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OpenESB vs webMethods.io 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

OpenESB
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
13th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
webMethods.io
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
94
Ranking in other categories
Business-to-Business Middleware (2nd), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (9th), API Management (10th), Cloud Data Integration (8th), Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of OpenESB is 2.4%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of webMethods.io is 9.7%, down from 11.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
webMethods.io9.7%
OpenESB2.4%
Other87.9%
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

Featured Reviews

PP
Integration Architect at Pymma consulting
Easily define choreography and orchestration with this process-oriented solution
We provide contracted services for our customers that include coordinating with providers and implementing the solution.  A current project includes using the solution to deploy 200 microservices.  The process-oriented solution allows you to define choreography and orchestration. This feature…
YM
Developer at a hospitality company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Offers strong integration capabilities and reliable features but needs pricing and scaling improvements
Many things are evolving with the AI buzz in the market. What I would like to see improved or enhanced in webMethods.io in the future is that since webMethods.io is already under IBM, I think IBM will introduce and integrate AI into it. Additionally, regarding what webMethods.io can improve is the license cost. Other cloud players are also providing the same kind of functionality, such as AWS and Azure. webMethods.io is being installed on-premises, but AWS is providing it directly in the cloud. When comparing the license cost and request per minute cost, webMethods.io needs to address that. There are many competitors in the market for this.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"OpenESB pushes the organization to clearly define service boundaries and interfaces. So it motives the business and the development teams to clearly define their business services and processes they want to implement. OpenESB supports fine and coarse-grain granularity for the services and supports top-down and bottom-up approaches for the services, processes definition, and composition."
"The process-oriented solution allows you to define choreography and orchestration."
"The core is very stable."
"One of the most valuable features is being able to implement business processes while keeping track of the design from BPMN to a BPEL Implementation."
"The Software AG Designer has been great. It's very intuitive."
"The cloud version of the solution is very easy to set up."
"A product with good API and EDI components."
"What I like the most about the solution is that it comes with ready-made tools like handling security tokens and OAuth."
"Application integrations are offered out-of-the-box, and that is extremely important to us. This is one of the main use cases that we have for it. It is about 60 to 70 percent of the workload in our application today."
"The tool helps us to streamline data integration. Its BPM is very strong and powerful. The solution helps us manage digital transformation."
"webMethods Trading Networks is a good solution for interacting with outside of the organization. We can integrate the solutions with multiple outside the organization."
"High throughput and excellent scalability."
 

Cons

"Regarding its management, a web console being able to synchronize distributed instances would be great."
"Cloud deployment is weak and needs to be improved."
"The documentation of the product must be improved. It could be tricky to find the right documentation on a topic since the documentation is spread in many places. I advise the new joiner to contact the community to get entry points and additional documentation. Tutorial and Video must be present to take up the product."
"The documentation needs to be better."
"I'd like to see the admin portal for managing the integration server go up a level, to have more capabilities and to be given a more modern web interface."
"A while ago, they were hacked, and it took them a very long time to open their website again in order to download any service packs or any features. I don't know what they could do differently. I know that they were vulnerable, and there was some downtime, but because they were down, we were unable to download any potential service packs."
"With performance, there is room for improvement in regards to if we would like to put another extra layer of security on it, such as SSL. This is affecting their performance quite significantly. They need to improve the process of managing the SSL and other things inside their solutions, so there will not be quite such a significant impact to the performance."
"The improvement needed is related to the model's position. As of now, it seems to be more of a conceptual idea rather than a widely implemented solution. For how long"
"webMethods.io Integration's installation is complex. It should also improve integration and connectors."
"Perhaps in the area of Microservices, where I think Trading Networks could benefit from some improvements."
"Upgrades are complex. They typically take about five months from start to finish. There are many packages that plug into webMethods Integration Server, which is the central point for a vast majority of the transactions at my organization. Anytime we are upgrading that, there are complexities within each component that we must understand. That makes any upgrade very cumbersome and complicated. That has been my experience at this company. Because there are many different business units that we are touching, there are so many different components that we are touching. The amount of READMEs that you have to go through takes some time."
"We'd like for them to open up to a more cloud-based solution that could offer more flexibility and maybe a better rules engine or more integration with rules engines."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The Community Edition is a full product you can use in production, it does not have limitations like other alternatives."
"There are two versions. The first is the community version, which is free and contains the last part of the feature, but if you want to get the Enterprise version, you'll have to pay €60,000 which covers support and two instances on production."
"The cost for the prediction instrument is high because it is charged per instances based on prediction, but the rest of the solution is free."
"webMethods Trading Networks is a bit costly compared to others solutions."
"The price is high and I give it a five out of ten."
"Initialy good pricing and good, if it comes to Enterprise license agreements."
"It is expensive, but we reached a good agreement with the company. It is still a little bit expensive, but we got a better deal than the previous one."
"The pricing and licensing costs for webMethods are very high, which is the only reason that we might switch to another product."
"The solution's development license is free for three to six months. We have to pay for other things."
"Most of my clients would like the price of the solution to be reduced."
"I do think webMethods is coming under increasing pressure when it comes to their price-to-feature value proposition. It's probably the single biggest strategic risk they have. They're very expensive in their industry. They've been raising the price recently, especially when compared with their competitors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise64
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about Built.io Flow?
The tool helps us to streamline data integration. Its BPM is very strong and powerful. The solution helps us manage digital transformation.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Built.io Flow?
webMethods.io is expensive. We have multiple components, and you need to pay for each of them.
What needs improvement with Built.io Flow?
webMethods.io needs to incorporate ChatGPT to enhance user experience. It can offer a customized user experience.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Built.io Flow, webMethods Integration Server, webMethods Trading Networks, webMethods ActiveTransfer, webMethods.io API
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Cisco, Agralogics, Dreamforce, Cables & Sensors, Sacramento Kings
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenESB vs. webMethods.io and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.