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IBM MQ vs TIBCO Enterprise Message Service 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM MQ
Ranking in Business Activity Monitoring
1st
Ranking in Message Oriented Middleware (MOM)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
170
Ranking in other categories
Message Queue (MQ) Software (1st)
TIBCO Enterprise Message Se...
Ranking in Business Activity Monitoring
2nd
Ranking in Message Oriented Middleware (MOM)
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Business Activity Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM MQ is 39.7%, down from 41.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO Enterprise Message Service is 19.6%, down from 26.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Activity Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Md Al-Amin - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable and secure performance consistently enhances message transfer
IBM MQ is more reliable and secure than other software. There is a saying that for the last 30 years IBM MQ has never been hacked. It is more secure and reliable. Whenever the configuration is done, I do not have to touch it again. It works fine, it is stable, and its communication is to the point and accurate. All performance-related aspects are better. Performance-wise, it is scalable, and other features such as DR, DC, replication, and active passive mode are complex to configure, but it remains scalable. The pricing model for IBM MQ could be more flexible for clients.
Ray Ochieng - PeerSpot reviewer
A value-for-money solution with the requisite features to facilitate efficient communication within an organization
We have been struggling with the stability of TIBCO Enterprise Message Service (EMS), but now I don't know how to differentiate whether the issues are caused by the infrastructure or the product itself. So, I am hesitant to provide a rating because I suspect that it might be due to my setup or environment. I really don't know how to evaluate the product independently. We have faced challenges with EMS, but I am unsure if it is related to infrastructure or the product itself. Even if I reach out for support, I am uncertain if the issue will be resolved since it could be partly related to the product. It's a tough situation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is stable, reliable, and scalable."
"The solution can scale well."
"What is quite useful is the asynchronous function which means we don't lose everything in the bank. Although we use a lot of things synchronously, asynch is the best thing so that no banking information is ever lost, even when the network goes down and comes up."
"Reliable integration between MQ servers is the most valuable feature."
"Technical support is quite helpful."
"The biggest advantage of IBM MQ is its reliability."
"The most valuable feature of IBM MQ is it has all the features necessary for contemporary messaging, not only for the financial industry but for any application."
"The most valuable feature is the stability. It's perfect in this way."
"It is very useful tool. It is also very easy to learn and implement.​"
"We have implanted the core middleware solution for the organization using this product and it is responsible for communication between different applications."
"​The initial setup is straightforward and the product documentation is very good.​"
"It allows us to achieve synchronous as well as asynchronous communication with the added advantage of making the communication reliable."
"I like TIBCO's ability to create versioned queues and persistent messages."
"TIBCO Enterprise Message Service's most valuable features are rapid zero-code integration and its large number of adapters and plugins."
"The Enterprise Messaging Server will store the message and wait for other subscribers to come onto the network."
"The setup was done by TIBCO. It has been stable and has a server."
 

Cons

"Everything in the solution could be simplified a little. We have trouble with the configuration and cost which is mostly an internal issue, but nevertheless, the errors do come up when there are configuration changes across a specific version. We have slightly different versions, which may have slightly different configurations which cause issues."
"What could be improved is the high-availability. The way MQ works is that it separates the high-availability from the workload balance. The scalability should be easier. If something happens so that the messages are not available on each node, scalability is only possible for the workload balance."
"Should have more integration in the monitoring tools."
"IBM could revamp the interface. The API is huge, but some developers find it limiting because of the cost. They tend to wrap the API course into the JMS, which means they're missing out on some good features. They should work a little bit on the API exposure."
"With IBM products, there's less marketing. If they do more demos and more seminars on their products, it will be very useful. On a given day. I get seminar invites for many vendors and products, but for IBM, I may get an invite once or twice a year."
"IBM MQ could improve by adding more protocols or APIs for a standard application, such as MuleSoft."
"The installation of product upgrades and patches is very difficult. It requires the use of the IBM Installation Manager (IM)."
"The areas of IBM MQ that have room for improvement are its compatibility with the public clouds, specifically its compatibility with Azure or AWS, as there is definitely a lot of scope for improvement there."
"I would like to see better integration with Java and Apache Kafka."
"An area for improvement would be integration with the API layer."
"Overall, my experience with the support team has been disappointing."
"TIBCO also has its proprietary line of cloud-based applications, but specifically, these two products are not cloud compatible."
"​Since all the communications goes through this product, it acts as a single point of failure."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is real money involved here. As compared to RabbitMQ, IBM MQ is on the higher side in terms of cost."
"The license for IBM MQ is commercial and not cheap. You get a multi-platform solution, which is important because it lets you connect systems on mainframes, personal solutions, Unix, Linux, etc."
"IBM products, in general, have high licensing costs and support costs are too high."
"To implement such an IBM solution, a company has to pay a lot in term of licensing and consultancy. A pricing model might be a better option."
"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the tool's price a seven. The product is expensive."
"Pricing could be better, as with all IBM products. But their performance in production, along with security and scalability, will pay returns in the long run."
"The pricing needs improvement."
"I rate the product price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"​The cost of licensing is very high. One should go for the product only if they need to ensure message reliability and they cannot afford to lose messages.​"
"In our case, we didn't pay for each product separately. We simply paid for all those companies that provided the components."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
36%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
4%
Financial Services Firm
44%
Computer Software Company
15%
Energy/Utilities Company
5%
Real Estate/Law Firm
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 do you like most about TIBCO Enterprise Message Service?
The setup was done by TIBCO. It has been stable and has a server.
What needs improvement with TIBCO Enterprise Message Service?
Maybe the capability to undergo training for specific functionalities, such as implementing Kaspersky for handling high volume transactions in TIBCO Enterprises Message Service. Occasionally, we su...
What is your primary use case for TIBCO Enterprise Message Service?
I use TIBCO Enterprise Message Service for some of my internal communications. For instance, if there is an API called A that needs to communicate with an API referred to as B, we prefer to use mes...
 

Also Known As

WebSphere MQ
Enterprise Message Service
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Deutsche Bahn, Bon-Ton, WestJet, ARBURG, Northern Territory Government, Tata Steel Europe, Sharp Corporation
BNL, SunGard, TUI Group, UTi Worldwide, Yellow Pages Group
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM MQ vs. TIBCO Enterprise Message Service and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
860,825 professionals have used our research since 2012.