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IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs OpenESB 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 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 (17th)
OpenESB
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
14th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM WebSphere Message Broker is 4.8%, up from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenESB is 2.9%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM WebSphere Message Broker4.8%
OpenESB2.9%
Other92.3%
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

Featured Reviews

MANUEL VALDIVIA - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Routes messages efficiently across our services, but the features for scalability need improvement
One of the key benefits has been its ability to expose services and securely integrate applications within our architecture. It's been integral in maintaining a stable infrastructure despite its limitations with dynamic service creation and flexibility compared to newer technologies like Kubernetes. The main challenge has been scalability during peak usage times.
PP
Integration Architect at Pymma consulting
Easily define choreography and orchestration with this process-oriented solution
We provide contracted services for our customers that include coordinating with providers and implementing the solution.  A current project includes using the solution to deploy 200 microservices.  The process-oriented solution allows you to define choreography and orchestration. This feature…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The documentation, performance, stability and scalability of the tool are valuable."
"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."
"IBM WebSphere Message Broker is one of the best middleware solutions"
"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."
"The solution has good integration."
"It's reliable for our day-to-day operations, ensuring fast and secure data integration across different systems."
"We are using three or four services in the backend for reformatting messages, and it is straightforward to use."
"Overall, in comparison to other solutions specific to the banking domain, this product is quite good."
"Millions of people were connecting every month on the system and there were no issues."
"OpenESB pushes the organization to clearly define service boundaries and interfaces. So it motives the business and the development teams to clearly define their business services and processes they want to implement. OpenESB supports fine and coarse-grain granularity for the services and supports top-down and bottom-up approaches for the services, processes definition, and composition."
"The core is very stable."
"One of the most valuable features is being able to implement business processes while keeping track of the design from BPMN to a BPEL Implementation."
"ESL Gaming used OpenESB for its scalability and processes 1 billion of messages daily with a large configuration deployed on a private cloud."
"One of our clients is a signature company and developed on a classic Java enterprise application using OpenESB, and in one year they saved £20,000,000 on development and maintenance."
"The process-oriented solution allows you to define choreography and orchestration."
 

Cons

"The images and size of the containers are too big and I think that they should be more lightweight."
"My biggest complaint about this product is the price."
"Today I probably wouldn't go for Message Broker because of the cost structure, support, and the whole ecosystem around IBM."
"They are expensive and not worth the money we are spending on them."
"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."
"Technical support is very slow and needs to be improved."
"As our business requirements evolve, we require more dynamic capabilities to adapt and scale our services accordingly."
"The Studio is a good tool based on NetBeans, but some of its features have to be improved, liked local schemas management."
"The documentation needs to be better — maybe they could add more accurate tutorials."
"The documentation of the product must be improved. It could be tricky to find the right documentation on a topic since the documentation is spread in many places. I advise the new joiner to contact the community to get entry points and additional documentation. Tutorial and Video must be present to take up the product."
"Regarding its management, a web console being able to synchronize distributed instances would be great."
"The documentation needs to be better."
"Cloud deployment is weak and needs to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"The price is very high and it's the main reason that we are searching for alternatives."
"The solution is expensive."
"IBM products are generally more stable and have more features, but also come at a greater cost."
"This product is more expensive than competing products."
"I feel with IBM, when you want certain functions or features, you have to continuously purchase add-ons. There are always additional fees."
"IBM software can be costly, but having a contract has helped manage and potentially lower costs over time."
"The licensing cost of IBM WebSphere Message Broker needs to be reduced"
"The Community Edition is a full product you can use in production, it does not have limitations like other alternatives."
"There are two versions. The first is the community version, which is free and contains the last part of the feature, but if you want to get the Enterprise version, you'll have to pay €60,000 which covers support and two instances on production."
"The cost for the prediction instrument is high because it is charged per instances based on prediction, but the rest of the solution is free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Construction Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Large Enterprise10
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

WebSphere Message Broker
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

WestJet, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Sharp Corporation, Michelin Tire
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs. OpenESB and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,417 professionals have used our research since 2012.