IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs NGINX Plus comparison

IBM and F5 are both solutions in the Application Infrastructure category. IBM is ranked #16 with an average rating of 8.0, while F5 is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.3. IBM holds a 1.5% mindshare in AIS, compared to F5’s 10.8% mindshare. Additionally, 84% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of F5 users who would recommend it.

IBM WebSphere Message Broker

Read 13 IBM WebSphere Message Broker reviews

285 Views
234 Comparison Views

84% willing to recommend

NGINX Plus

Read 31 NGINX Plus reviews

1,956 Views
1,647 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

IBM WebSphere Message Broker

NGINX Plus

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

IBM WebSphere Message Broker and NGINX Plus compete in the realm of IT infrastructure solutions. IBM WebSphere Message Broker holds the advantage in comprehensive messaging and integration capabilities, whereas NGINX Plus provides superior load balancing and web server functionalities, appealing for speed and efficiency.

Features: IBM WebSphere Message Broker provides robust message transformation, support for multiple protocols and data formats, and seamless integration capabilities that cater to complex IT environments. NGINX Plus offers advanced load balancing, application firewall, and monitoring features, excelling in environments requiring high performance and scalability.

Room for Improvement: IBM WebSphere Message Broker could improve by simplifying its deployment process, enhancing user interface intuitiveness, and reducing overhead in less complex environments. NGINX Plus can expand its protocol support, enhance its monitoring capabilities, and offer more extensive logging features to support enterprise environments with complex operational demands.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NGINX Plus has a lightweight architecture that ensures straightforward deployment and setup, backed by responsive customer support that aids quick troubleshooting. IBM WebSphere Message Broker, while powerful, involves a complex deployment process and customer support that, although thorough, may come across as more formal and less agile.

Pricing and ROI: NGINX Plus generally offers a cost-effective initial investment with predictable subscription pricing, allowing for a quicker ROI in performance-focused applications. IBM WebSphere Message Broker incurs higher initial costs but provides substantial ROI in environments needing comprehensive integration and data management solutions. The pricing structure of NGINX Plus might appeal more to businesses targeting swift deployment and lower long-term expenses.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs. NGINX Plus Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs. NGINX Plus

April 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 WebSphere Message Broker

Ranking in Application Infrastructure

16th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (8th)

NGINX Plus

Ranking in Application Infrastructure

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (6th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Application Infrastructure category, the mindshare of IBM WebSphere Message Broker is 1.5%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 10.8%, down from 11.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Infrastructure

Featured Reviews

BrajendraKumar

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.

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Ritesh-Bakhru

Major Account Manager at Check Point Software

Quick installation and very easy to manage while doing orchestration or automation

NGINX cannot be a replacement for your traditional load balancer with what we use in the network today. However, with applications going toward microservices, NGINX is definitely a way forward. F5 has many traditional load balancing features, so they still need to bring some of those features to NGINX. NGINX is a very basic load balancer and cannot do as many customizations as F5. I think F5 is trying to implement those features in NGINX so they can improve the balancing on NGINX, but I think that will take some time. With the traditional F5 set up, the same OS can do load balancing, firewalls, and even policy enforcement. If we are able to bring some of those capabilities to NGINX, I think it would become a versatile solution and usage would definitely increase.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"Integration and mapping are easy, which is a major advantage."

"The most valuable feature of IBM WebSphere Message Broker is the ability to facilitate communication with legacy systems, offering a multitude of great capabilities. For example, if there is a mainframe system in place with a web service serving as the front end. In that case, the solution enables efficient protocol transformations to convert all request payloads into a format that the legacy systems can accept, rendering the integration and transformation processes seamless and highly effective."

"Performance-wise, this solution is really good."

"Straightforward development and deployment."

"It has many interfaces and you can connect to any backend source that has another format, and convert it to the desired format."

"Message Broker is valuable because most of the applications are using MQ. Even in my current engagement, the few applications which I audit to onboard the bank are using MQ."

More IBM WebSphere Message Broker pros

"Supports IMAP, POP and SMTP protocols for the reverse proxy."

"NGINX Plus also has NGINX App Protect. It's a separate module, which is inspired by the F5 apps."

"When I worked in a security research center, we tested NGINX to support DoS and DDoS attacks, and its results were great."

"It's lightweight software that can handle heavy loads efficiently."

"NGINX provides a cost advantage, value addition, and effective support."

"Nginx is extremely efficient in terms of the connection rate to the CPU cycles ratio, and in terms of the bandwidth to CPU cycles."

"With NGINX, I appreciate its ability to route traffic geographically."

