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 #9 with an average rating of 8.0, while Red Hat is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.0. IBM holds a 4.1% mindshare in E, compared to Red Hat’s 7.1% 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

943 Views
707 Comparison Views

84% willing to recommend

Red Hat Fuse

Read 24 Red Hat Fuse reviews

1,568 Views
1,537 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: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs. Red Hat Fuse

September 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)

9th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Infrastructure (17th)

Red Hat Fuse

Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

5th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM WebSphere Message Broker is 4.1%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Fuse is 7.1%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Red Hat Fuse	7.1%
IBM WebSphere Message Broker	4.1%
Other	88.8%

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

Featured Reviews

BrajendraKumar

Technical Architect at HCL Technologies

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.

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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

"Straightforward development and deployment."

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

"It has many interfaces and you can connect to any backend source that has another format, and convert it to the desired format."

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

"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."

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

"It's reliable for our day-to-day operations, ensuring fast and secure data integration across different systems."

"The solution has good integration."

More IBM WebSphere Message Broker pros

"The features I found most valuable in Red Hat Fuse are the OSB framework, containerization, and the integration of Apache technologies such as the NQ channel, CXF, etc. These are the features that are very prominent in the solution. Red Hat Fuse also offers flexibility, so it's another valuable characteristic of the solution."

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

"The initial setup process is quite straightforward."

"The solution is stable. We have gone for months or years without any issue. There are no memory restarts, so from my point of view, it's very stable."

"Red Hat Fuse's best features are that it's very easy to set up and maintain."

"I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten. We are an enterprise business."

"What I like about Red Hat Fuse is that it's a well-established integration software. I find all aspects of the tool positive."

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

More Red Hat Fuse pros

Cons

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

"It is currently a weighty product."

"Today I probably wouldn't go for Message Broker because of the cost structure, support, and the whole ecosystem around IBM."

"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."

"Technical support is good but they could have a better response time."

"Technical support is very slow and needs to be improved."

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

More IBM WebSphere Message Broker cons

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

"While it's a good platform, the pricing is a bit high."

"The web tools need to be updated."

"The solution will be discontinued in 2024."

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

"The stability of the solution is an area with a shortcoming that needs to be improved."

"My company doesn't have any experience with other messaging tools, so it's difficult to mention what areas could be improved in Red Hat Fuse, but it could be pricing because I find it expensive."

"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."

More Red Hat Fuse cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."

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

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

"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."

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

"The solution is expensive."

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

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

"After doing some Googling and comparisons, the main standouts were MuleSoft and Red Hat Fuse. One of the big factors in our decision to go with Fuse was the licensing cost. It was cheaper to go with Fuse."

"We use the standard license, but you need the container platform in order to run it."

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

"The solution doesn't have independent licensing."

"Our license for Red Hat Fuse is around $27,000 per year, which is very expensive."

"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."

More Red Hat Fuse pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Large Enterprise	10

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	12

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 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

What advice do you have for others considering Red Hat Fuse?

I would rate Red Hat Fuse as eight out of ten. When the solution was being used in our organization, the JBoss or Red Hat support was great. The solution was highly stable, robust, and scalable, an...

See all answers

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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

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Compared 30% of the time

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Compared 18% of the time

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Compared 17% of the time

Oracle Service Bus vs Red Hat Fuse

Compared 15% of the time

WSO2 Enterprise Integrator vs Red Hat Fuse

Compared 11% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM WebSphere Message Broker

September 2025

Download IBM WebSphere Message Broker product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Fuse

August 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

September 2025

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

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs. Red Hat Fuse and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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