Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

ActiveMQ pros and cons

Vendor: Apache

4.0 out of 5

28 reviews
89% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

ActiveMQ excels in JVM-related languages and JMS integration with reliable message delivery via multiple protocols like MQTT and AMQP, supporting EIP and REST. It offers high throughput and low latency for large data volumes. Though praised for ease of setup and community support, the platform faces challenges with mirror queues management, scalability, and clustering, as well as stability concerns, highlighting the need for AI enhancements and better deployment documentation.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

ActiveMQ is highly recommended for JVM-related languages and offers robust JMS integration.

ActiveMQ supports various protocols like MQTT and AMQP, along with extensive EIP, REST, and Message Groups compatibility.

It provides reliable message delivery with functionalities like topics, durable topics, and message broadcasting for multiple consumers.

ActiveMQ is praised for its performance, low latency, and efficiency in handling large data volumes and ensuring prompt delivery.

The ActiveMQ community is vibrant and offers strong support, enhancing the overall user experience.

CONS

ActiveMQ does not scale out well and becomes complex with many mirror queues.

Improvement is needed in clustering, which currently relies on an active/passive relationship that introduces a single point of failure.

Stability issues are present, where sometimes ActiveMQ gets stuck and requires a restart.

Initial setup complexity is a concern, and installation needs optimization.

AI capabilities require enhancement in future updates to improve functionality.

ActiveMQ Pros review quotes

Java Technical Lead at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Apr 24, 2017

The most important feature is that it's best for JVM-related languages and JMS integration.

Read full review

Manager, Site Reliability Engineering at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

May 7, 2017

Reliable message delivery and mirroring.

Read full review

Director of Data and Technology at a transportation company with 51-200 employees

May 7, 2017

I appreciate many features including queue, topic, durable topic, and selectors. I also value a different support for different protocols such as MQTT and AMQP. It has full support for EIP, REST, Message Groups, UDP, and TCP.

Read full review

Free Report: ActiveMQ Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about ActiveMQ. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.

881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Sr Software Engineer - Enterprise Automation Systems at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

May 8, 2017

It’s a JMS broker, so the fact that it can allow for asynchronous communication is valuable.

Read full review

Microservices Consultant at a transportation company with 501-1,000 employees

May 8, 2017

Message broadcasting: There could be a use case sending the same message to all consumers. So as a producer, I broadcast the message to a topic. Then, whichever consumers are subscribed to the topic can consume the same message.

Read full review

ME

MarkEllerington

Solutions Architect at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Feb 2, 2020

I'm impressed, I think that Active MQ is great.

Read full review

Technical Specialist at APIZone

Mar 30, 2022

ActiveMQ is very lightweight and quick.

Read full review

GT

Lead Architect at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Sep 16, 2022

The most valuable feature of this solution is the holding and forwarding.

Read full review

Senior Software Developer at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Nov 1, 2022

ActiveMQ brings the most value to small applications because it will not cost you very much to complete.

Read full review

NK

Director at Tibco

Nov 9, 2022

The initial setup is straightforward and only takes a few minutes.

Read full review

Show 10 more reviews (out of 20)

ActiveMQ Cons review quotes

Java Technical Lead at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Apr 24, 2017

Message Management: Better management of the messages. Perhaps persist them, or put in another queue with another life cycle.

Read full review

Manager, Site Reliability Engineering at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

May 7, 2017

It does not scale out well. It ends up being very complex if you have a lot of mirror queues.

Read full review

Director of Data and Technology at a transportation company with 51-200 employees

May 7, 2017

Needs to focus on a certain facet and be good at it, instead of handling support for most of the available message brokers.

Read full review

Free Report: ActiveMQ Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about ActiveMQ. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.

881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Sr Software Engineer - Enterprise Automation Systems at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

May 8, 2017

The clustering for sure needs improvement. When we were using it, the only thing available was an active/passive relationship that had to be maintained via shared file storage. That model includes a single point of failure in that storage medium.

Read full review

Microservices Consultant at a transportation company with 501-1,000 employees

May 8, 2017

Distributed message processing would be a nice addition.

Read full review

ME

MarkEllerington

Solutions Architect at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Feb 2, 2020

This solution could improve by providing better documentation.

Read full review

Technical Specialist at APIZone

Mar 30, 2022

From the TPS point of view, it's like 100,000 transactions that need to be admitted from different devices and also from the different minor small systems. Those are best fit for Kafka. We have used it on the customer side, and we thought of giving a try to ActiveMQ, but we have to do a lot of performance tests and approval is required before we can use it for this scale.

Read full review

GT

Lead Architect at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Sep 16, 2022

It would be great if it is included as part of the solution, as Kafka is doing. Even though the use case of Kafka is different, If something like data extraction is possible, or if we can experiment with partition tolerance and other such things, that will be great.

Read full review

Senior Software Developer at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Nov 1, 2022

There are some stability issues.

Read full review

NK

Director at Tibco

Nov 9, 2022

The solution can improve the other protocols to equal the AMQ protocol they offer.

Read full review

Show 10 more reviews (out of 20)

Product Categories

Product Categories

Message Queue (MQ) Software

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs ActiveMQ

IBM MQ vs ActiveMQ

VMware Tanzu Data Solutions vs ActiveMQ

Amazon SQS vs ActiveMQ

PubSub+ Platform vs ActiveMQ

Red Hat AMQ vs ActiveMQ

Aurea CX Messenger vs ActiveMQ

EMQX vs ActiveMQ

Red Hat JBoss A-MQ for xPaaS vs ActiveMQ

StormMQ vs ActiveMQ

See all alternatives

Product Categories

Product Categories

Message Queue (MQ) Software

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs ActiveMQ

IBM MQ vs ActiveMQ

VMware Tanzu Data Solutions vs ActiveMQ

Amazon SQS vs ActiveMQ

PubSub+ Platform vs ActiveMQ

Red Hat AMQ vs ActiveMQ

Aurea CX Messenger vs ActiveMQ

EMQX vs ActiveMQ

Red Hat JBoss A-MQ for xPaaS vs ActiveMQ

StormMQ vs ActiveMQ

See all alternatives

Related questions

555

What Is The Biggest Difference Between ActiveMQ and IBM MQ?

18

What is the biggest difference between ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ?

27

When evaluating Message Queue, what aspect do you think is the most important to look for?

41

What Message Queue (MQ) Software do you recommend? Why?

54

What is the best MQ software out there?

75

What is MQ software?

25

Why is Message Queue (MQ) Software important for companies?