Amazon SNS vs IBM MQ comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and IBM are both solutions in the Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #5 with an average rating of 9.0, while IBM is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.6. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 6.5% mindshare in MOM, compared to IBM’s 28.6% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Amazon SNS

Read 11 Amazon SNS reviews

598 Views
274 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM MQ

Read 169 IBM MQ reviews

1,529 Views
1,043 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Amazon SNS

IBM MQ

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Amazon SNS and IBM MQ based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon SNS vs. IBM MQ Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon SNS vs. IBM MQ

April 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 851,604 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

Amazon SNS

Ranking in Message Oriented Middleware (MOM)

5th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

IBM MQ

Ranking in Message Oriented Middleware (MOM)

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

169

Ranking in other categories

Business Activity Monitoring (1st), Message Queue (MQ) Software (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) category, the mindshare of Amazon SNS is 6.5%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM MQ is 28.6%, up from 24.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Message Oriented Middleware (MOM)

Featured Reviews

Bireshwar Adhikary

Senior Consultant at ATOS

The best service available with easy message flow and a pay-as-you-go model

Messages easily flow from publisher or application to subscriber. You can also flow messages from publisher to SNS with an https-like mediator. Amazon SQS is there, so message queue services are also there. The message transports to the service provider such as Redshift, the SQ bucket, Teams, Splunk, or any other message service. The solution has no up-front costs. Messages flow much more quickly than in the past. They used to run a bit late after being published.

Read full review

Md Al-Amin

Senior System Analyst at Thakral

Reliable and secure performance consistently enhances message transfer

IBM MQ is more reliable and secure than other software. There is a saying that for the last 30 years IBM MQ has never been hacked. It is more secure and reliable. Whenever the configuration is done, I do not have to touch it again. It works fine, it is stable, and its communication is to the point and accurate. All performance-related aspects are better. Performance-wise, it is scalable, and other features such as DR, DC, replication, and active passive mode are complex to configure, but it remains scalable. The pricing model for IBM MQ could be more flexible for clients.

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

"The integration between the features is excellent."

"The mobile push notifications are the most valuable. Previously, we used to use Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) for this functionality. It is a Google service for sending push notifications. Android did not have a good service for sending push notifications, but now, Amazon SNS integrates with FCM. Under the road, it is actually using FCM, but we can see all the metrics on our AW service itself, which makes it a lot easier instead of using a third-party service for this particular functionality."

"Messages easily flow from publisher or application to subscriber."

"Stability has been good for us. It is quite high."

"The most valuable feature of Amazon SNS is speed. It's really fast."

"Push notifications are the most valuable. I have mostly used push notifications for my system. Amazon SNS supports all devices for push notification services. It supports iOS, Android, and Windows notifications. It provides reliable push notification services. We have queues, and we can track which notifications have failed or had some issues. We can then figure out the issue. We can also debug the issue because of which our push notification didn't reach the end users."

"Amazon SNS has SMS notifications as well. Most of the other solutions have only email notifications."

"The initial setup of Amazon SNS was easy."

More Amazon SNS pros

"It runs everywhere, from the mainframe in the US to the PCs in the Gobi desert attached to an analog modem."

"The solution can scale well."

"There is no dependency on the end party service's run status."

"Currently, we are not using many advanced features. We are only using point-to-point MQ. I have previously used features like context-based authentication, SSL authentication, and high availability. These are good and pretty cool features. They make your business reliable. For critical business needs, everyone uses only IBM MQ. It is the first choice because of its reliability. There is a one-send-and-one-delivery feature. It also has a no-message-loss feature, and because of that, only IBM MQ is used in banking or financial sectors."

"This initial setup is not complex at all. Deploying it was very easy."

"A stable and reliable software that offers good integration between different systems."

"It also has a backup queue concept and topics, features that I have not seen anywhere else. I like these features very much."

"The most valuable feature is the interaction within the system."

More IBM MQ pros

Cons

"There could be more integration with other solutions."

"We would like to have the option when someone leaves the organization or moves to another team, to remove notifications. Currently this needs to be done manually by the company admin."

