Mule ESB Reviews

We are an IT consulting company and we have built our security on Mule ESB. We work for different customers for whom we develop projects for application integration using MuleSoft.

Our use cases involve connecting backend systems like Salesforce, SAP, and other custom applications. We also expose these APIs to external customers. We have also integrated it with a system of engagement, for example, Qooper.

The most valuable feature for Mule is the number of connectors that are available. There are a lot of connectors to different systems so if you want to connect to SAP or Salesforce, there are readily available connectors that are of great help. It saves a lot of time using this system.

The level of integration that this product offers is quite far ahead of the competition.

They have a very strong developer community, interacting at an informal level on a daily basis.

MuleSoft is not so strong in method-based integration, so they're not so functional in that regard. It seems that it has not been their priority.

We have been working with this product for about a year.

No problems with stability have been brought to my attention, although once the system is in production, a different team handles it.

This product is hosted on the AWS cloud, so it has inherent scalability.

We have implemented this solution for between three and five customers in the past year. It is suitable for medium to large companies, where we have clients in each category including some that are quite big.

They have a wonderful, modern concept of community-based support. It is not a formal meeting. Rather, they often interact using technologies such as WhatsApp. They share problems and get solutions from all over the world. Surely, this is a very strong area of MuleSoft.

Some of my team members have worked on other ESB solutions in the past, but in this organization, we have not dealt with one other than MuleSoft.

One of the products that we are familiar with is a solution by IBM. This competing product is strong in terms of method-based integration.

The initial setup is very simple. The installation probably takes four hours, on average.

Our in-house teams do the implementation for our clients.

From a developer's perspective, it does not require much effort for maintenance. After we develop, the DevOps team takes it over for deployment and maintenance. When it comes to issues in production, my team would not be responsible.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

It's used for regional implementation, where several systems are integrated and contributing to a central on-premises system.

The transformation and the data format are the features that I like the most.

There are several areas that need improvement. It's not easy to troubleshoot and we still can't make it work. It starts then stops. We are still trying to make it work using other tools that we have in-house, such as Kubernetes. So far, we have not found the proper way to connect them.

Stability is an issue as well as scalability. Both of these need improvement.

Pricing is always an area that can be improved. It's everyone's wish.

I have been using Mule ESB for five years.

It starts and stops, so we haven't had a chance to test it in production.

We have not reached out to technical support. Our case was so complex that we had to reach out to the architect to come on-site and help us with it here. This type of support is definitely expensive.

The initial setup was complex.

Deployment took a week. We were waiting for the team to be onsite.

We had a team from Mulesoft to help us.

The licensing is yearly, and there are additional fees for services. For example, having the help of the architect was a separate fee.

It's definitely allowed us to develop everything but we are stuck in testing. It works then it stops working, and now we are trying to figure out why. It's not related to the software but related to the teams that work with it. It's a new technology for us.

I am still trying to discover the benefits. I know that it has many connectors, that it's a tool to integrate with Salesforce. That's when they say we cannot do what we need to without MuleSoft. We didn't use it for that purpose. For our purposes, custom integration as ESB, we are still trying to discover where our benefits are. I don't have a good idea yet.

We were able to develop what we were planning to. It's highly configurable. We were able to configure the workflows and orchestrations, but we are not able to run it yet.

I don't want to give people the wrong impression because of my experience so far because it may not be an accurate one. It may not be the fault of the solution.

When I worked with IBM in the past, it was easier.

Due to the complexities, I would rate MuleSoft a six out of ten.

We primarily provide services using the Mule ESB. We use it to integrate multiple systems.

The connectivity the solution provides is excellent. There are often too many systems that we have to integrate and this helps with that.

The platform itself is very good.

I'm not sure of any areas Mule ESB needs to improve.

The price of the solution is a little bit high. It would be helpful if different sized businesses had access to different plans.

The solution isn't as stable as we'd like it to be. There are some ongoing issues and therefore Mule has to provide frequent patches. Mule's core IP should be more stable overall.

I've been familiar with the solution for two years.

We had a bit of an issue with stability when it came to running some large files. We kept getting an error. In the end, we had to divide the files and process it via multiple files because of the way we implemented them. Large file processing also seems to take up more memory.

The technical support has been very good. It depends on the account we're working on, however. Good accounts get prompt responses in regards to queries.

We didn't previously use a different solution. We've only been working with MuleSoft.

The initial setup was straightforward. We haven't faced any issues with implementation. They've recently simplified the processes. I recall, earlier it was not that easy to set up.

Deployment doesn't take too much time. Sometimes it can be done in minutes. It shouldn't take more than an hour.

