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Mule ESB vs Oracle SOA Suite 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

Mule ESB
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (2nd)
Oracle SOA Suite
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (11th), SOA Governance (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Application Integration solutions, they serve different purposes. Mule ESB is designed for Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and holds a mindshare of 18.0%, down 22.6% compared to last year.
Oracle SOA Suite, on the other hand, focuses on Application Infrastructure, holds 3.6% mindshare, down 4.1% since last year.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Mule ESB18.0%
IBM Integration Bus21.0%
webMethods.io11.1%
Other49.9%
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
Application Infrastructure Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Oracle SOA Suite3.6%
Apache Web Server11.4%
IIS10.5%
Other74.5%
Application Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

Maharsh-Kapadia - PeerSpot reviewer
Transforms enterprise integration with comprehensive platform and excellent support
The best features of this solution are that everything we get into a single platform, whether it's integration, API, or data modeling; everything is available in one platform. It's a hybrid, including cloud and on-premise solutions with good connectivity and good connectors. From the benefits of using Mule ESB, we could reduce the manual tasks to 50% in one to two years. The cost is still something we are trying to make lower because we see some advantages when we move from point-to-point integration to API-led connectivity. We have seen a lot of reusable assets, so the cost is reduced. Ultimately, we want to see how it's transformed into business revenue; that's what we are still looking into.
MANOHAR SADDALA - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables seamless integration with multiple systems
I would rate the scalability a seven out of ten. It's not much more dynamic, not as dynamic as you may think, like seeing it in the cloud. In order to use it, you need to have the download servers and then scale up your systems. Oracle SOA Suites serves as a middle layer between applications. For example, let's say you have SAP, and we have Salesforce or Oracle ERP system. Users connect to those systems and perform certain activities or transactions on the applications. Now, if any data needs to be synchronized or any integration needs to happen between these applications, we use the Oracle SOA Suite. It acts as the bridge between the applications, not between the users. It's like having endpoints between the applications. Currently, we have 20 endpoints; 20 systems are connected to it, which is great. Oracle SOA Suite is being used daily. We are using it to its maximum potential.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Mule ESB is a very easy-to-use and user-friendly solution."
"The solution improved my company by modernizing the way we offer services and improving the user experience."
"The solution has a good graphical interface."
"Easy connectivity and easy integration."
"The most valuable feature of Mule ESB is data transformation, i.e. our interacting with different systems and orchestrating for our business needs."
"It is easily deployable and manageable. It has microservices-based architecture, which means that you can deploy the solution based on your needs, and you can manage the solution very easily."
"The cloud and integration abilities are most useful allowing us to use applications such as Salesforce and DataWeave."
"For complex cases, we employ the SSLi engine, whereas for simpler ones like healthcare or response data, such as EDI 270 or 271. We prefer to use an external XRT engine instead of handling it within the ESB for ease of management."
"Conceptually, how it integrates a lot of essential enterprise process components. That's the most valuable."
"This is one of the critical products for my company and we use it extensively. We currently use each and every feature of Oracle SOA."
"Valuable features include web service development and cloud connectivity."
"Provides connectivity between discrete systems and has availability."
"We were able to scale out using multiple application and web servers balanced by hardware load balancers and Weblogic clustering."
"The stability of the solution is the most valuable feature."
"The ability to stand up a highly available SOA Suite, which has full DR capabilities, in a remote center and synchronize the databases using Data Guard."
"In Oracle SOA Suite some applications are not able to use REST, but it can support both SOAP and REST. You're able to integrate quite a lot of systems, which may not be able to in other solutions. You can also use XML and JSON. It is a standardizing type of tool. It doesn't matter whether I'm using JSON or XML, it can convert them."
 

Cons

"The price of Mule ESB could improve."
"From my perspective, Mule ESB is lightweight, but it can be improved when it comes to the agility of the system."
"I would like to see support for BPM in the next release of this solution."
"Improvements could be made in performance."
"The initial setup is not easy."
"It would be great to see implementing security modules as a feature."
"It would be much more beneficial if the solution included AI and business process management."
"It's not easy to troubleshoot and we still can't make it work."
"The technical support is good, we have premier support which costs extra."
"The solutions can improve the communication or translations between formats, such as JSON and XML. The JSON REST API could improve."
"An area for improvement in Oracle SOA Suite is the cost. It could be lower."
"SOA"
"If the disk space expansion can be made more flexible, not requiring a database restart, it would be a major benefit."
"Its function options can be improved."
"One area that could be better is the human task feature. It could be improved to provide more functionality and customization options because it has limited options available."
"The installation and adjustment process seems too complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 an expensive solution."
"The solution is expensive."
"The price of the Mule ESB commercial version is expensive. However, they have a free community version."
"I think the price is very high. If you use TIBCO BW, the license is for the CPU usage, then the IPS, and support. I also think the license for the product is a one-time expense."
"The various features and components for this solution are no longer free."
"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."
"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."
"Oracle SOA Suite is an expensive solution."
"The pricing is not very high as compared to its competitors."
"Oracle pricing is expensive. Support is based on your license. AWS is much better than Oracle in this regard."
"The product is moderately priced."
"Based on my knowledge, Oracle SOA Suite doesn't have user-based licensing. It has a system-based licensing model, so you pay for whole systems. Oracle SOA Suite is an expensive solution, so it's a four out of ten for me."
"This product is WebLogic based, hence it can be both resource hungry as well as expensive from a licensing point of view."
"It is necessary to evaluate the requirement regarding the platform usage and what the main operation area of the platform will be."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
10%
Performing Arts
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise36
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise40
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What do you like most about Oracle SOA Suite?
The solution's XSLT or XSL Transformation feature was very useful.
What needs improvement with Oracle SOA Suite?
The solution’s initial setup is complex and could be improved. A big challenge for Oracle SOA Suite is that you don't get too many technical resources.
 

Also Known As

No data available
SOA Suite
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot
7-Eleven, Arcor SAIC, Banca Transilvania, Eaton Corporation, Emdeon, Ferrovial, Griffith University, National Instruments, Pella Corporation, Vodafone Group Plc,
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM, Salesforce, Oracle and others in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). Updated: August 2025.
867,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.