"I recently worked with Firebase, and it provides an option to create a marketing campaign with a title and a specific image to inform our audience about something. We just design the campaign and then use the push notifications. It would be good if Amazon also adds a similar feature."

"There needs to be more documentation on the integration with different platforms."

"In future releases, I want to see if the platforms that SMS can reach. It would be a good way to improve it. More platforms to be able to use it."

"I expect Amazon SNS to provide some capabilities to allow the configuration process to be done in a single script."

"Messages should flow through a gateway without the need for a mediator."

"In terms of improvement, I would like to have better customer support for SNS. We can then manage it very easily."

More Amazon SNS cons

"The issue is that they're using a very old clustering model."

"IBM MQ is not very user-friendly."

"The memory management is very poor and it consumes too much memory."

"The licensing fees should be more cost-effective so that we can better pitch the product to our clients. With the pricing as it is, they tend to move away from IBM products."

"Sometimes, not all messages are consumed in the queues. File transfers need improvement."

"I'm not sure that current version has event-driven mechanism requests that people go for. I would like the latest version to come with both type of event mechanisms: an email server and a POP server. If that is not there, then that would be a great addition."

"Everything in the solution could be simplified a little. We have trouble with the configuration and cost which is mostly an internal issue, but nevertheless, the errors do come up when there are configuration changes across a specific version. We have slightly different versions, which may have slightly different configurations which cause issues."

"IBM could revamp the interface. The API is huge, but some developers find it limiting because of the cost. They tend to wrap the API course into the JMS, which means they're missing out on some good features. They should work a little bit on the API exposure."

More IBM MQ cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of push notifications and everything is quite fair. If you are using FCM under the hood, it is completely free. When you are using push notification on SMS, it is just a nominal price that you need to pay. SMS services are a lot more costly. It is because we don't have proper providers in India. That's why it gets a lot more costly in terms of SMS. This is the reason why we don't use SMS services from SNS itself. We use other third-party services like SMS Horizon. We use a third-party service for email services. It is almost free. It is just around $1 a month. Configuring Lambda is also quite cheap. You only pay for the Lambda usage. You don't pay for SNS itself."

"The pricing is very cheap."

"It is the cheapest solution in the market. It is on a monthly basis. After a month, you are build based on your usage. There are no additional costs to the standard licensing fees."

"Amazon SNS is cheap and I would rate it a three out of ten. The pricing is usage-based."

"The solution has no up-front costs because you pay based on the number of messages you publish."

"Their pricing is competitive. I would rate the cost four out of five."

"One can use the tool for free."

"The licensing fees are paid quarterly and they are expensive."

"It's a very expensive product."

"IBM MQ is an expensive solution compared to other solutions. However, if you pay less you will not receive the same experience or features."

"I think the pricing is reasonable, especially with IIB as a part of it."

"Licensing for this software is on a yearly basis. The standard fee includes the maintenance and updates that are released periodically."

"It is a licensed product. As compared to an open-source solution, such as RabbitMQ, it is obviously costly. If you're using IBM Message Broker, which is a licensed product, IBM MQ is included in the same license. You don't have to pay separately for IBM MQ. The license cost of IBM MQ is lesser than IBM Message Broker."

"The fee for this solution is on the higher end of the scale."

"There is a different platform price between Windows, z/OS, and iSeries."

More IBM MQ pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

28%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Media Company

Financial Services Firm

37%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon SNS?

The most valuable feature of Amazon SNS is speed. It's really fast.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon SNS?

The pricing is very cheap.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon SNS?

In future releases, I want to see if the platforms that SMS can reach. It would be a good way to improve it. More platforms to be able to use it.

See all answers

What is MQ software?

Hi As someone with 45+ years of experience in the Transaction and Message Processing world, I have seen many "MQ" solutions that have come into the market place. From my perspective, while each pro...

See all answers

What are the differences between Apache Kafka and IBM MQ?

Apache Kafka is open source and can be used for free. It has very good log management and has a way to store the data used for analytics. Apache Kafka is very good if you have a high number of user...

See all answers

How does IBM MQ compare with VMware RabbitMQ?

