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IBM MQ vs Redis comparison

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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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.1
IBM MQ is valued for reliability and cost savings, with returns within two years despite unclear direct financial impact.
Sentiment score
7.3
Redis boosts performance and reduces costs, enhancing API latency and productivity while allowing focus on feature development.
It's a product which integrates the external systems with internal systems or among the systems themselves, making it an essential technology component required to integrate multiple systems.
Dev lead at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
We reduced the database read load by around 30 to 40 percent and improved API response time by 20 to 30 percent, specifically for frequently accessed endpoints.
SDE 2 at Virtusa
We have seen a positive return on investment from using Redis, mainly through improved application performance, reduced database load, and lower operational overhead.
Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.9
IBM MQ support is responsive with quick issue resolution, but some users experience delays in accessing skilled assistance.
Sentiment score
6.4
Redis users rarely need support due to stability, relying on documentation and community, with mixed experiences reported.
We cannot hold on to the project for a long time just to wait for IBM to fix the issues.
Dev lead at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
The response time for IBM MQ support could be better because when we are using IBM MQ and something goes wrong, support is required as the resource availability of the IBM product is very limited.
Senior System Analyst at Thakral
With containerized flavors of these products, we are having a tough time dealing with PMRs because the versions are new to IBM.
Software Engineer IV at Royal Cyber Inc.
By simply referring to their documentation, we have been able to fix our bugs and general issues.
Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Since Redis is quite stable and well-documented, we have not needed much support, but when required, the response has been helpful.
SDE 2 at Virtusa
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
IBM MQ is scalable and suitable for enterprises, though some note challenges with modernization and automation compared to cloud-native solutions.
Sentiment score
7.8
Redis excels in scalability and efficiency, handling high traffic with clustering and sharding, benefiting enterprise application demands.
IBM MQ handles many thousands of messages in a second, indicating good scalability.
Senior Software Test Analyst at CoCre8 Technology Solutions
In our environment, we do not have horizontal scaling for IBM MQ, but as demand increases, we would just vertically scale it.
Software Engineer IV at Royal Cyber Inc.
We've got 12 VMs running, and it's very easy to scale.
Enterprise Technical Leader at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The in-memory architecture provides consistently low-latency access even as data access patterns and request volume increase.
Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Data migration and changes to application-side configurations are challenging due to the lack of automatic migration tools in a non-clustered legacy system.
Data Engineer at a photography company with 1,001-5,000 employees
With features such as clustering and replication, it can handle high traffic and a large database very effectively.
SDE 2 at Virtusa
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
IBM MQ is praised for stability, reliability, efficient message handling, and performance across complex environments despite occasional external issues.
Sentiment score
7.9
Redis is lauded for its stability, reliable caching performance, and robust architecture, supported by strong community and managed services.
We have never had any downtime or crashes since it's been running.
Senior Software Test Analyst at CoCre8 Technology Solutions
The transaction is always guaranteed with IBM MQ, which is the main reason I have been working with it for fifteen years while dealing with financial transactions or messages.
Software Engineer IV at Royal Cyber Inc.
Otherwise, they're completely stable.
Enterprise Technical Leader at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Redis has consistently provided fast and predictable performance, particularly for caching and high-frequency data access scenarios.
Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Redis is fairly stable.
Data Engineer at a photography company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

IBM MQ users seek enhanced security, cloud integration, intuitive interfaces, performance improvements, lower pricing, and active-active clustering.
Redis users seek improvements in cache management, user interface, observability, scalability, security setup, and cloud integrations for enhanced usability.
Having a graphical user interface would improve usability.
Senior Software Test Analyst at CoCre8 Technology Solutions
The pricing model for IBM MQ could be more flexible for clients.
Senior System Analyst at Thakral
They don't meet our standards due to the timing to get a person with knowledge.
Information Technology Solution Consultant
Making security features and enterprise governance capabilities easier to configure out of the box would help organizations adopt Redis more confidently for larger and more critical workloads.
Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Data persistence and recovery face issues with compatibility across major versions, making upgrades possible but downgrades not active.
Data Engineer at a photography company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Redis is very reliable, but it could be improved in areas such as monitoring, debugging, and feasibility into memory use.
SDE 2 at Virtusa
 

Setup Cost

IBM MQ's pricing is high compared to open-source alternatives, though enterprise agreements and flexible licensing can reduce costs.
Enterprise Redis costs vary by deployment model, with self-managed being cost-effective and cloud services charging for memory usage.
It's not cheap.
Enterprise Technical Leader at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
It's possible to get some training, but the cost of this learning is expensive.
SWIFT manager at Raiffeisen Bank Aval
The price of IBM MQ is definitely on the higher side.
Dev lead at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
The main value comes from the performance improvements, reduced database load, and increased scalability that Redis provides.
Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Since we use an open-source version of Redis, we do not experience any setup costs or licensing expenses.
Data Engineer at a photography company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The pricing is reasonable for the performance provided.
SDE 2 at Virtusa
 

