OpenESB vs webMethods.io comparison

OpenESB and IBM are both solutions in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category. OpenESB is ranked #13, while IBM is ranked #3 with an average rating of 7.7. OpenESB holds a 2.4% mindshare in E, compared to IBM’s 9.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of OpenESB users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of IBM users who would recommend it.

OpenESB

Read 4 OpenESB reviews

416 Views
412 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

webMethods.io

Read 94 webMethods.io reviews

8,762 Views
1,402 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

OpenESB

webMethods.io

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 2025

webMethods.io and OpenESB are competing products in the integration solutions category. webMethods.io seems to have the upper hand in ease of deployment and pricing, while OpenESB is preferred for complex integration tasks due to its robust capabilities.

Features: webMethods.io offers extensive integration options, standard APIs, and cloud support. OpenESB provides strong support for complex message-based systems, advanced integration patterns, and is suitable for enterprises needing sophisticated processing capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: webMethods.io benefits from streamlined cloud-based deployment and comprehensive support, facilitating quicker time-to-market and easier maintenance. OpenESB offers a flexible on-premise and hybrid model but requires more expertise for successful deployment.

Pricing and ROI: webMethods.io provides a competitive pricing structure ideal for scalable cloud services, promising higher ROI. OpenESB, while having a higher setup cost, handles complex tasks efficiently, offering ROI through greater operational efficiencies for suitable scenarios.

To learn more, read our detailed OpenESB vs. webMethods.io Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

OpenESB vs. webMethods.io

December 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 881,114 peers since 2012

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

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

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
Product	Market Share (%)
webMethods.io	9.7%
OpenESB	2.4%
Other	87.9%

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

Featured Reviews

PaulPerez

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…

Read full review

Yashraj Makwana

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.

Read full review

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 core is very stable."

"The process-oriented solution allows you to define choreography and orchestration."

"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."

"I like the solution's policies, transformation, mediation, and routing features."

"The tool is very powerful and user-friendly."

"Best feature is Insight for monitoring, and as a debugging tool. It has saved us a lot of time during crisis situations."

"The tool supports gRPC."

"Broker and UM are the best features."

"This solution has given us a competitive advantage because we have better automation and insight."

"How simple it is to create new solutions."

"webMethods Trading Networks is a stable solution."

More webMethods.io pros

Cons

"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."

"Regarding its management, a web console being able to synchronize distributed instances would be great."

"The orchestration is not as good as it should be."

"The licensing cost is high compared to other options."

"Some things could be improved, especially how ActiveTransfer handles third-party file transfers. It would be nice to have a native file-watching mechanism for when you're scheduling jobs with a third-party scheduler. Currently, we are using an outside file watcher solution to check the files before the file transfer. It checks the location to see if the file is there. If the file is there, it will prepare it for transfer. If the file isn't available, it will send an email it can create a ticket send it now. We recommended adding this file watcher mechanism."

"I would like the solution to provide bi-weekly updates."

"The solution's release management feature could be better."

"For code version control, you need to use some external software."

"wM SAP Adapter User Guide - Example, like Message Broker setup was unclear, leading to issues during Testing and we had refer the internet forums to understand that there is a Message Broker Cleanup utility and that needs to be setup as well."

"There are things that could be improved with the webMethods API gateway. One thing is that it's too attached to the integration service and we'd like it to be a little bit more independent. We would like for them to separate operations so that it doesn't rely on the bulky integration server and so that it can be used everywhere."

More webMethods.io cons

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."

"Most of my clients would like the price of the solution to be reduced."

"It is worth the cost."

"The price is a little bit high, especially regarding their support."

"The price of webMethods Integration Server isn't that high from an enterprise context, but open-source ESB solutions will always be the cheapest."

"Pricing is the number-one downfall. It's too expensive. They could make more money by dropping the price in half and getting more customers. It's the best product there is, but it's too expensive."

"Initialy good pricing and good, if it comes to Enterprise license agreements."

"I signed a three-year deal with them. It is a yearly locked-in price for the next three years."

"This is an expensive product and we may replace it with something more reasonably priced."

More webMethods.io pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Manufacturing Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Energy/Utilities Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	23
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	64

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Built.io Flow?

webMethods.io needs to incorporate ChatGPT to enhance user experience. It can offer a customized user experience.

See all answers

Comparisons

Mule ESB vs OpenESB

Compared 31% of the time

WSO2 Enterprise Integrator vs OpenESB

Compared 21% of the time

IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs OpenESB

Compared 17% of the time

Aurea CX Messenger vs OpenESB

Compared 17% of the time

Oracle Service Bus vs OpenESB

Compared 15% of the time

More OpenESB Competitors

IBM App Connect vs webMethods.io

Compared 5% of the time

IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services vs webMethods.io

Compared 5% of the time

IBM Integration Bus vs webMethods.io

Compared 5% of the time

Apigee vs webMethods.io

Compared 4% of the time

Boomi iPaaS vs webMethods.io

Compared 4% of the time

More webMethods.io Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

OpenESB

January 2026

Download OpenESB product report

Buyer's Guide

webMethods.io

January 2026

Download webMethods.io product report

Also Known As

No data available

Built.io Flow, webMethods Integration Server, webMethods Trading Networks, webMethods ActiveTransfer, webMethods.io API

Overview

OpenESB is a Java-based open-source enterprise service bus. It can be used as a platform for both enterprise application integration and service-oriented architecture. OpenESB allows you to integrate legacy systems, external and internal partners and new development in your Business Process.

OpenESB

webMethods.io Integration is a powerful integration platform as a service (iPaaS) that provides a combination of capabilities offered by ESBs, data integration systems, API management tools, and B2B gateways.

IBM

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Cisco, Agralogics, Dreamforce, Cables & Sensors, Sacramento Kings

Buyer's Guide

OpenESB vs. webMethods.io

December 2025

Free Report: OpenESB vs. webMethods.io

Find out what your peers are saying about OpenESB vs. webMethods.io and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our OpenESB vs. webMethods.io report.

See our list of best Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) vendors and best Cloud Data Integration vendors.

We monitor all Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.