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ActiveMQ vs PubSub+ Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 27, 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

ActiveMQ
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
2nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
PubSub+ Platform
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) (2nd), Event Monitoring (10th), Streaming Analytics (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of ActiveMQ is 26.5%, up from 21.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PubSub+ Platform is 4.7%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Message Queue (MQ) Software
 

Featured Reviews

Prashant-Sharma - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows for asynchronous communication, enabling services to operate independently but issues with stability
The feature of ActiveMQ which I feel is good is its ability to have DLP, the later queues. If something goes wrong with the platform, it retries. Even if it fails, it goes to DLP, and later we can rescan the same event for processing. The ability to store the failed events for some time is valuable.
BhanuChidigam - PeerSpot reviewer
Performs well, high availability, and helpful support
We use approximately four people for the maintenance of the solution. My advice to others is this solution has high throughput and is used for many stock exchanges. For business critical use cases, such as processing financial transactions at a quick speed, I would recommend this solution. I rate PubSub+ Event Broker an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The main function I find valuable in ActiveMQ is facilitating message transfer within the client's internal network. ActiveMQ handles the message transfer from the internal network to the cloud. Regarding multi-protocols, we use different approaches based on client capabilities. Some clients connect for real-time data transfer, using database queries for periodic updates every ten minutes. We collect data from multiple clients, ensuring we get real-time sensor values where possible and periodic updates for others."
"The initial setup is straightforward and only takes a few minutes."
"I am impressed with the tool’s latency. Also, the messages in ActiveMQ wait in a queue. The messages will start to move when the system reopens after getting stuck."
"ActiveMQ is very lightweight and quick."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the holding and forwarding."
"Reliable message delivery and mirroring."
"The most important feature is that it's best for JVM-related languages and JMS integration."
"ActiveMQ brings the most value to small applications because it will not cost you very much to complete."
"One of the main reasons for using PubSub+ is that it is a proper event manager that can handle events in a reactive way."
"The valuable feature of PubSub+ Event Broker is the speed of processing, publishing, and consumption."
"The way we can replicate information and send it to several subscribers is most valuable. It can be used for any kind of business where you've got multiple users who need information. Any company, such as LinkedIn, with a huge number of subscribers and any business, such as publishing, supermarket, airline, or shipping can use it."
"When we went to add another installation in our private cloud, it was easy. We received support from Solace and the install was seamless with no issues."
"The most valuable feature of PubSub+ Event Broker is the scaling integration. Prior to using the solution, it was done manually with a file, and it can be done instantly live."
"The event portal and the diversity of deployment options in a hybrid landscape are the most valuable features."
"Guaranteed Messaging allows for us to transport messages between on-prem and the cloud without any loss of data."
"The most useful features has been the WAN optimization and probably the HybridEdge, which requires some third-party adapters or plugins. The idea that we can position Solace as a protocol-agnostic message transport fabric is key to our company having all manners of asynchronous messaging protocols from MQ, Kafka, JMS, etc. I really like the WAN optimization: Send once over a WAN, then distribute locally as many times as there are subscribers."
 

Cons

"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."
"It does not scale out well. It ends up being very complex if you have a lot of mirror queues."
"The tool needs to improve its installation part which is lengthy. The product is already working on that aspect so that the complete installation gets completed within a month."
"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."
"Needs to focus on a certain facet and be good at it, instead of handling support for most of the available message brokers."
"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."
"The solution can improve the other protocols to equal the AMQ protocol they offer."
"There are some stability issues."
"The deployment process is complex."
"The integrations could improve in PubSub+ Event Broker."
"The product should allow third-party agents to be installed. Currently, it is quite proprietary."
"The ease of management could be approved. The GUI is very good, but to configure and manage these devices programmatically in the software version is not easy. For example, if I would like to spin up a new software broker, then I could in theory use the API, but it would require a considerable amount of development effort to do so. There should be a tool, or something that Solace supports, that we could use for this, e.g., a platform like Terraform where we could use infrastructure as code to configure our source appliances."
"It could be cheaper. It could also have easier usage. It is a brilliant product, but it is quite complex to use."
"If you create one event in the past, you cannot resend it."
"Some of the feature's gaps with some of the open-source vendors have been closed in a lot of ways. Being more agile and addressing those earlier could be an area for improvement."
"We have requested to be able to get into the payload to do dynamic topic hierarchy building. A current workaround is using the message's header, where the business data can be put into this header and be used for a dynamic topic lookup. I want to see this in action when there are a couple of hundred cases live. E.g., how does it perform? From an administration perspective, is the ease of use there?"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the open-source version, so we have not looked at any pricing."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable and competitive compared to other solutions."
"It’s open source, ergo free."
"We use the open-source version."
"ActiveMQ is open source, so it is free to use."
"There are no fees because it is open-source."
"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."
"I think the software is free."
"Having a free version of the solution was a big, important part of our decision to go with it. This was the big driver for us to evaluate Solace. We started using it as the free version. When we felt comfortable with the free version, that is when we bought the enterprise version."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"I would rate the product's pricing a ten out of ten."
"We have been really happy with the product licensing rates. It has been free for us, up to a 100,000 transactions per second, and all we have to do is pay for support. Making their product available and accessible to us has not been a problem at all."
"The licensing is dependent on the volume that is flowing. If you go for their support services, it will cost some more money, but I think it is worth it, especially if you are just starting your journey."
"We are looking for something that will add value and fit for purpose. Freeware is good if you want to try something quickly without putting in much money. However, as far as our decision is concerned, I don't think it helps. At the end of the day, if we are convinced that a capability is required, we will ask for the funding. Then, when the funding is available, we will go for an enterprise solution only."
"It could be cheaper. Its licensing is on a yearly basis."
"The price of PubSub+ Event Broker is reasonable for the capability it offers. However, when compared to others solutions on the market it is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
34%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
35%
Computer Software Company
12%
Retailer
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ActiveMQ?
For reliable messaging, the most valuable feature of ActiveMQ for us is ensuring prompt message delivery.
What needs improvement with ActiveMQ?
We need to address the non-deterministic load issues. Sometimes, ActiveMQ either restarts automatically or goes into ActiveMQ mode, causing interruptions. We need to enhance stability and improve t...
What is your primary use case for ActiveMQ?
We have a digital ID platform that uses various services running on Kafka. There are two main endpoints where services interact with external services. These include an automatic biometric service ...
What do you like most about PubSub+ Event Broker?
The most valuable feature of PubSub+ Event Broker is the scaling integration. Prior to using the solution, it was done manually with a file, and it can be done instantly live.
What needs improvement with PubSub+ Event Broker?
The solution could be improved by enhancing the message pooling size for persistent messages to handle both small and large messages effectively. Additionally, providing a comprehensive dashboard t...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

AMQ
PubSub+ Event Broker, PubSub+ Event Portal
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Washington, Daugherty Systems, CSC, STG Technologies, Inc. 
FxPro, TP ICAP, Barclays, Airtel, American Express, Cobalt, Legal & General, LSE Group, Akuna Capital, Azure Information Technology, Brand.net, Canadian Securities Exchange, Core Transport Technologies, Crédit Agricole, Fluent Trade Technologies, Harris Corporation, Korea Exchange, Live E!, Mercuria Energy, Myspace, NYSE Technologies, Pico, RBC Capital Markets, Standard Chartered Bank, Unibet 
Find out what your peers are saying about ActiveMQ vs. PubSub+ Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
845,564 professionals have used our research since 2012.