IBM MQ has a great reputation behind it, and this solution is very robust with great stability. It is easy to use, simple to configure and integrates well with our enterprise ecosystem and protocol...

See all answers

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Red Hat AMQ vs IBM MQ

Compared 8% of the time

Software AG Universal Messaging vs IBM MQ

Compared 1% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon SNS

May 2025

Download Amazon SNS product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM MQ

May 2025

Download IBM MQ product report

Also Known As

No data available

WebSphere MQ

Overview

Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) is a highly available, durable, secure, fully managed pub/sub messaging service that enables you to decouple microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications. Amazon SNS provides topics for high-throughput, push-based, many-to-many messaging. Using Amazon SNS topics, your publisher systems can fan out messages to a large number of subscriber endpoints for parallel processing, including Amazon SQS queues, AWS Lambda functions, and HTTP/S webhooks. Additionally, SNS can be used to fan out notifications to end users using mobile push, SMS, and email.

You can get started with Amazon SNS in minutes by using the AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), or AWS Software Development Kit (SDK).

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

IBM MQ is a middleware product used to send or exchange messages across multiple platforms, including applications, systems, files, and services via MQs (messaging queues). This solution helps simplify the creation of business applications, and also makes them easier to maintain. IBM MQ is security-rich, has high performance, and provides a universal messaging backbone with robust connectivity. In addition, it also integrates easily with existing IT assets by using an SOA (service oriented architecture).

IBM MQ can be deployed:

On-premises
In the cloud
Hybrid cloud

IBM MQ supports the following APIs:

MQI (Message Queue Interface)
REST
.NET
MQTT
JMS
IBM MQ Light

IBM MQ Features

Some of the most powerful IBM MQ features include:

High availability
Stability and scalability
Flexible deployment options
Uniform clusters
Automated and intelligent workload balancing
Broad language, API, and messaging protocol support
Administrative features that simplify messaging management
Open standards development tools
Simple management tools

IBM MQ Benefits

Some of the benefits of using IBM MQ include:

Multi-style messaging: IBM MQ supports simple multi-style messaging, making it easy to connect diverse systems with support for message queuing, transactions, and more.
Reduced risk: With IBM MQ you will never lose a message, and messages are never delivered more than once.
Cloud-native: Because IBM MQ has a minimal infrastructure, it is suitable to be cloud-native, and therefore has the capability to always remain on.
Available anywhere: Using IBM MQ, you have access to secure messaging anywhere, at any time.
Secure: IBM MQ makes sure to keep your data safe by using TLS secured communications, providing access identity management, message-level security, and more measures to protect your information.
Easy for application programmers: To use IBM MQ, application programmers do not need to have any knowledge of communications programming.
Technical support: IBM MQ has a large user community and also provides support 24/7 as needed.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by IBM MQ users who are currently using the solution.

PeerSpot user Sunil S., a manager at a financial services firm, explains that they never lose messages are never lost in transit, mentioning that he can store messages and forward them as required: "Whenever payments are happening, such as incoming payments to the bank, we need to notify the customer. With MQ we can actually do that asynchronously. We don't want to notify the customer for each and every payment but, rather, more like once a day. That kind of thing can be enabled with the help of MQ."

Another PeerSpot reviewer, Luis L. who is a solutions director at Thesys Technologies, says that IBM MQ is a valuable solution and is "A stable and reliable software that offers good integration between different systems."

The head of operations at a financial services firm notes that "I have found the solution to be very robust. It has a strong reputation, is easy to use, simple to configure in our enterprise software, and supports all the protocols that we use."

In addition, a Software Engineer at a financial services firm praises the security benefits of it and states that “it has the most security features I've seen in a communication solution. Security is the most important thing for our purposes."

IBM

Sample Customers

PlayOn! Sports, NASA, Change Healthcare, FCBarcelona

Deutsche Bahn, Bon-Ton, WestJet, ARBURG, Northern Territory Government, Tata Steel Europe, Sharp Corporation

Buyer's Guide

Amazon SNS vs. IBM MQ

April 2025

Free Report: Amazon SNS vs. IBM MQ

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon SNS vs. IBM MQ and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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