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Amazon SNS vs IBM MQ comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM MQ
Ranking in Message Oriented Middleware (MOM)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
174
Ranking in other categories
Business Activity Monitoring (1st), Message Queue (MQ) Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) category, the mindshare of Amazon SNS is 4.8%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM MQ is 16.3%, down from 28.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM MQ16.3%
Amazon SNS4.8%
Other78.9%
Message Oriented Middleware (MOM)
 

Featured Reviews

VK
Technical Trainer at DIEMS Chh.Sambhajinagar
Event-driven alerts have automated incident response and support real-time campus workflows
Amazon SNS helps with microservices decoupling and SaaS scalability in our projects. When Lambda triggers, a proper notification is provided to the faculty or student, which is generated automatically due to the Lambda function. Amazon SNS has many features, including message filtering, multi-protocol support, security and compliance, and global reach. Beyond Lambda triggers and microservices communication, Amazon SNS shines with all these features. It is not just a notification tool; it is a versatile backbone for an event-driven system. Amazon SNS has impacted our organization positively due to all the notifications. For example, when a student uploads a file to Amazon S3, Amazon SNS immediately publishes an event that triggers a Lambda function, which scans the file for security, processes metadata, or even sends a notification to faculty. This automation ensures real-time processing without manual intervention, and it is something emphasized in training sessions as a practical DevOps workflow.
David Pizinger - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise Technical Leader at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Has faced unexpected VM restarts but continues to deliver messages reliably
I'm not sure if we've utilized IBM MQ's high availability. Our MQ VMs are set up in clusters, and I think our queue managers are set up in pairs. However, I don't know if we actually use any specific high availability features of IBM MQ that are out of the box. We have it architected with high availability because we use F5 load balancers, and everything about our architecture is highly available. I haven't personally used the management tools with IBM MQ, but we do have them, and our middleware folks leverage them. I can't really comment on them because I don't use them myself. I don't think the management tools help optimize message flows, and I'm not really aware of how they help in this. I'm not familiar with dynamic routing for IBM MQ.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Messages easily flow from publisher or application to subscriber."
"The initial setup of Amazon SNS was easy."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon SNS is speed. It's really fast."
"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."
"Amazon SNS has SMS notifications as well. Most of the other solutions have only email notifications."
"We see ROI because we use the features that help us and make our product work better."
"It's a simple communication service that allows us to communicate with customers."
"Since moving to SNS push notifications, we have had a lot better coverage."
"It improves reliability and guarantees that messages are not lost."
"We have found the MQ messaging topologies valuable."
"The features of IBM MQ that have proven most effective for ensuring message delivery reliability are the stability of the system, the resilience and the product, which is definitely of top quality in this segment."
"Stability-wise, it's very good. People have been using it for 15 to 20 years. MQ and IIB are the most stable products from IBM."
"The methodology and the way in which the platform has been produced as a standard is most valuable."
"Clustering is one of its most valuable features."
"Stability and reliability are the most valuable features; it's very reliable and very stable, and you can do a fast recovery in case of any failure."
"Rock-solid performance really is the most solid feature of it."
 

Cons

"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."
"I expect Amazon SNS to provide some capabilities to allow the configuration process to be done in a single script."
"In terms of improvement, I would like to have better customer support for SNS. We can then manage it very easily."
"I believe Amazon SNS could be improved because when you integrate it, you also need SQS, so it is a two-service job."
"Messages should flow through a gateway without the need for a mediator."
"A major issue with AWS as a whole is that it has a lot of services that do the same thing, and people get confused about which one to use in which scenario."
"Amazon SNS is strong, but there are a few areas where it could be improved."
"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."
"The user interface should be enhanced to include more monitoring features and other metrics. The metrics should include not only those from the IBM MQ point of view but also CPU and memory utilization."
"We have used the technical support, but we are more concerned about the response time."
"The pricing needs improvement."
"Lately, it hasn't been that stable. We're using multi-instance queue managers and we're having a lot of issues with storage and that affects the availability of the queue manager."
"Monitoring is a big part. We would like to see if we get back out queues or the queue depth goes high, so that we can be alerted on that."
"There could be a better front-end GUI interface for us, where we can see things more easily."
"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."
"IBM MQ can scale, but there are some challenges with it."
 

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."
"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."
"Their pricing is competitive. I would rate the cost four out of five."
"The pricing is very cheap."
"One can use the tool for free."
"The solution has no up-front costs because you pay based on the number of messages you publish."
"Amazon SNS is cheap and I would rate it a three out of ten. The pricing is usage-based."
"The price of IBM MQ could improve by being less expensive."
"Licensing for this software is on a yearly basis. The standard fee includes the maintenance and updates that are released periodically."
"The price is high."
"IBM MQ appliance has pricing options, but they are costly."
"The problem with this product is that it's a little bit expensive."
"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the tool's price a seven. The product is expensive."
"IBM MQ is an expensive solution compared to other solutions. However, if you pay less you will not receive the same experience or features."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Retailer
9%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise147
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon SNS?
I believe Amazon SNS could be improved because when you integrate it, you also need SQS, so it is a two-service job. It does not provide filtering or advanced routing, there is no ordering guarante...
What is your primary use case for Amazon SNS?
My main use case for Amazon SNS is that we use it for a messaging service with a publish-subscribe model to send messages to multiple subscribers.A specific example of how I use Amazon SNS for the ...
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon SNS?
The features I find valuable in Amazon SNS are messaging, real-time notifications, and the ability to create an event-driven architecture. I give this product a rating of 8 out of 10.
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...
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...
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
WebSphere MQ
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PlayOn! Sports, NASA, Change Healthcare, FCBarcelona
Deutsche Bahn, Bon-Ton, WestJet, ARBURG, Northern Territory Government, Tata Steel Europe, Sharp Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon SNS vs. IBM MQ and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.