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

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
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
50
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 6.8%, up 6.1% compared to last year.
Mule ESB, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), holds 20.4% mindshare, down 22.2% 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

"The most valuable features are the flexibility and the range of EDI standards that IBM Sterling can handle."
"It's highly stable, and the redundancy is amazing. B2B Integrator also has a high availability option to work in a cluster environment. You rarely have issues operating it because of the HA."
"IBM B2B Integrator is a great tool, robust, reliable, low-maintenance, and ideal solution."
"It can scale horizontally as well as vertically as a cluster."
"Out-of-box process orchestration yields quick implementations."
"The solution offers good integration capabilities."
"The technical support on offer through the portal is very helpful and responsive."
"This solution allows for easy integration with heterogeneous applications."
"Mule ESB has a user-friendly design, and everything is in one place. The API and architecture are popular right now. Also, MuleSoft has a large and supportive online community."
"This tool has exceptional API management and integration connectors in addition to multiple out of the box connectors."
"Mule ESB is a very easy-to-use and user-friendly solution."
"Scalability and load balancing."
"The most beneficial features of Mule ESB are the control plane and runtime plane."
"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."
"Easy connectivity and easy integration."
"I like that Mule ESB provides fast and good technical support."
 

Cons

"The dashboard is not integrated and should be bundled by the product vendor."
"We often need to change property files for accounts, and I don't always have access to them. For core mapping, we need to install JDK"
"They do not have a solid partner ecosystem, and they do not have a clear roadmap for down the line; they're missing that clear roadmap."
"API-Fication required, and there should be more clarity on their cloud migration strategy."
"The tool requires you to write a lot of code in Java and XSLT, which makes development tough."
"The user interface is outdated. B2B Integrator was developed in the United States in the nineties, and the graphical user interface hasn't improved since. It's tough because you have to program the software in XML. Nowadays, other methods are easier to work with."
"There should be a single place to do things, rather than making it complicated, not moving away and truncating the old features but instead coming up with the new and still keeping the old stuff confuses people sometimes."
"Map translator needs more enhancements."
"The solution's setup needs to be a bit more straightforward and its support needs to respond faster."
"It would be great to see implementing security modules as a feature."
"Mule ESB is more into the latest REST APIs, not much into the SOAP web services. Developing is all about web services and not easy with Mule."
"The current version will not be supported for much longer."
"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."
"We would like to have a built-in logging framework in which we can do auditing."
"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."
"Limitation on external subscribers to listen to the messages on the bus."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 solution is priced at $20,000 to $30,000 per year with no extra costs."
"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 product costs more than 40K."
"The pricing is based on how many cores are used and the type of cores."
"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."
"Plan your licensing model (cloud or on-premises or hybrid) that will allow seamless integration with new partners."
"The pricing must be improved."
"The solution is expensive."
"The price of the Mule ESB commercial version is expensive. However, they have a free community version."
"You will not get any support from Mule ESB's team for the tool's community edition...You can get support with the licensed version of Mule ESB."
"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."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Business-to-Business Middleware solutions are best for your needs.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Healthcare Company
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

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: May 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.