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Mule ESB vs WSO2 Enterprise Integrator 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

Mule ESB
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
WSO2 Enterprise Integrator
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
7th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (25th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of Mule ESB is 20.6%, down from 22.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WSO2 Enterprise Integrator is 5.0%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Ritesh_Shah - PeerSpot reviewer
Decreases the development timeframe and costs
The main issue with the product is pricing. It uses core-based pricing for WSO2 Enterprise Integrator and API Manager. It would be best if you had APIM by default. It provides many connectors for easy integration with third-party systems. Often, customers decide to develop using open-source tools like Spring Boot if there aren't many connectors required to avoid increasing costs. They'll develop this way and then deploy using APIM, the bare minimum needed. It is mainly required for very complicated setups with many connectors. In the implementations I've seen, people often used open-source tools because there weren't many third-party systems involved—just their organization's own systems. From WSO2 Enterprise Integrator, I expect them to bring up more and more connectors in the future. That's the main expectation. Having more connectors in various areas will help us when discussing new requirements. I don't have any specific use case right now, so I can't name a particular connector. But, as new technologies emerge, the relevant connectors should be there for those. WSO2 Enterprise Integrator mainly helps with the integration part, which can be simplified only if you have relevant connectors for whatever you're doing.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Mule Expression Language"
"The connectors help to connect with a variety of applications."
"For complex cases, we employ the SSLi engine, whereas for simpler ones like healthcare or response data, such as EDI 270 or 271. We prefer to use an external XRT engine instead of handling it within the ESB for ease of management."
"It was pretty fast to develop APIs on this platform, which is something I liked about it. So, the time to value was pretty good."
"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."
"Mule ESB is a very easy-to-use and user-friendly solution."
"The connectivity the solution provides is excellent. There are often too many systems that we have to integrate and this helps with that."
"The solution basically conforms to our standards."
"In my opinion, the most valuable aspect of this solution is its extensive range of adaptors and connectors. This feature holds significant importance and provides great value to users."
"It was mostly easy to set up the product."
"The stability is excellent."
"I like the user-friendly system and development of the service-oriented architecture."
"The drag-and-drop features for connectors are very valuable."
"The productivity is the most valuable feature. It is very easy to write remediations."
"The solution has two main parts: integration and transformation. It's very user-friendly and easy to understand for everyone."
 

Cons

"It would be beneficial if users could navigate the UI easily without extensive training or learning curves."
"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."
"There are some features on the commercial version of the solution that would be great if they were on the community version. Additionally, if they added more authorization features it would be helpful."
"It should have some amount of logging."
"The price of Mule ESB could improve."
"The payment system needs improvement."
"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."
"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."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"One of the reasons that we are looking for a replacement is their way of defining integration. The language of the XML structures that I use to describe the integrations are not that standard, and it's not easy to find people who are familiar with this approach."
"You cannot include the validation of XPath."
"I would like to see better documentation for the open-source version."
"The integration capabilities need to be improved."
"The micro integrator should be improved. There is room for enhancement considering alternative integration components."
"WSO2 libraries are not mature enough. For example, if you want to integrate with Kafka using its Kafka library, it often has many bugs."
"I would like to see them bring back a feature, from earlier versions, that was very useful in debugging and finding issues."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Mule ESB is an expensive solution."
"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."
"I think the price is very high. If you use TIBCO BW, the license is for the CPU usage, then the IPS, and support. I also think the license for the product is a one-time expense."
"The solution is expensive."
"Plan your licensing model (cloud or on-premises or hybrid) that will allow seamless integration with new partners."
"This is expensive. In my next project, we had to go to other vendor."
"The pricing must be improved."
"This product is expensive, but it does offer value for money."
"The solution costs about 20,000 or 30,000 euros per year, per instance."
"I rate the product price a six on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"The pricing of WSO2 Enterprise Integrator for enterprise subscriptions can be considered expensive, especially from the perspective of someone who prefers open-source software."
"It is a low-cost solution."
"The open-source, unsupported version is available free of charge."
"The cost is better than IBM Cloud Pak."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Insurance Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 do you like most about Mule ESB?
The solution's drag-and-drop interface and data viewer helped us quite a lot.
What do you like most about WSO2 Enterprise Integrator?
WSO2's analytics capability is good, considering the ELC support they provide.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WSO2 Enterprise Integrator?
The product has reasonable and competitive pricing for enterprise customers. It is expensive for small businesses especially. They are using the open-source solution, and they find it expensive sin...
What needs improvement with WSO2 Enterprise Integrator?
The main issue with the product is pricing. It uses core-based pricing for WSO2 Enterprise Integrator and API Manager. It would be best if you had APIM by default. It provides many connectors for e...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot
West
Find out what your peers are saying about Mule ESB vs. WSO2 Enterprise Integrator and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
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