I'm unsure of the licensing costs. I believe the total price is less than IBM, but it's still rather expensive.

We're partners of MuleSoft. We provide the solution's service to our clients.

The solution would be useful for large organizations. If there are more than three or four systems, and if there is an expansion, it would work best. Small or medium enterprises with two or three systems, may find the solution a little bit unorganized.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. If the stability were more reliable, I'd rate it higher.

We use Salesforce to store the most valuable information in our system. We have many clients that request this data, and we send it to them using the Mule ESB solution.

The most valuable feature is the Salesforce integration.

The drag and drop feature makes it very easy for transformation, and to use the Anypoint platform.

It is very easy to manage the flow using Anypoint.

I would like to see the transformation component improved such that they can support the integration of more datatypes. For example, in version 3.7 they do not support the Excel format, and some companies using that version cannot do transformation with Excel input. As a workaround, they have to manually write Java code to do it.

The Anypoint platform consumes a lot of memory, and it would be great for developers if it were more lightweight.

It would be great if they extended the free trial of the API designer to two months.

The version that I am using, 3.8, is quite stable. My understanding of version 4 is that it is not stable, yet, because it is new, and it will take some time.

This solution is very scalable, and we can use it however we like. It can connect to every kind of system.

There are approximately two hundred people using the system, directly and indirectly.

We have used technical support for some issues that we could not figure out by ourselves. They are fast and don't take a long time to respond.

We started with Mule ESB.

The Anypoint platform is based on Eclipse, so anyone who has worked in Java will find it easy.

I performed the installation myself.

The various features and components for this solution are no longer free.

I will soon be migrating to version 4 of Mule ESB, although we are also interested in the WSO2 solution because it seems to be very complete.

Using Mule ESB does not require somebody to be a Java developer, although there are some Java concepts that you need to know. For example, some people use JSON, and I find that they are scared of Mule ESB because it is based on Java. But really, it isn't a problem if they don't know it.

This solution has good performance and support, but not everybody can use it because many of the features are expensive. Especially for application management, it is expensive compared to solutions such as WSO2. It is limiting for small and medium-sized companies.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

I'm a consultant in a bank in Kuwait. I suggest good products for companies that are seeking my advice.

One of the important features of Mule ESB as an enterprise architect is that it should be scalable. It should be customizable for different kinds of clients. 

For client A, we need only two products. For client B, I need to group one and three. The product must be customizable for each. 

The product should be able to identify who is calling and what the components are. We need to return them to the calling point. Mule ESB covers most of these requirements.

Last month, the Guardian had a post saying that Mule is one of the best products for enterprise applications.

The most valuable feature of Mule ESB is data transformation, i.e. our interacting with different systems and orchestrating for our business needs. 

For example, a customer has liabilities in loans and credit cards, maybe some other mortgages, like four liabilities which are split into four systems. 

I need to expose an API that can tune the data from four systems and expose it into one single API. For that, I have to call our services and complex security policies.

Mule ESB loads complex web service security policies. Sometimes, we have some FLAC files or maybe some messaging services. We need to consume those components and expose them as an API, which is nothing but some adjacent format, i.e. a REST API.

Technically, there are mainly two API standards. One we call SOAP and the other one is the REST API. SOAP is nothing but fully external. It's very old, but huge complex enterprise companies are still using SOAP-based web services. In the mobile smartphone era, most of the hand-held devices are using REST APIs. 

Mule ESB is more into the latest REST APIs, not much into the SOAP web services. Developing is all about web services and not easy with Mule. That is one of the disadvantages of Mule. In next-gen products, Mule is in a good position.

Normally, if you're declaring a parameter or a variable, you can have visibility until it's not operating the variable. As an architect, programmer, or developer, you know when it's available. Graphically, that's not been available until this tool appeared.

It is this kind of enhancement that I'm looking for from MuleSoft. Two weeks ago or a month back, they had a big release. With this package, they are saying that APIs are your products. 

You can sell your API to different organizations and the developers can register on their portal. It's available this fall. These are the best features I am looking for now. 

My product is an API. I need to market it through the internet. I can have my portal with all of the tools built-in. This kind of feature I didn't see with the competitors currently in the market.

Mule ESB is very stable. I didn't face any issues. Recently I got a new version. I faced some other components issues, but not critical, i.e. easy to identify and rectify.

I moved from Mule 4.1 to 4.2 and it was really easy if you are migrating only one or two applications. It's very fast. I'm doing some experiments on my workspace for around 20-25 applications. 

I'm opening all of my applications in one shot, and it is scaling for me. I didn't update them as a bulk application. I worked by importing them one by one and it was fine.

