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JBoss ESB 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

JBoss ESB
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
13th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Mule ESB
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of JBoss ESB is 3.1%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Mule ESB is 20.4%, down from 22.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

Featured Reviews

RS
Easy to use with flexible pricing, but needs more flexibility surrounding integrations
The EPA, from what I understand, lacks a lot of features and it doesn't really know how to interface with legacy systems or how to develop APIs for legacy systems. I'm not sure if it is possible, however, we would like to see features that allow for legacy systems so that they can continue to be developed and managed well. The solution should provide some more general studio features. We should be able to manipulate the platform in order to do some integrations on our own. There needs to be a bit more flexibility.
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 solution is very easy to use. I can download the trial version and just give it a go."
"The solution's drag-and-drop interface and data viewer helped us quite a lot."
"The solution offers multiple deployment options."
"Once it is started, we don't see any problems on a day to day basis."
"The solution has a good graphical interface."
"The most powerful feature is DataWeave, which is a powerful language where data can be transformed from one form into another."
"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 most valuable feature for Mule is the number of connectors that are available."
"The solution doesn't require much code writing and we can develop APIs very easily."
 

Cons

"The EPA, from what I understand, lacks a lot of features and it doesn't really know how to interface with legacy systems or how to develop APIs for legacy systems."
"From an improvement perspective, there should be fewer coding challenges for users in Mule ESB."
"The initial setup is not easy."
"We would like the ability to use our own code. This would allow us to develop customizations with ease. Additionally, it would be nice to have more analytics or insights on the exchanged information between databases."
"It would be great to see implementing security modules as a feature."
"Documentation is cryptic, product releases are far too frequent, and upgrades become troublesome."
"It needs more samples. Also, the dependency on Maven should be removed."
"It would be much more beneficial if the solution included AI and business process management."
"One area that could be improved is the way that policies are propagated when APIs are moved from one environment to another. It's an issue, but when you develop and test the rest APIs in a lower environment and need to move them, there's a propagation process. This process moves certain aspects of the APIs, like the basic features. But when we move them, the policies don't always move with them. The policies should be able to move so we don't have to redo them manually. There are some APIs we use, but it's a bit tedious."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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 various features and components for this solution are no longer free."
"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 solution is expensive."
"Plan your licensing model (cloud or on-premises or hybrid) that will allow seamless integration with new partners."
"The pricing must be improved."
"The price of the Mule ESB commercial version is expensive. However, they have a free community version."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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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 ...
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rancore, Sprint, ResMed, Brazil's Ministry of Health, ING Services Polska
Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM, Salesforce, Oracle and others in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.