IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs Red Hat Fuse comparison

IBM and Red Hat are both solutions in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category. IBM is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.0, while Red Hat is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.0. IBM holds a 4.4% mindshare in E, compared to Red Hat’s 7.0% mindshare. Additionally, 84% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

IBM WebSphere Message Broker

Read 13 IBM WebSphere Message Broker reviews

1,019 Views
795 Comparison Views

84% willing to recommend

Red Hat Fuse

Read 24 Red Hat Fuse reviews

1,801 Views
1,765 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM WebSphere Message Broker

Red Hat Fuse

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 2025

IBM WebSphere Message Broker and Red Hat Fuse compete in integration software. IBM WebSphere Message Broker holds an advantage in complex enterprise-level integrations, while Red Hat Fuse offers open-source flexibility and cost-efficiency.

Features: IBM WebSphere Message Broker supports a wide range of protocols and has advanced transformation capabilities, making it ideal for complex enterprise environments. Red Hat Fuse integrates seamlessly with Java, supports microservices architecture, and offers strong containerization features.

Room for Improvement: IBM WebSphere Message Broker could simplify its setup process and reduce the need for expert handling. It might also benefit from more intuitive interfaces and enhanced documentation for users. Red Hat Fuse can improve its customer support, optimize performance for high-demand operations, and enhance its user-friendly documentation.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM WebSphere Message Broker's comprehensive capabilities come with a more complex setup that may require expert intervention. In contrast, Red Hat Fuse provides a simpler deployment experience and a lean learning curve, backed by developer-friendly interfaces. IBM offers extensive customer support, while Red Hat leverages community support with professional services available for subscribers.

Pricing and ROI: IBM WebSphere Message Broker has higher initial setup costs but delivers a robust ROI for large-scale enterprise operations through reliability and performance. Red Hat Fuse presents a cost-effective alternative, with lower setup costs and attractive ROI due to its open-source nature and reduced total cost of ownership.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs. Red Hat Fuse Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs. Red Hat Fuse

July 2025

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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

Ranking in other categories

Application Infrastructure (16th)

Red Hat Fuse

Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

6th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM WebSphere Message Broker is 4.4%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Fuse is 7.0%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

Featured Reviews

MANUEL VALDIVIA

Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Routes messages efficiently across our services, but the features for scalability need improvement

One of the key benefits has been its ability to expose services and securely integrate applications within our architecture. It's been integral in maintaining a stable infrastructure despite its limitations with dynamic service creation and flexibility compared to newer technologies like Kubernetes. The main challenge has been scalability during peak usage times.

Read full review

Kaushal Kedia

Technical Architect at Accenture

Offers a single console for all applications and supports Camel routing

Containerization is one key area where the product can improve, but it probably has already improved in JBOS integration. On a few occasions, our company's production team faced an issue with Red Hat Fuse; the screen displayed that the containers had gone down while, in reality, they were running in the background. The user interface and the back-end code were not in sync in the aforementioned situation, which our organization frequently faced while using Red Hat Fuse. But at our company, we were using an older version of Red Hat Fuse in which we faced the issues. From the JBOS end, the product was very frequently changed from Red Hat, and it was difficult for our clients to keep investing money in every upgrade. Six or seven years back, Red Hat Fuse was one of the best solutions.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"IBM WebSphere Message Broker is one of the best middleware solutions"

"It is a scalable solution...The setup is easy."

"Integration and mapping are easy, which is a major advantage."

"Message Broker is valuable because most of the applications are using MQ. Even in my current engagement, the few applications which I audit to onboard the bank are using MQ."

"The transactions and message queuing are the most valuable features of the solution."

"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."

"We only use the basic features, but the most valuable one for us is the Publish-subscribe pattern."

"Performance-wise, this solution is really good."

More IBM WebSphere Message Broker pros

"The most valuable feature is the software development environment."

"More than a feature, I would say that the reliability of the platform is the most valuable aspect."

"The most valuable part of Fuse is the fact that it's based on Red Hat Apache Camel. It is really good that it already comes with so many different connectors. That makes it relatively easy to use. We use their XML definition to define the routes, making it really easy to define the routing."

"The initial setup process is quite straightforward."

"This solution's adaptability to our use case has helped us integrate our systems seamlessly."