Valuable Features

IBM MQ offers reliable message delivery, scalability, integration, security, and ease of use, ensuring data integrity across diverse platforms.
Redis is preferred for speed and reliability, offering low latency, high throughput, and efficient scaling with minimal configuration.
These are financial transactions, so we do not want to lose the message at any cost.
Software Engineer IV at Royal Cyber Inc.
There is a saying that for the last 30 years IBM MQ has never been hacked.
Senior System Analyst at Thakral
It's time-tested, very stable, highly resilient, and has all the features to troubleshoot even if something goes wrong.
Dev lead at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
It functions similarly to a foundational building block in a larger system, enabling native integration and high functionality in core data processes.
Data Engineer at a photography company with 1,001-5,000 employees
By offloading frequent reads from the database and enabling fast in-memory cache access, it reduced latency, improved throughput, and helped maintain stability during peak loads.
SDE 2 at Virtusa
The most valuable features include high-speed in-memory data access, flexible data structures, caching capabilities, data expiration and time-to-live management, high availability and scalability, and atomic operations.
Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM MQ
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
174
Ranking in other categories
Business Activity Monitoring (1st), Message Queue (MQ) Software (1st), Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) (1st)
Redis
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
NoSQL Databases (3rd), Managed NoSQL Databases (5th), In-Memory Data Store Services (1st), Vector Databases (5th), AI Software Development (8th)
 

Featured Reviews

David Pizinger - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise Technical Leader at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Has faced unexpected VM restarts but continues to deliver messages reliably
I'm not sure if we've utilized IBM MQ's high availability. Our MQ VMs are set up in clusters, and I think our queue managers are set up in pairs. However, I don't know if we actually use any specific high availability features of IBM MQ that are out of the box. We have it architected with high availability because we use F5 load balancers, and everything about our architecture is highly available. I haven't personally used the management tools with IBM MQ, but we do have them, and our middleware folks leverage them. I can't really comment on them because I don't use them myself. I don't think the management tools help optimize message flows, and I'm not really aware of how they help in this. I'm not familiar with dynamic routing for IBM MQ.
RituRaj - PeerSpot reviewer
SDE 2 at Virtusa
Caching has improved response times and reduces database load for high-traffic applications
Redis is very reliable, but it could be improved in areas such as monitoring, debugging, and feasibility into memory use. Better built-in tools for observability would help teams manage it more effectively at scale. Managing memory efficiently and troubleshooting issues can sometimes require additional tooling, so these areas can also be improved.One practical challenge I experienced is managing memory efficiently. Since Redis is in-memory, we need to carefully configure eviction policies and monitor usage. Debugging cache-related issues such as stale data or cache invalidation can sometimes be tricky. Additionally, tuning memory usage and eviction policies needs to be planned very carefully.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
University
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise147
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What is MQ software?
Hi As someone with 45+ years of experience in the Transaction and Message Processing world, I have seen many "MQ" solutions that have come into the market place. From my perspective, while each pro...
What are the differences between Apache Kafka and IBM MQ?
Apache Kafka is open source and can be used for free. It has very good log management and has a way to store the data used for analytics. Apache Kafka is very good if you have a high number of user...
How does IBM MQ compare with VMware RabbitMQ?
IBM MQ has a great reputation behind it, and this solution is very robust with great stability. It is easy to use, simple to configure and integrates well with our enterprise ecosystem and protocol...
What needs improvement with Redis?
Making management easier, especially for teams operating large Redis clusters, would be helpful. More advanced built-in observability, performance insights, and automated recommendations would help...
What is your primary use case for Redis?
Redis is used primarily as a caching layer to provide a high-performance caching solution that improves application response times and reduces load on backend services and databases. We use it main...
What advice do you have for others considering Redis?
There are a couple of things to consider when using Redis. It is a supporting layer, not a main database. Identifying specific use cases where Redis can provide the most value, such as caching, ses...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

WebSphere MQ
Redis Enterprise
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Deutsche Bahn, Bon-Ton, WestJet, ARBURG, Northern Territory Government, Tata Steel Europe, Sharp Corporation
1. Twitter 2. GitHub 3. StackOverflow 4. Pinterest 5. Snapchat 6. Craigslist 7. Digg 8. Weibo 9. Airbnb 10. Uber 11. Slack 12. Trello 13. Shopify 14. Coursera 15. Medium 16. Twitch 17. Foursquare 18. Meetup 19. Kickstarter 20. Docker 21. Heroku 22. Bitbucket 23. Groupon 24. Flipboard 25. SoundCloud 26. BuzzFeed 27. Disqus 28. The New York Times 29. Walmart 30. Nike 31. Sony 32. Philips
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM MQ vs. Redis and other solutions. Updated: October 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.