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IBM Integration Bus vs TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 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 Integration Bus
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
70
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM Integration Bus is 20.4%, down from 22.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus is 3.9%, up from 3.5% 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 Bus20.4%
TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus3.9%
Other75.7%
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.
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

"IBM Integration Bus' most valuable features are its performance, fast and easy development, and easy support."
"Facilitates communication between parties and legacy systems."
"The message queue feature is very valuable."
"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."
"We've been using IBM Integration Bus for seven years to create a service-oriented architecture in our bank and implement SOAR infrastructure using this tool. It helps us with internal services for core banking and different digital channels. We also use it to expose our services to other banks and companies and consume services from outside our bank using proxy servers."
"IBM Integration Bus is a very strong tool."
"Easy to understand documentation with a huge list of examples and tutorials."
"The most valuable features of the IBM Integration Bus are flexibility. It's also an alternative for integrating it with other projects, which we are not ready at this time to do, such as switching to tunnels. The tunnels would be used with other partners to make sure everything is secured."
"The solution is very stable."
"It's very stable and reliable."
"The most valuable features are the monitoring, ease of use, and easy to understand development GUI."
"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"
"TIBCO has the platform in terms of speed and ease of use."
"It is easy to develop. It has a very wide range of features. The older versions are very stable, and there are no issues with the product."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that the performance is robust."
"The most valuable feature is that it is a service-oriented architecture, SOA-based."
 

Cons

"I would like to be able to run and install this solution on different platforms."
"Licensing is too high. It is quite expensive."
"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."
"The product could be improved by including more resources on SQL."
"They could integrate AI technologies with the product. Additionally, ongoing developments and enhancements in integration technologies could be beneficial."
"We decided to move away from IBM Integration Bus for IT technical refreshments."
"Session management can sometimes hand forcing server reboots."
"The password settings need improvement."
"Migration to cloud solutions or products should be made convenient, transparent, and easily understandable."
"In the next release, there should be improvements made to the API manager."
"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."
"Issues with the support, the fees, and the termination of the professional services are reasons we are looking for other solutions."
"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."
"Our version does not have cloud capabilities."
"The solution is very expensive when you use multiple components, it would b better if this could be reduced."
"In the configuration, where we need to customize, it takes more time that we expect it to, ideally."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing could be improved to make it more competitive."
"IBM Integration Bus itself is prices fair but App-Connect is a bit expensive which we use in conjunction with it."
"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."
"Pricing is on par with its competition."
"IBM Integration Bus is expensive."
"Support costs are high compared to the competition. Otherwise, the support is good."
"The price of this product could be lower."
"IBM Integration Bus is expensive. There are cheaper products in the marketplace."
"When it comes to cost, TIBCO is much more competitive than a product like Pega."
"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."
"The biggest issue disadvantage of TIBCO is that it is expensive."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
16%
Retailer
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
 

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 MuleSoft Anypoint Platform on cloud / on-premises and hybrid modes and on PCE/RTF ...
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 the best fit for our organization. Ultimately we decided to choose IBM Integratio...
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 SAP, oracle database, and this Civil connector is there. Of course, we have thi...
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 lifecycle management, making it a product that is way behind its competitors. The...
 

Also Known As

IBM WebSphere ESB
ActiveMatrix Service Bus
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Salesbox, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Road Buddy, Swiss Federal Railways, Electricity Supply Board, The Hartree Centre, ESB Networks
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 Integration Bus vs. TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
870,697 professionals have used our research since 2012.