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IBM Integration Bus vs Mule ESB vs TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus 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 June 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM Integration Bus is 22.1%, up from 21.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Mule ESB is 20.1%, down from 22.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus is 3.6%, up from 3.6% 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.
PurbayanSaha - PeerSpot reviewer
Has API-led architecture and provides a unique, user-friendly, and scalable architecture for hosting APIs
There's room for improvement in multi-file transfer functionality. It's not convenient when using MuleSoft, and it should have better capability for handling large amounts of data. For example, applications like GoAnywhere can handle huge chunks of data, so the tool should also have something to facilitate that aspect of integration.
Mustofa Yonus - PeerSpot reviewer
A robust product that needs to improve the functionality it offers related to API lifecycle management
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a six to seven out of ten. My company consists of around 7000 employees, and we use the solution as an integrated service in around 300 to 400 systems, both internally and externally, making it a huge number. Our company uses the solution every minute and every second, and we can't function without it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"like the API lead integration, which is more focused, and I also like real-time integration."
"It is a stable solution."
"I found all features valuable. There are a lot of connectors."
"The product is a user-customized tool so that you can adjust it to your specific needs pretty well with little trouble."
"I use the integration of Kafka and the message flow, which is really good. It is also good for moving any file from one location to another. Using IBM Integration Bus in the data stage is pretty simple. You can see the preview and other things. The MQ server integrated with IBM Integration Bus is really great. I don't have to do a lot of configuration from that side. It is really good."
"The integration with other tools is excellent. It integrates well with batch issues."
"We use IBM Integration Bus for document conversions."
"The features I have found most valuable in this solution are transformation and routing."
"It's open source, and there are a lot of community resources. Mule ESB makes it easy to connect to other software applications."
"It is easily deployable and manageable. It has microservices-based architecture, which means that you can deploy the solution based on your needs, and you can manage the solution very easily."
"I like that Mule ESB provides fast and good technical support."
"The architecture based on events has several connectors which allow integration from external and internal applications of the company."
"The solution's drag-and-drop interface and data viewer helped us quite a lot."
"Everything runs in Java, which is a useful feature."
"The most valuable feature of Mule ESB is data transformation, i.e. our interacting with different systems and orchestrating for our business needs."
"I am impressed with the product's connectors and scalability."
"The most valuable feature is that it is a service-oriented architecture, SOA-based."
"The stability of this solution is excellent."
"The solution is very stable."
"The product’s most valuable feature is stability."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that the performance is robust."
"The technology is really easy to learn."
"The GUI and IDE features of this solution are easy to work with and to develop. We find application management easy using this solution. It is a stable product"
"The most attractive and beneficial feature is the ease of development."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in providing more specific error messages and error criteria."
"Its documentation is currently lacking. We have different environments where we use our configuration services, but we are not able to find documentation about how to deploy the local code to the server and how to set it up on a server level. I would like more documents from IBM that explain which variables should be in your machine while building a project, and when you deploy the code into the server, what should be their values. There are some variable values. I could not find such documentation. While working on a project, I developed the code on a local machine, and while deploying the code to our test environment, I made a couple of mistakes. We had to change some values at the server level, but we couldn't find any documentation regarding this, which made the task difficult."
"The solution needs to simplify its documentation, such as the user and operation manuals, to make them even easier to understand."
"I would like to be able to build an Integration Bus cluster that is active-active."
"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."
"The next versions are moving toward container use. It would be a shame to make the product highly complex just to support one pattern of deployment. It is my hope that IBM continues to focus on practical functionality that is simple and cost-effective."
"Performance can be an issue sometimes. The tool occasionally crashes due to memory-related problems. We've reported these issues to IBM, and they are actively working on improving the tooling experience."
"We have come across many customer complaints about the excessive time it takes for IBM to provide customer and technical support."
"It needs more samples. Also, the dependency on Maven should be removed."
"In India, particularly in the banking sector, clients do not prefer cloud solutions due to regulatory and compliance requirements."
