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IBM B2B Integrator vs Mule ESB 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

IBM B2B Integrator
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Business-to-Business Middleware (7th)
Mule ESB
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Application Integration solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM B2B Integrator is designed for Business-to-Business Middleware and holds a mindshare of 6.5%, up 6.0% compared to last year.
Mule ESB, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), holds 20.6% mindshare, down 22.3% since last year.
Business-to-Business Middleware
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

Featured Reviews

Nagasaikiran Kesana - PeerSpot reviewer
Fast, easy to use, and useful for integration purposes
In the initial stage, I used only business processes to build code. As I used the product more and more, I learned that we could monitor, perform support activities, and install and upgrade servers. We can learn how to manage the clients to get business. We must get into a call with customers and get their requirements. We must pass all the test cases, both positive and negative. We need to manage our team as well. We use various protocols for data security, like SFTP, FTP, and HTTP. We follow the security levels based on the customer’s requirements. We encrypt the file, and the customers decrypt it using the public and private keys we provide. Customers who need high security opt for HTTP certificates and AS2. I have also worked on AWS and Azure to pass files to the buckets. I also work on single sign-on authentication. External users can access our dashboard with a few details. For example, if our customers need to see whether a file is transferred from our end, they can easily log in to the details and monitor it. They can also perform health checks. I will recommend the tool to others. People who want to use the tool must not do anything blindly. They must analyze, learn the concept, and understand the purpose of the tool. There are other products in the market, like MuleSoft, that have the same functionality. We must understand why we are using IBM B2B Integrator. We must gather some information. I take some introductory classes for the new joiners in my organization. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
PurbayanSaha - PeerSpot reviewer
Has API-led architecture and provides a unique, user-friendly, and scalable architecture for hosting APIs
There's room for improvement in multi-file transfer functionality. It's not convenient when using MuleSoft, and it should have better capability for handling large amounts of data. For example, applications like GoAnywhere can handle huge chunks of data, so the tool should also have something to facilitate that aspect of integration.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"IBM B2B Integrator is a great tool, robust, reliable, low-maintenance, and ideal solution."
"B2B Integrator is multi-platform, so it can be integrated with Windows, Unix, or whatever, and it can work with almost all programming languages. It can also transfer a lot of data in a short time. For instance, a system I recently implemented exchanges about 20 million files a day."
"It is easy of use and it's easy to maintain. It's also faster to on-board partners."
"There are also different tabs where we can check the status of file transfers and business processes, and we can monitor adapters and services in the link."
"Out-of-box process orchestration yields quick implementations."
"This solution allows for easy integration with heterogeneous applications."
"The solution is useful for transferring files from one format to another format. Also, the solution is useful in translation."
"The technical support on offer through the portal is very helpful and responsive."
"Most of our use cases are for Salesforce. So, the connectors for Salesforce have been really helpful. They've made development two times faster."
"It is easily deployable and manageable. It has microservices-based architecture, which means that you can deploy the solution based on your needs, and you can manage the solution very easily."
"The solution improved my company by modernizing the way we offer services and improving the user experience."
"The most valuable feature is the Salesforce integration."
"It's open source, and there are a lot of community resources. Mule ESB makes it easy to connect to other software applications."
"What Mule provides out-of-box is a sufficient product."
"Once it is started, we don't see any problems on a day to day basis."
"Scalability and load balancing."
 

