a consolidated product. It works and it does its job pretty well."
"The customer service executives are very responsive."
"It's a very complete product. It allows us to network security and add more layers of security to the system."
"I like the user-friendly system and development of the service-oriented architecture."
 

Cons

"The price could be better. It would also be better if they simplified the code."
"Technical support is something that should be better."
"I would rate the support from IBM Integration Bus a seven out of ten. They are very helpful but sometimes it takes too long for them to respond."
"I can't say that there is any improvement I’m looking for. I’m new and haven’t connected with all features. For all drawbacks that were in the old version, I think they have been solved. The scalability needs improvement."
"I would like to be able to build an Integration Bus cluster that is active-active."
"Recently, there was a lot of instability when selecting the solution they needed for testing."
"It needs improvement in terms of technical support as well as in terms of integration of data mining. I am not convinced about many things in this solution, such as the conversion of the DFDL or copybook file, which is the conversion from a text file to XML. It is very complex. They should also provide more information about this solution in the IBM Knowledge Center. I can get a lot of information from the IBM Knowledge Center about DataStage, but I don't get that much information about IBM Integration Bus. There is hardly any information even on the internet and various channels such as YouTube. They can provide good step-by-step documentation based on a company's requirements. It would be really helpful. My company is mainly looking for data mining and communicating with multiple servers. IBM Integration Bus is good for communicating with multiple servers, but it needs improvement for XML conversion and data mining. We have a lot of old systems that use XML."
"Its licensing or subscription model should be improved for more flexible adoption. There should also be more ease of use."
"Technical support is very slow and needs to be improved."
"Today I probably wouldn't go for Message Broker because of the cost structure, support, and the whole ecosystem around IBM."
"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."
"Technical support is good but they could have a better response time."
"The solution can add container engines such as docker."
"The images and size of the containers are too big and I think that they should be more lightweight."
"The installation configuration is quite difficult."
"The customization can be a bit difficult."
"I would like to see better documentation for the open-source version."
"You cannot include the validation of XPath."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"They should introduce better pricing for small companies."
"The server is very specific and it is very difficult to get experience with it."
"If I have to buy software, then it becomes expensive for me."
"They should release upgrades more frequently."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the IBM Integration Bus is expensive. If you compare the price to the cloud version you can purchase what you need but the on-premise version price is flat."
"The solution requires a license and is very expensive here in India."
"It is not cheap. It has its cost. It is one of the high-cost solutions."
"IBM is expensive."
"The price of the license could be cheaper."
"IBM Integration Bus is expensive. There are cheaper products in the marketplace."
"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 pricing could be improved to make it more competitive."
"The solution is expensive."
"This product is more expensive than competing products."
"I feel with IBM, when you want certain functions or features, you have to continuously purchase add-ons. There are always additional fees."
"IBM products are generally more stable and have more features, but also come at a greater cost."
"IBM software can be costly, but having a contract has helped manage and potentially lower costs over time."
"The licensing cost of IBM WebSphere Message Broker needs to be reduced"
"The solution is expensive."
"The price is very high and it's the main reason that we are searching for alternatives."
"The solution costs about 20,000 or 30,000 euros per year, per instance."
"It is a low-cost solution."
"The open-source, unsupported version is available free of charge."
"The cost is better than IBM Cloud Pak."
"I rate the product price a six on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"The pricing of WSO2 Enterprise Integrator for enterprise subscriptions can be considered expensive, especially from the perspective of someone who prefers open-source software."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
6%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise47
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise11
 

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 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 WebSph...
What do you like most about WSO2 Enterprise Integrator?
WSO2's analytics capability is good, considering the ELC support they provide.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WSO2 Enterprise Integrator?
The product has reasonable and competitive pricing for enterprise customers. It is expensive for small businesses esp...
What needs improvement with WSO2 Enterprise Integrator?
Something that could be improved in WSO2 Enterprise Integrator is that the problem is not a lack of capability or fun...
 

Also Known As

IBM WebSphere ESB
WebSphere Message Broker
No data available
 

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
West
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