"Its versatility and capabilities make it invaluable for implementing patches and fixes when necessary."

More NGINX Plus pros

Cons

"The installation configuration is quite difficult."

"The images and size of the containers are too big and I think that they should be more lightweight."

"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."

"The product's features are not being upgraded or enhanced by the vendor"

"Stability and pricing are areas with shortcomings that need improvement."

"It is currently a weighty product."

"The solution can add container engines such as docker."

"As our business requirements evolve, we require more dynamic capabilities to adapt and scale our services accordingly."

More IBM WebSphere Message Broker cons

"The solution needs to be easier to setup and deploy."

"Lack of a feature to print data on the terminal for verification of network traffic during debugging and testing."

"Initially, I experienced hiccups whenever I installed the application. As with any application, there were initial issues, however, after receiving support, everything was rectified."

"One area of improvement could be that NGINX could provide a means to generate self-signed SSL certificates."

"Make modules easier to enable or disable. The beauty and ugly side of the NGINX modules is you have to know how to compile the module. For beginners or non-very technical aspirant(s) going for NGINX, they have to learn how to compile the modules."

"If NGINX brings some features for health check in the open source version, it would be better. "

"The user interface could be improved."

"The biggest room for improvement would be to allow NGINX Core machines to cluster for memory zones in some way with a plug and play module. "

More NGINX Plus cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."

"IBM software can be costly, but having a contract has helped manage and potentially lower costs over time."

"This product is more expensive than competing products."

"The licensing cost of IBM WebSphere Message Broker needs to be reduced"

"The solution is expensive."

"IBM products are generally more stable and have more features, but also come at a greater cost."

"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."

"The list price of NGINX Plus is close to $5,500."

"HAProxy is cheaper than NGINX."

"I am not so happy with their pricing policy, but this is not the worse thing in my life. I can tolerate it."

"You pay for each feature that you want."

"There's an open-source version of NGINX that is free."

"NGINX Plus is worth it, if you need it. If you do not need the features or support, the free and open source package is more than capable. "

"Nginx is free. I don't have experience with the Plus version."

"The price is the cost to contract support with a specialized company, usually during consulting hours."

More NGINX Plus pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

31%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

18%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM WebSphere Message Broker?

It is a scalable solution...The setup is easy.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Which is better - IIS or NGINX Plus?

IIS is a flexible, secure, and manageable web server to host anything on the web. IIS’s scalable and open architecture can handle the most demanding tasks. From media streaming to web applications,...

See all answers

What do you like most about NGINX Plus?

It performs very well. That's one of the primary reasons we use NGINX.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX Plus?

My use case involves using the free and open-source version of NGINX, making it cost-effective as I haven't incurred any costs.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 20% of the time

IBM DataPower Gateway vs IBM WebSphere Message Broker

Compared 12% of the time

Mule ESB vs IBM WebSphere Message Broker

Compared 11% of the time

IBM BPM vs IBM WebSphere Message Broker

Compared 9% of the time

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IIS vs NGINX Plus

Compared 17% of the time

HAProxy vs NGINX Plus

Compared 15% of the time

NetScaler vs NGINX Plus

Compared 11% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs NGINX Plus

Compared 10% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs NGINX Plus

Compared 10% of the time

More NGINX Plus Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM WebSphere Message Broker

May 2025

Download IBM WebSphere Message Broker product report

Buyer's Guide

NGINX Plus

May 2025

Download NGINX Plus product report

Also Known As

WebSphere Message Broker

NGINX

Overview

WebSphere Message Broker is an enterprise service bus (ESB) providing connectivity and universal data transformation for service-oriented architecture (SOA) and non-SOA environments. It allows businesses of any size to eliminate point-to-point connections and batch processing regardless of platform, protocol or data format.

IBM

NGINX Plus is a versatile solution that offers load balancing, caching, proxying, and API deployment capabilities. It can be deployed on private or public clouds and is ideal for building CDN solutions. The solution can also be used to secure web applications and replace web services like Apache.

NGINX has helped organizations improve functioning, reduce downtimes, and offer a DevOps-friendly solution. Its community support and documentation are highly regarded, and its configuration is more straightforward, making it a recommended choice over HAProxy.

Sample Customers

WestJet, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Sharp Corporation, Michelin Tire

Locaweb, AppNexus, Wix, Reliam, Montana Interactive, MuleSoft, Warpwire, Discovery Education, InkaBinka, WordPress.com, Gogo, GOV.UK, NASA

Buyer's Guide

IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs. NGINX Plus

April 2025

Free Report: IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs. NGINX Plus

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs. NGINX Plus and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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