I'm not into any official technical support. Their forum is pretty good and it's very active, but I cannot assure you that you will get a response within a day or two.

WebMethod is very expensive, but their support is awesome. I closely work with the operating technical support team. For retrieving the code from our bank, they are working with us very closely. Sometimes they are flying over here for conducting demos. 

Especially in the Middle East, MuleSoft is not doing like that. They are not doing much marketing in the industry. Maybe they are more focusing on South America or Asia. I'm not seeing much in the Middle East.

Mule ESB is one of the best. It is easy to use and setup. You just need to install their Anypoint Studio. It's very safe for all this. It's in a good rank just for the setup.

We evaluated Oracle, AG webMethods, and Red Hat OpenShift. The final one was MuleSoft. I'm very impressed with MuleSoft because of the pricing and license.

You have to implement several components. Sometimes, according to your needs, you have to buy several licenses for each component. Those are the things we compared.

My opinion is that Mule ESB depends on the business and the continuity of their enrollment. If you are a system that has not much left to repair, then your products and your APIs are assets within your organization. 

Here in the bank, we are facing different kinds of issues when we are integrating different systems:

• We are communicating with different card carriers like Mastercard and Visa. 
• Their standards are different according to the client requirements, i.e. exactly what kind of card they're looking for.
• They can get the products according to their requirements as well as their budget. 

I would rate Mule ESB with 7.5 or 8 out of 10. 

1. It's really easy to implement.
2. It's supporting our platforms: Windows, Linux, and Mac.
3. The performance.
4. It's free.

I'm looking for an API platform that supports the whole technology as well as the next-gen. 

Mule ESB is lacking for self-support, self-training, and documentation. The documentation of the product is less because they're selling the training.

You have to enroll for the training, then you'll get the full documentation. If you're an advanced user, you will not get much information from the public documentation.

We are using the on-premises version of this solution.

The most valuable feature is DataWeave. It allows for the transformation of data, for example to JSON or from JSON. It's very powerful.

There are also many connectors available, which is nice.

We would like to have a built-in logging framework in which we can do auditing. In our case, we are working on-premise. We are not using the cloud solution, so we have MMC, which is not enough in a high transaction environment.

This is a very stable solution. It doesn't require much memory or other resources. Once it is started, we don't see any problems on a day to day basis. Even when you need to make changes, they are easy to do. 

The scalability is easy. It can be done horizontally or vertically. We are scaling horizontally because we don't have any space left in the server. If we need to expand the number of nodes then it depends upon the licensing.

Our development team has three people, and I am the lead.

The community forums for this solution have been very helpful. You find plenty of information there. In the past three or four years, I have only raised three issues. They were related to the VM, and not the product itself, so I did not need product assistance.

We did not use another solution prior to this one. We started with the open source solution, version 3.1.0, and we implemented all of the services. We then paid for a licensed version.

The initial setup is pretty easy. We have multiple applications bounded by that domain, for resource sharing, so it was easy.

I set up the solution myself.

The calculation of ROI is difficult because we work in terms of providing support to other applications. There are many departments involved, and we cannot calculate our support in terms of money.

Before moving to the licensed version of this solution, we had a meeting to discuss the IBM Oracle web method. After looking at everything, including our code and the capability that Oracle has, we decided to continue with Mule ESB because of the ease in moving from the older, open source version, to the newer one. All we had to do is download it and continue with our work.

My advice to others who are implementing this solution is to first become acquainted with the forums. There are always reports coming out about the software, and new technologies. The next thing is that I would suggest always starting with the latest version. Older versions are available, but you should install the most recent one.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Our primary use for this solution is API driven related management and lightweight message processing.

The most powerful feature is DataWeave, which is a powerful language where data can be transformed from one form into another. 

This solution could be improved by making it more flexible, and more user-friendly.

I would like to see support for BPM in the next release of this solution.

This solution is very good, and it is stable.

In terms of scalability, it is very good.

Technical support for this solution is very good, and very interactive. If I have any questions then I reach out to them and they respond very quickly.

We were using a variety of technologies, but we use this solution because it is a very lightweight message processing system.

I would say that this initial setup was moderate.

Our DevOps handled the implementation.

We looked at other options, but this one is what our vendor recommended.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

• API integration with many backend systems, deployment options, testing. 
• It helps me to manage API as well.

• For API creation and integrations in agile mode.
• Reduces the development cost and time as we work in agile mode.

Connectors: It has many connectors and components that really help to complete the development very quickly.

• Support, and with respect to licensing cost.
• Many of the customers feel that the licensing cost is much.