"Mule ESB isn't as secure as IBM. Financial companies go with IBM for that reason."
"In the next release, I would like to see improvement in the generator for the DataWeave language so that it's a little more graphic."
"There are some issues with both stability and scalability."
"The stability could be improved."
"We would like to have a built-in logging framework in which we can do auditing."
"It should have some amount of logging."
"I don't like the product's API management platform, as it doesn't offer users enough functionality to help with API lifecycle management, making it a product that is way behind its competitors."
"The initial setup process could be easier."
"Issues with the support, the fees, and the termination of the professional services are reasons we are looking for other solutions."
"Migration to cloud solutions or products should be made convenient, transparent, and easily understandable."
"The intermediate version that we are using has stability issues. These stability issues should be resolved, but it seems like TIBCO is not focusing on resolving these issues. The resolution timelines are quite high even for high-priority incidents. Its price should be lower. Its licensing cost is considerably high as compared to other ESBs."
"If TIBCO could be able to sort the size of their base image in the Container edition, it would be really marvelous. Right now it's around 299 MB. We'd really want it to reduce to a few MBs."
"In the next release, there should be improvements made to the API manager."
"The stability of their latest version is not on par with their classic version 5.X."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution requires a license and is very expensive here in India."
"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 price of the license could be cheaper."
"The maintenance and support of the product are very expensive."
"IBM Integration Bus is expensive. There are cheaper products in the marketplace."
"IBM is expensive."
"The price of this product could be lower."
"The price is reasonable considering the features we receive."
"Regarding licensing and pricing, I find it somewhat flexible. They are more flexible with larger customers compared to small and medium ones, as their licensing model depends on ports and other factors. Large customers benefit from more flexibility in implementation and renewal compared to smaller ones."
"The pricing must be improved."
"You will not get any support from Mule ESB's team for the tool's community edition...You can get support with the licensed version of Mule ESB."
"The licensing is yearly, and there are additional fees for services."
"This is expensive. In my next project, we had to go to other vendor."
"Plan your licensing model (cloud or on-premises or hybrid) that will allow seamless integration with new partners."
"The price of the Mule ESB commercial version is expensive. However, they have a free community version."
"Most of the challenges that I had with this solution were for smaller customers. There is not a good licensing model or pricing model. It is more expensive than other solutions, and that's the downside of MuleSoft. I had to be creative to be able to sell it to the business, but we did. This is something they have to work on because for large companies, it's affordable, but for small and medium businesses, it's very hard to sell."
"The price is on the higher side. For the same price, if I go to the previous version, I would have got a lot more capacity with similar kinds of features."
"Price-wise, I would say that the product is expensive."
"Its licensing cost is considerably high as compared to other ESBs."
"The licensing cost is a challenge for quite a few customers."
"When it comes to cost, TIBCO is much more competitive than a product like Pega."
"The biggest issue disadvantage of TIBCO is that it is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
11%
Retailer
8%
Manufacturing Company
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 do you like most about Mule ESB?
The solution's drag-and-drop interface and data viewer helped us quite a lot.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Mule ESB?
Pricing is higher compared to other solutions, and the licensing costs are high.
What needs improvement with Mule ESB?
I cannot say that installation with Kubernetes ( /products/kubernetes-reviews ) needs to be improved to be less trick...
What do you like most about TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus?
The most valuable feature of the solution is that the performance is robust.
What needs improvement with TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus?
I don't like the product's API management platform, as it doesn't offer users enough functionality to help with API l...
 

Also Known As

IBM WebSphere ESB
No data available
ActiveMatrix Service Bus
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Salesbox, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Road Buddy, Swiss Federal Railways, Electricity Supply Board, The Hartree Centre, ESB Networks
Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot
Colonial Life, CTBC Bank, New World Mobility, QUALCOMM, Swisscom Mobile, T-Mobile USA, Tata Teleservices, Telecom Italia
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM, Salesforce, Oracle and others in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). Updated: May 2025.
858,469 professionals have used our research since 2012.