IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs WSO2 Enterprise Integrator comparison

IBM and WSO2 are both solutions in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category. IBM is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.0, while WSO2 is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.3. IBM holds a 4.4% mindshare in E, compared to WSO2’s 5.4% mindshare. Additionally, 84% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 76% of WSO2 users who would recommend it.

IBM WebSphere Message Broker

Read 13 IBM WebSphere Message Broker reviews

980 Views
764 Comparison Views

84% willing to recommend

WSO2 Enterprise Integrator

Read 20 WSO2 Enterprise Integrator reviews

1,813 Views
907 Comparison Views

76% willing to recommend

IBM WebSphere Message Broker

WSO2 Enterprise Integrator

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 2025

IBM WebSphere Message Broker and WSO2 Enterprise Integrator are two prominent products in the field of enterprise integration. IBM WebSphere Message Broker tends to have the upper hand in scalability and performance, while WSO2 Enterprise Integrator offers flexibility and cost-effective solutions, appealing to budget-conscious organizations.

Features: IBM WebSphere Message Broker provides high throughput, support for complex integrations, and robust data handling capabilities, making it suitable for large enterprises. WSO2 Enterprise Integrator features a lightweight architecture, ease of integration with open-source technologies, and offers robust API management along with cloud-native development capabilities.

Room for Improvement: IBM WebSphere Message Broker could enhance its adaptability with open-source technologies, improve flexibility, and reduce cost complexities. WSO2 Enterprise Integrator could improve scalability for large enterprise requirements, expand its out-of-the-box adaptors, and provide enhanced advanced customization capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM WebSphere Message Broker benefits from established deployment processes and comprehensive enterprise-level support. On the other hand, WSO2 Enterprise Integrator offers straightforward deployment and strong community support, appealing to those seeking simpler setup and flexible service options.

Pricing and ROI: IBM WebSphere Message Broker incurs higher setup costs but delivers substantial ROI for businesses in need of extensive capabilities. Conversely, WSO2 Enterprise Integrator presents a more budget-friendly initial cost and remains attractive to smaller enterprises, delivering decent ROI particularly when economic efficiency is prioritized.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs. WSO2 Enterprise Integrator Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs. WSO2 Enterprise Integrator

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)

WSO2 Enterprise Integrator

Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

7th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Integration (29th)

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 WSO2 Enterprise Integrator is 5.4%, up from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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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Ritesh_Shah

Senior Solution Architect at Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Decreases the development timeframe and costs

The main issue with the product is pricing. It uses core-based pricing for WSO2 Enterprise Integrator and API Manager. It would be best if you had APIM by default. It provides many connectors for easy integration with third-party systems. Often, customers decide to develop using open-source tools like Spring Boot if there aren't many connectors required to avoid increasing costs. They'll develop this way and then deploy using APIM, the bare minimum needed. It is mainly required for very complicated setups with many connectors. In the implementations I've seen, people often used open-source tools because there weren't many third-party systems involved—just their organization's own systems. From WSO2 Enterprise Integrator, I expect them to bring up more and more connectors in the future. That's the main expectation. Having more connectors in various areas will help us when discussing new requirements. I don't have any specific use case right now, so I can't name a particular connector. But, as new technologies emerge, the relevant connectors should be there for those. WSO2 Enterprise Integrator mainly helps with the integration part, which can be simplified only if you have relevant connectors for whatever you're doing.

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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

"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 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."

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

"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."

"Straightforward development and deployment."

"The documentation, performance, stability and scalability of the tool are valuable."

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

More IBM WebSphere Message Broker pros

"The solution basically conforms to our standards."

"It was mostly easy to set up the product."

"It's a very complete product. It allows us to network security and add more layers of security to the system."

"The solution has two main parts: integration and transformation. It's very user-friendly and easy to understand for everyone."

"The solution's customer service is good."

"The learning curve for this solution is very good."

"The drag-and-drop features for connectors are very valuable."

"The installation process is easy."

More WSO2 Enterprise Integrator pros

Cons

"It is currently a weighty product."

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

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

More IBM WebSphere Message Broker cons

"They should release upgrades more frequently."

"The server is very specific and it is very difficult to get experience with it."

"The main issue with the product is pricing. It uses core-based pricing for WSO2 Enterprise Integrator and API Manager. It would be best if you had APIM by default. It provides many connectors for easy integration with third-party systems."

"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"The administration side is complex and could use significant improvements to enhance the solution's functionality."

"In my opinion, the administration model and interface, of Carbon, are lacking in terms of its features and user experience."

"There are a lot of security settings that when you apply you have to re-apply again every time you modify a setting. It is something that really needs to be enhanced."

"You cannot include the validation of XPath."

More WSO2 Enterprise Integrator cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

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

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

"The solution is expensive."

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

"This product is more expensive than competing products."

"The solution is expensive."

"The open-source, unsupported version is available free of charge."

"The solution costs about 20,000 or 30,000 euros per year, per instance."

"The cost is better than IBM Cloud Pak."

"It is a low-cost solution."

"I rate the product price a six on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."

"The pricing of WSO2 Enterprise Integrator for enterprise subscriptions can be considered expensive, especially from the perspective of someone who prefers open-source software."

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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

17%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

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 WSO2 Enterprise Integrator?

WSO2's analytics capability is good, considering the ELC support they provide.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WSO2 Enterprise Integrator?

The product has reasonable and competitive pricing for enterprise customers. It is expensive for small businesses especially. They are using the open-source solution, and they find it expensive sin...

See all answers

What needs improvement with WSO2 Enterprise Integrator?

Something that could be improved in WSO2 Enterprise Integrator is that the problem is not a lack of capability or functionalities. The problem is that it is a very complex environment. To put your ...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM WebSphere Message Broker

August 2025

Download IBM WebSphere Message Broker product report

Buyer's Guide

WSO2 Enterprise Integrator

July 2025

Download WSO2 Enterprise Integrator product report

Also Known As

WebSphere Message Broker

No data available

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

WSO2 Enterprise Integrator, core to the WSO2 Integration Agile Platform, is an open source Integration product for cloud native and container-native projects. It enables enterprise integration experts to build, scale, and secure sophisticated integration solutions to achieve digital agility. Unlike other integration products, WSO2 Enterprise Integrator already contains integration runtimes, message brokering, business process modeling, analytics and visual tooling capabilities.

WSO2

Sample Customers

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

West

Buyer's Guide

IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs. WSO2 Enterprise Integrator

July 2025

Free Report: IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs. WSO2 Enterprise Integrator

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs. WSO2 Enterprise Integrator and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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