"The installation is quite okay. We don't really change much in the configuration. Most of the time, most of the settings remain with the default and we are able to handle our needs using the default setting."

"I found it was quite easy to set up and implement."

"The process workflow, where we can orchestrate and design the application by defining different routes, is really useful."

More Red Hat Fuse pros

Cons

"There is some lag in the GUI. There have been some performance issues and maybe it's because of the application data."

"The images and size of the containers are too big and I think that they should be more lightweight."

"The installation configuration is quite difficult."

"It is currently a weighty product."

"The product's features are not being upgraded or enhanced by the vendor"

"Stability and pricing are areas with shortcomings that need improvement."

"As our business requirements evolve, we require more dynamic capabilities to adapt and scale our services accordingly."

"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."

More IBM WebSphere Message Broker cons

"I don't know the product last versions. I know they are migrating a microservices concepts. We still didn't get there... but we are in the process."

"I would like to see more up-to-date documentation and examples from Red Hat Fuse."

"As its learning curve is quite steep, developer dependency will always be there in the case of a Red Hat Fuse development. This should be improved for developers. There should be some built-in connectors so the grind of the developer can be reduced."

"The testing part, specifically when running it in the cloud, could be improved. It's a little bit complex, especially considering its cloud nature."

"The monitoring experience should be better."

"What could be improved in Red Hat Fuse is the deployment process because it's still very heavy. It's containerized, but now with Spring Boot and other microservices-related containers, deployment is still very heavy. Red Hat Fuse still has room for improvement in terms of becoming more containerized and more oriented."

"Red Hat is not easy to learn. You can learn it but you sometimes need external expertise to implement solutions."

"Our clients would like to see the user interface improved so that it is more user-friendly."

More Red Hat Fuse cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"IBM software can be costly, but having a contract has helped manage and potentially lower costs over time."

"The price is very high and it's the main reason that we are searching for alternatives."

"I feel with IBM, when you want certain functions or features, you have to continuously purchase add-ons. There are always additional fees."

"IBM products are generally more stable and have more features, but also come at a greater cost."

"This product is more expensive than competing products."

"The licensing cost of IBM WebSphere Message Broker needs to be reduced"

"The solution is expensive."

"This is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."

"My company pays for the license of Red Hat Fuse yearly. At the end of the day, it's a low-cost solution, and its support licenses are still very decently priced versus bigger operators such as IBM, etc. Red Hat Fuse is much more affordable than other solutions. On a scale of one to five, with one being cheap and five being extremely expensive, I'm rating its pricing a one."

"You need to pay for the license. It's not free."

"This is an expensive product. It costs a lot and although it's worth the money, the explanations that we need to give to our top executives are highly complicated."

"Red Hat Fuse is an expensive tool, though I cannot answer how much it costs as that's confidential."

"The solution doesn't have independent licensing."

"We found other solutions were more costly."

"We are paying around $24 million across five years."

More Red Hat Fuse pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

24%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What do you like most about Red Hat Fuse?

The process workflow, where we can orchestrate and design the application by defining different routes, is really useful.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Red Hat Fuse?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Red Hat Fuse?

Our company used Red Hat Fuse to integrate layers of numerous applications. The solution has also been used in our organization for orchestration purposes of multiple microservices over the years. ...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM WebSphere Message Broker

July 2025

Download IBM WebSphere Message Broker product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Fuse

July 2025

Download Red Hat Fuse product report

Also Known As

WebSphere Message Broker

Fuse ESB, FuseSource

Overview

WebSphere Message Broker is an enterprise service bus (ESB) providing connectivity and universal data transformation for service-oriented architecture (SOA) and non-SOA environments. It allows businesses of any size to eliminate point-to-point connections and batch processing regardless of platform, protocol or data format.

IBM

Red Hat JBoss Fuse is a lightweight, flexible integration platform that enables rapid integration across the extended enterprise - on-premise or in the cloud. JBoss Fuse includes modular integration capabilities, an enterprise service bus (ESB), to unlock information.

Red Hat

Sample Customers

WestJet, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Sharp Corporation, Michelin Tire

Avianca, American Product Distributors (APD), Kings College Hospital, AMD, CenturyLink, AECOM, E*TRADE

Buyer's Guide

IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs. Red Hat Fuse

July 2025

Free Report: IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs. Red Hat Fuse

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