Cons

"The web interface of B2B is quite outdated and not particularly user-friendly."
"There is no related transaction stored in the database because it's an OLTP application."
"The reporting features could be better. right now, they are lacking a bit."
"The mapping, visibility, deployment, and the dashboard could be improved and updated. The communication logs are very poor. They are not easily understood, and we need to navigate to many places for many reasons. You can't just pull the information; it's very tough."
"The tool requires you to write a lot of code in Java and XSLT, which makes development tough."
"End-to-end visibility and monitoring application required. The control center is available and covers this area, but it still fails in many monitoring scenarios."
"API integration could be improved. The legacy system could be on the cloud."
"There are also some features in the solution that are not user-friendly, like code lists with no search options. So, we must navigate hundreds of pages to check for one entry."
"There are some features on the commercial version of the solution that would be great if they were on the community version. Additionally, if they added more authorization features it would be helpful."
"It would be great to see implementing security modules as a feature."
"In the next release, I would like to see improvement in the generator for the DataWeave language so that it's a little more graphic."
"Documentation is cryptic, product releases are far too frequent, and upgrades become troublesome."
"MuleSoft isn't as mature as some other integration technologies out there like IBM WebSphere. There's room for growth, and MuleSoft is working toward that."
"The price of Mule ESB could improve."
"We would like the ability to use our own code. This would allow us to develop customizations with ease. Additionally, it would be nice to have more analytics or insights on the exchanged information between databases."
"The solution's setup needs to be a bit more straightforward and its support needs to respond faster."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is priced at $20,000 to $30,000 per year with no extra costs."
"The pricing is based on how many cores are used and the type of cores."
"Licensing depends upon the package you opt for within the solution. The solution is a bit costly compared to the other integration tools in the market."
"The price of IBM B2B Integrator is too high. However, IBM may be willing to give a discount if there are negotiations. If they see that there is a good opportunity for them they can provide a discount."
"The product costs more than 40K."
"We pay an annual fee based on the number of VPUs. It's fairly reasonable. We're in the middle of analyzing other products, and they're all pretty much in the same range."
"The licensing is yearly, and there are additional fees for services."
"This product is cheaper than some offered by other vendors, although there is a problem because you have to pay for some third-party adapters."
"The various features and components for this solution are no longer free."
"I think the price is very high. If you use TIBCO BW, the license is for the CPU usage, then the IPS, and support. I also think the license for the product is a one-time expense."
"Mule ESB is a costly solution. We pay approximately $80,000 annually for the system. The cost of the number of instances, annual subscription, and cloud hosting services are expensive."
"Regarding licensing and pricing, I find it somewhat flexible. They are more flexible with larger customers compared to small and medium ones, as their licensing model depends on ports and other factors. Large customers benefit from more flexibility in implementation and renewal compared to smaller ones."
"Most of the challenges that I had with this solution were for smaller customers. There is not a good licensing model or pricing model. It is more expensive than other solutions, and that's the downside of MuleSoft. I had to be creative to be able to sell it to the business, but we did. This is something they have to work on because for large companies, it's affordable, but for small and medium businesses, it's very hard to sell."
"Plan your licensing model (cloud or on-premises or hybrid) that will allow seamless integration with new partners."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Retailer
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM B2B Integrator?
IBM B2B Integrator is a great tool, robust, reliable, low-maintenance, and ideal solution.
What needs improvement with IBM B2B Integrator?
It supports many of our use cases but falls short in some areas as technology evolves, especially with data transfer between edge locations and the cloud or on-premise systems. The solution doesn’t...
Migration from IBM Integration Bus to Mulesoft ESB for a large enterprise tech services company
I was previously part of the Oracle SOA/OSB development team. In my current capacity I architected solutions using MuleSoft Anypoint Platform on cloud / on-premises and hybrid modes and on PCE/RTF ...
IBM Integration Bus vs Mule ESB - which to choose?
Our team ran a comparison of IBM’s Integration Bus vs. Mule ESB in order to determine what sort of ESB software was the best fit for our organization. Ultimately we decided to choose IBM Integratio...
What do you like most about Mule ESB?
The solution's drag-and-drop interface and data viewer helped us quite a lot.
 

Also Known As

IBM Sterling B2B Integrator, Sterling Gentran Integration Suite
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bonnie Plants, Toshiba Europe, Florida Hospital
Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot
Find out what your peers are saying about Salesforce, SAP, IBM and others in Business-to-Business Middleware. Updated: March 2025.
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