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IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs Mule ESB 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 WebSphere Message Broker
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (16th)
Mule ESB
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM WebSphere Message Broker is 4.4%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Mule ESB is 19.3%, down from 22.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

Featured Reviews

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 Some of the clients of our organization are using an outdated version of IBM WebSphere Message Broker for which the vendor doesn't provide direct support anymore.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.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Straightforward development and deployment."
"IBM WebSphere Message Broker is one of the best middleware solutions"
"We only use the basic features, but the most valuable one for us is the Publish-subscribe pattern."
"It is a scalable solution...The setup is easy."
"Integration and mapping are easy, which is a major advantage."
"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."
"The solution has good integration."
"It's reliable for our day-to-day operations, ensuring fast and secure data integration across different systems."
"This tool has exceptional API management and integration connectors in addition to multiple out of the box connectors."
"Scalability and load balancing."
"Easy connectivity and easy integration."
"I like that Mule ESB provides fast and good technical support."
"The solution's drag-and-drop interface and data viewer helped us quite a lot."
"The transformation and the data format are the features that I like the most."
"The most valuable feature is the Salesforce integration."
"I am impressed with the product's connectors and scalability."
 

Cons

"There is some lag in the GUI. There have been some performance issues and maybe it's because of the application data."
"The solution can add container engines such as docker."
"Technical support is good but they could have a better response time."
"Technical support is very slow and needs to be improved."
"The user interface is designed mainly for experts, much in the way a BPM or another integration tool is."
"The product's features are not being upgraded or enhanced by the vendor"
"Today I probably wouldn't go for Message Broker because of the cost structure, support, and the whole ecosystem around IBM."
"I know that Message Broker was a very tightly copied product with another IBM product, that is, IBM MQ. I would like to have a little bit more decoupling from the IBM MQ because it should not be a prerequisite for IBM WebSphere Message Broker usage."
"Improvements could be made in performance."
"The price of Mule ESB could improve."
"I cannot say that installation with Kubernetes needs to be improved to be less tricky, but more information is needed from MuleSoft. They do not help much with Kubernetes, so we should have a person who is well-versed in Kubernetes to handle this."
"In India, particularly in the banking sector, clients do not prefer cloud solutions due to regulatory and compliance requirements."
"From the product perspective, it was sometimes hard to manage the dependencies. When we had to add dependencies on a couple of different packages, it was sometimes confusing. It was hard to update them with Anypoint Studio, as well as with MuleSoft. There were challenges with that. So, that's one of the areas that could be improved."
"The stability could be improved."
"It would be great to see implementing security modules as a feature."
"One area that could be improved is the way that policies are propagated when APIs are moved from one environment to another. It's an issue, but when you develop and test the rest APIs in a lower environment and need to move them, there's a propagation process. This process moves certain aspects of the APIs, like the basic features. But when we move them, the policies don't always move with them. The policies should be able to move so we don't have to redo them manually. There are some APIs we use, but it's a bit tedious."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"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"
"IBM products are generally more stable and have more features, but also come at a greater cost."
"The price is very high and it's the main reason that we are searching for alternatives."
"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."
"The solution is expensive."
"The pricing must be improved."
"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."
"Mule ESB is a costly solution. We pay approximately $80,000 annually for the system. The cost of the number of instances, annual subscription, and cloud hosting services are expensive."
"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 price of the Mule ESB commercial version is expensive. However, they have a free community version."
"The licensing is yearly, and there are additional fees for services."
"Plan your licensing model (cloud or on-premises or hybrid) that will allow seamless integration with new partners."
"This product is cheaper than some offered by other vendors, although there is a problem because you have to pay for some third-party adapters."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 evolve, we require more dynamic capabilities to adapt and scale our services accordi...
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 WebSphere, and handling static service creation.
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 Mule ESB?
The solution's drag-and-drop interface and data viewer helped us quite a lot.
 

Also Known As

WebSphere Message Broker
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

WestJet, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Sharp Corporation, Michelin Tire
Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs. Mule ESB and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,481 professionals have used our research since 2012.