IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services vs Mule ESB comparison

The compared IBM and Salesforce solutions aren't in the same category. IBM is ranked #4 in BBM , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 15.7% mindshare in the category. Salesforce is ranked #2 in E , with an average rating of 7.9, and holds a 19.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 86% of Salesforce users who would recommend it.

IBM Sterling B2B Integratio...

Read 9 IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services reviews

1,307 Views
856 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Mule ESB

Read 51 Mule ESB reviews

3,212 Views
2,107 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

IBM Sterling B2B Integratio...

Mule ESB

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services and Mule ESB based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Salesforce, SAP, IBM and others in Business-to-Business Middleware.

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Business-to-Business Middleware

June 2025

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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 Sterling B2B Integratio...

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Business-to-Business Middleware (4th)

Mule ESB

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Application Integration solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services is designed for Business-to-Business Middleware and holds a mindshare of 15.7%, up 12.9% compared to last year.
Mule ESB, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), holds 19.3% mindshare, down 22.4% since last year.

Business-to-Business Middleware

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

Featured Reviews

Joshua Rule

Senior Integration Consultant at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Comes with real-time integration suite and best security

We use the product in an integrated environment where the client needs a variety of different file transfer protocols as well as an integrated file translation service IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services offers the best security. The product's most valuable feature is the real-time…

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PurbayanSaha

Technology Consultant at Ernst & Young

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.

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

"IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services is a stable and scalable product."

"They have best-in-class, quality support."

"We are able to monitor all B2B messages, and we are able to see or track each message on it from an error perspective. That's a good side of it. It is working well, and we're able to do our current job."

"They have multiple features for each kind of task and issue. The company has different channels to give information to the administration. Security and integration capabilities are also important. This product has helped to replace a lot of other solutions, saving time and cost."

"The solution is extremely scalable."

"The product's most valuable feature is the real-time integration suite."

"Most of our use cases are for Salesforce. So, the connectors for Salesforce have been really helpful. They've made development two times faster."

"Once it is started, we don't see any problems on a day to day basis."

"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."

"The solution doesn't require much code writing and we can develop APIs very easily."

"It's open source, and there are a lot of community resources. Mule ESB makes it easy to connect to other software applications."

"I'm not using ESB directly. It is the integration layer, so it's running under the hood. However, the conversion and transformation performance is excellent. Anypoint Enterprise Security is also solid."

"The most valuable feature of Mule ESB is data transformation, i.e. our interacting with different systems and orchestrating for our business needs."

"The transformation and the data format are the features that I like the most."

More Mule ESB pros

Cons

"Onboarding on the solution is complex. It's hard to onboard partners and customer suppliers. It's one aspect that is not that straightforward."

"They can improve APIs because they are still lagging behind in API connectivity. With non-API connectivity, they're market leaders, but API connectivity, they're still in the immature space."

"The only weaknesses they have different governance for each task and different channels for communication which are hard to maintain. The relation of the company with other companies can be improved. We have a lot of customers who this platform for the interchange of information which can also be improved. The compliance information about banks can also be updated."

"It can be now classified as a legacy system because there are no more updates. From what I know, there will be no updates for the current version, which is an issue. Therefore, we are looking for a compatible new software that we can use. We're currently researching what is there in the market. We would consider something that would give us better speed on our current processor. There is also room for improvement in terms of its scalability and GUI. It is an old system, and its scalability can be improved. Its GUI can also be more appealing."

"There are limitations with the subscription model that comes with the product."

"In India, particularly in the banking sector, clients do not prefer cloud solutions due to regulatory and compliance requirements."

"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."

"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."

"Improvements could be made in performance."

"MuleSoft is not so strong in method-based integration, so they're not so functional in that regard."

"The stability could be improved."

"I cannot say that installation with Kubernetes needs to be improved to be less tricky, but more information is needed from MuleSoft. They do not help much with Kubernetes, so we should have a person who is well-versed in Kubernetes to handle this."

More Mule ESB cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is a little bit on the higher side because they give you the best support. Out of ten, I would rate pricing at seven or eight."

"They have a good pricing system, in relation to powerful features."

"The tool is expensive because of its rich features."

"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."

"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."

"This product is expensive, but it does offer value for money."

"The pricing must be improved."

"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."

"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."

"The solution is expensive."

"The price of the Mule ESB commercial version is expensive. However, they have a free community version."

More Mule ESB pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Retailer

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services?

The product's most valuable feature is the real-time integration suite.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services?

The tool is expensive because of its rich features.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services?

IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services does not have specific issues that need improvement. While each product, like SeeBurger and IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services, has its own advantages and d...

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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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Mule ESB?

The solution's drag-and-drop interface and data viewer helped us quite a lot.

See all answers

Comparisons

webMethods.io vs IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services

Compared 17% of the time

IBM B2B Integrator vs IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services

Compared 17% of the time

SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite vs IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services

Compared 12% of the time

OpenText Trading Grid vs IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services

Compared 8% of the time

SAP Process Orchestration vs IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services

Compared 8% of the time

More IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services Competitors

IBM Integration Bus vs Mule ESB

Compared 26% of the time

Oracle Service Bus vs Mule ESB

Compared 13% of the time

IBM B2B Integrator vs Mule ESB

Compared 9% of the time

webMethods.io vs Mule ESB

Compared 7% of the time

IBM DataPower Gateway vs Mule ESB

Compared 6% of the time

More Mule ESB Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services

June 2025

IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services report

Download IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services product report

Buyer's Guide

Mule ESB

June 2025

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Overview

IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services are designed to alleviate the burden on internal resources by providing secure connectivity and collaboration with your customers, suppliers, and business partners. The solution is built on the cloud-based B2B integration and visibility capabilities of IBM Sterling B2B Collaboration Network and provides comprehensive service offerings for partner onboarding, B2B process management, and trading partner support.

Facilitate growth by rapidly growing and adapting your B2B community without burdening internal resources and capital
Reduce B2B total cost of ownership by reducing the cost and increasing the reliability of B2B operations

Accelerate B2B collaboration with global customers and suppliers by leveraging our B2B expertise.

IBM

For companies looking to modernize and unlock the value of existing on-premises systems and applications, an enterprise service bus (ESB) architecture serves as a critical foundation layer for SOA. When deployed as an ESB, the Mule runtime engine of Anypoint Platform combines the power of data and application integration across legacy systems and SaaS applications, with a seamless path to the other capabilities of Anypoint Platform and the full power of API-led connectivity.

Salesforce

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot

Buyer's Guide

Business-to-Business Middleware

June 2025

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