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IBM Integration Bus vs IBM WebSphere Message Broker comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 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

IBM Integration Bus
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
70
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM WebSphere Message Broker
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
9th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM Integration Bus is 15.4%, down from 22.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM WebSphere Message Broker is 5.0%, up from 3.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Integration Bus15.4%
IBM WebSphere Message Broker5.0%
Other79.6%
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

Featured Reviews

RA
Associate Consultant at MindCraft Software Pvt. Ltd.
Efficient data transformation and seamless integration drive successful deployments
As for improvements in IBM Integration Bus, we are getting another feature of the retry mechanism now. Version 8.13 was upgraded, and we started using the retry mechanism itself, and we are using nodes in the development level. They are improving one of the nodes such as the HTTP request node, implementing the indirect retry mechanism itself, and we are getting new features.
BrajendraKumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Architect at HCL Technologies
Offers large-sized business information processing with a time-saving setup and impressive stability
I primarily use two previews of the product for Dev and two for QA as part of the production process. Whatever tools our company is using, the cost of a license in IBM WebSphere Message Broker is about 80% of all these software or tools. The message routing capabilities satisfy workflow efficiency. The product supports message formats of XML, JSON, and SSID, which are around 24 KB to 50 KB in size. The solution supports communication protocols like STTP and TCP. Features like DataGraph need to be introduced in IBM WebSphere Message Broker. Some of the clients of our organization are using an outdated version of IBM WebSphere Message Broker for which the vendor doesn't provide direct support anymore. For the aforementioned version, our company professionals can solve the queries on their own without seeking support from IBM. During the installation of a prior version of IBM WebSphere Message Broker, sometimes I have to configure the failovers through the cluster, where issues arise, and I often seek help from the support team. The solution is being used by some medicine companies in our organization that receive sales orders from the EDR or JDE. I would not recommend the product to others as its becoming obsolete and they can rather choose a middleware solution from Amazon or Azure. But I would overall rate the product a nine 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 message queue feature is very valuable."
"If people have good knowledge of it, they can really do a lot of stuff."
"Easy to understand documentation with a huge list of examples and tutorials."
"The product helps efficiently work with different connectors from different back-end systems."
"IBM Integration Bus is a very good solution and they have come a long way with improvements over the years."
"This solution is very reliable and it is easy to learn."
"There are three elements that make IBM Integration Bus very important for our organization's payroll systems which are the solution's high scalability, performance, and reliability."
"I am into microservices using Java Spring Boot, but if we are using legacy systems, IBM Integration Bus is very good for them. They have their own computational logic called EC12, their own proprietary language. You can do any kind of complex logic and can implement other ESVs that I have seen."
"It has many interfaces and you can connect to any backend source that has another format, and convert it to the desired format."
"It is a scalable solution...The setup is easy."
"We only use the basic features, but the most valuable one for us is the Publish-subscribe pattern."
"Performance-wise, this solution is really good."
"Integration and mapping are easy, which is a major advantage."
"Before the cloud, it was very easy for us to build and it was quick to integrate."
"IBM WebSphere Message Broker is one of the best middleware solutions"
"Setup is very easy; we had proper documentation for setup, so it didn't take much time, and setup takes a maximum of two or three hours and I can set up the complete application."
 

Cons

"I can't say that there is any improvement I’m looking for. I’m new and haven’t connected with all features. For all drawbacks that were in the old version, I think they have been solved. The scalability needs improvement."
"They need to come up with Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS). It should also have a feature for integrating with those applications that are on the cloud."
"Its documentation is currently lacking."
"The product could be improved by including more resources on SQL and improving the simplicity of the resources available."
"Surely something that can be improved is session management. Sometimes sessions hang, and practically every day we hear about session congestion and this kind of thing."
"We have come across many customer complaints about the excessive time it takes for IBM to provide customer and technical support."
"The solution is complex and there is a need for more resources and greatly improved quality."
"The pricing could be improved to make it more competitive."
"It is currently a weighty product."
"They are expensive and not worth the money we are spending on them."
"Technical support is very slow and needs to be improved."
"I find the installation configuration is quite difficult compared to other solutions."
"Technical support is good but they could have a better response time."
"The user interface is designed mainly for experts, much in the way a BPM or another integration tool is."
"I know that Message Broker was a very tightly copied product with another IBM product, that is, IBM MQ. I would like to have a little bit more decoupling from the IBM MQ because it should not be a prerequisite for IBM WebSphere Message Broker usage."
"Today I probably wouldn't go for Message Broker because of the cost structure, support, and the whole ecosystem around IBM."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is on par with its competition."
"For small companies, First of all, there are a lot of free products that could be used for integration. It can use the cloud or new implementation in the past. But if the tool is IBM, the official box in your company, you can make your submission and also publish the cloud to the work file. But let’s say, if you are working with premises, then you have to buy a reasonable main full support and gain experience with your product."
"The price is reasonable considering the features we receive."
"As customers, we always try to buy things as cheaply as possible. But the price for the IBM Integration Bus is fine. When we compare it to competitors, it's pretty much the same. However, there are a lot of open-source integration platforms coming to the market as well. So overall, the price is fine as far as licensed products are concerned."
"The maintenance and support of the product are very expensive."
"The price of the IBM Integration Bus is expensive. If you compare the price to the cloud version you can purchase what you need but the on-premise version price is flat."
"Our licensing is based on a five-year contract, and as far as I know, there are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fee."
"IBM provides a quite complicated licensing model."
"The price is very high and it's the main reason that we are searching for alternatives."
"I feel with IBM, when you want certain functions or features, you have to continuously purchase add-ons. There are always additional fees."
"This product is more expensive than competing products."
"The solution is expensive."
"IBM products are generally more stable and have more features, but also come at a greater cost."
"The solution is expensive."
"The licensing cost of IBM WebSphere Message Broker needs to be reduced"
"IBM software can be costly, but having a contract has helped manage and potentially lower costs over time."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
5%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Construction Company
13%
Computer Software Company
9%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise47
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Integration Bus?
Regarding the pricing setup cost and licensing for IBM Integration Bus, I believe it is expensive. The IBM tool is now expensive because they moved to the cloud. I am not sure about the previous co...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM WebSphere Message Broker?
IBM software can be costly, but having a contract has helped manage and potentially lower costs over time.
What needs improvement with IBM WebSphere Message Broker?
There could be greater flexibility and agility in service creation for the product. As our business requirements evolve, we require more dynamic capabilities to adapt and scale our services accordi...
What is your primary use case for IBM WebSphere Message Broker?
We use the product for exposing services at the application level, integrating with various architectures like WebSphere, and handling static service creation.
 

Also Known As

IBM WebSphere ESB
WebSphere Message Broker
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Salesbox, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Road Buddy, Swiss Federal Railways, Electricity Supply Board, The Hartree Centre, ESB Networks
WestJet, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Sharp Corporation, Michelin Tire
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Integration Bus vs. IBM WebSphere Message Broker and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.