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OpenESB vs webMethods.io 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

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
webMethods.io
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
92
Ranking in other categories
Business-to-Business Middleware (3rd), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (10th), API Management (10th), Cloud Data Integration (7th), Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of OpenESB is 1.4%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of webMethods.io is 10.7%, up from 9.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

Featured Reviews

PP
Enables us to define the business process and integrate it with other software
I used to work with Integration Bus. What is interesting is that the two products were made mainly by the same team, but OpenESB is lighter, you can run it on a simple GBM. It's lighter and has quite a few resources, no application server, and no database. This provides you with more intelligence because there is some kind of friction in the routing service, and you can play with that friction to provide some connection policy, like the last deployed policy. For example, if you were to install version one, and afterward, you deployed version two, automatically — if you decided that your connection will be the right deployed connection — you would be routed to the last version. If it doesn't work, you would just need to redeploy version one. Also, there are higher-level concepts, such as the interface of services, which allows you to define your interface and choose the method of implementation, like Java for example. On the other hand, with OpenESB, I am more connected. At the monitoring level, you can trust the level and replay the process, which is interesting, but because you have to store everything on the database, you have a conventional system that makes your system require more resources. The push ability to extract data from the process and then publish it in the data container is very interesting. For example, by using a database like Google's big data analytic search, you can create your own analytics from the data in your process without disturbing the process.
Michele Illiano - PeerSpot reviewer
Can function as an ESB along with the core product, with decent integration of message protocols
I have noticed that webMethods ActiveTransfer has had problems when handling large files. For example, when we receive (and perform operations on) files that are larger than about 16 MB, the software starts losing performance. This is why, for most customers who have to deal with big files, I suggest that they use a product other than ActiveTransfer. I would like to note that this problem mainly concerns large files that undergo extra operations, such assigning, unassigning, or file translation. When these operations take place on large files, ActiveTransfer will use up a lot of resources. Within the product itself, I also believe that there is room for improvement in terms of optimization when it comes to general performance. I suspect that the issues underlying poor optimization are because it is all developed in Java. That is, all the objects and functions that are used need to be better organized, especially when it comes to big files but also overall. webMethods ActiveTransfer was born as an ESB to handle messages, and these messages were typically very short, i.e. small in size. A message is data that you have to send to an application, where it must be received in real-time and possibly processed or acknowledged elsewhere in the system as well. So, because it was initially designed for small messages, it struggles with performance when presented with very large files. All this to say, I suggest that they have an engineer reevaluate the architecture of the product in order to consider cases where large files are sent, and not only small ones. As for new features, compared to other products in the market, I think Software AG should be more up to date when it comes to extra protocol support, especially those protocols that other solutions have included in their products by default. Whenever we need to add an unsupported protocol, we have to go through the effort of custom development in order to work with it. Also, all the banks are obligated to migrate to the new standards, and big companies are all handling translations and operating their libraries with the new protocol formats. But webMethods ActiveTransfer doesn't seem to be keeping up with this evolution. Thus, they should aim to be more compliant in future, along the lines of their competitors such as IBM and Primeur.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The process-oriented solution allows you to define choreography and orchestration."
"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."
"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."
"It's a visual tool, so our transformations can be quickly implemented without a lot of fuss. The fact that we have an easy way to expose REST services is also very interesting. It offers the possibility to connect over GMS to synchronize message brokers."
"The ease of mapping... is the single largest feature. It gives us the ability to craft anything. A lot of single-purpose technologies, like Mirth, are good for healthcare messages, but we use webMethods not only for healthcare messages but for other business-related purposes, like integrations to Salesforce or integrations to Office 365. It's multi-purpose nature is very strong."
"The orchestration aspects of APIs, the integration capabilities, and the logging functionalities were the most critical features of our workflow."
"It has a good integration server, designer, and a very good API portal."
"The cloud version of the solution is very easy to set up."
"All of the components are very independent but are tied together to give the business value."
"The main assets are its flow language, debugging, and Broker. Flow language is far better and more flexible for debugging."
"It is a very stable product."
 

Cons

"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."
"The documentation needs to be better."
"Regarding its management, a web console being able to synchronize distributed instances would be great."
"Cloud deployment is weak and needs to be improved."
"Other products have been using AI and cloud enhancements, but webMethods Integration Server is still lagging in that key area."
"The UI for the admin console is very old. It hasn't been updated for years and is pretty much the same one that we started with. This is something that could be refreshed and made more modern."
"The market webMethods Integration Server falls under is a very crowded market, so for the product to stand out, Software AG would need to get traction in the open source community by releasing a new version or a base version and open source it, so people can create new custom components and add it to the portfolio."
"I'd like to see the admin portal for managing the integration server go up a level, to have more capabilities and to be given a more modern web interface."
"The price has room for improvement."
"The licensing cost is high compared to other options."
"The interface needs some work. It is not very user-friendly."
"t doesn't represent OOP very well, just a method and proprietary interface called IData."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The Community Edition is a full product you can use in production, it does not have limitations like other alternatives."
"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."
"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."
"Sometimes we don't have a very clear idea what the licensing will entail at first, because it can be very customizable. On one hand, this can be a good thing, because it can be tailored to a specific customer's needs. But on the other hand it can also be an issue when some customer asks, "What's the cost?" and we can't yet give them an accurate answer."
"Currently, the licensing solution for this product is pretty straightforward. The way that Software AG has moved in their licensing agreements is very understandable. It is very easy for you to see where things land. Like most vendors today, they are transaction based. Therefore, just having a good understanding of how many transactions that you are doing a year would be very wise. Luckily, there are opportunities to work with the vendor to get a good understanding of how many transactions you have and what is the right limit for you to fall under."
"There are no hidden costs in addition to the standard licensing fees for webMethods. For corporate organizations, it's a very cheap or fairly priced product, but for growing or small businesses, it's quite expensive. These businesses would probably need to consider an enterprise services bus at some point. Thus, from a pricing point, it closes out non-cooperate businesses."
"This is not a cheap solution but, compared to other products such as those offered by IBM, the pricing is similar."
"This is an expensive product and we may replace it with something more reasonably priced."
"Pricing has to be negotiated with the local Software AG representative. SAG can always prepare an appropriate pricing model for every client."
"webMethods.io Integration's pricing is high and has yearly subscription costs."
"I would like to see better pricing for the license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Hospitality Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about Built.io Flow?
The tool helps us to streamline data integration. Its BPM is very strong and powerful. The solution helps us manage digital transformation.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Built.io Flow?
webMethods.io is expensive. We have multiple components, and you need to pay for each of them.
What needs improvement with Built.io Flow?
webMethods.io needs to incorporate ChatGPT to enhance user experience. It can offer a customized user experience.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Built.io Flow, webMethods Integration Server, webMethods Trading Networks, webMethods ActiveTransfer, webMethods.io API
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Cisco, Agralogics, Dreamforce, Cables & Sensors, Sacramento Kings
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenESB vs. webMethods.io and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,989 professionals have used our research since 2012.