ActiveMQ vs PubSub+ Platform comparison

Apache and Solace are both solutions in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category. Apache is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.5, while Solace is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.3. Apache holds a 22.4% mindshare in MQ, compared to Solace’s 4.3% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Solace users who would recommend it.

ActiveMQ

Read 28 ActiveMQ reviews

4,451 Views
4,184 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

PubSub+ Platform

Read 18 PubSub+ Platform reviews

2,323 Views
836 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

ActiveMQ

PubSub+ Platform

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 27, 2025

ActiveMQ and PubSub+ Platform are both key players in the messaging and streaming industry. While ActiveMQ offers a cost-effective solution, PubSub+ Platform provides robust features, making it superior in terms of extensive functionality and performance.

Features: ActiveMQ provides simplicity and compatibility with JMS-based applications, transaction support, and multi-protocol capabilities. PubSub+ Platform is known for dynamic message routing, high availability, and real-time streaming, offering robust support for complex data systems.

Room for Improvement: ActiveMQ could enhance its high availability features and improve message routing under load. It might also benefit from better real-time streaming capabilities. PubSub+ Platform could offer a more straightforward deployment process and reduce complexity in its feature set. Simplifying its cost structure could also be an area for enhancement.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: ActiveMQ is appreciated for its straightforward deployment process and ease of use. PubSub+ Platform, while more elaborate in deployment, offers superior integration options and robust customer support, providing efficiency in larger environments.

Pricing and ROI: ActiveMQ, being open-source, is cost-effective with low initial setup costs, ideal for budget-conscious projects. PubSub+ Platform, despite its higher cost, delivers long-term benefits through advanced features and scalability, resulting in enhanced ROI for large enterprises seeking high performance.

To learn more, read our detailed ActiveMQ vs. PubSub+ Platform Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ vs. PubSub+ Platform

December 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

ActiveMQ

Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software

2nd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

PubSub+ Platform

Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software

8th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) (2nd), Event Monitoring (12th), Streaming Analytics (14th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of ActiveMQ is 22.4%, down from 25.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PubSub+ Platform is 4.3%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Message Queue (MQ) Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
ActiveMQ	22.4%
PubSub+ Platform	4.3%
Other	73.3%

Message Queue (MQ) Software

Featured Reviews

MoumitaDas

Software Engineer III at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Integration capabilities enhance message handling without human interaction

With ActiveMQ there should be more options. If you work with other technologies, for example, Java, there are many options. We can integrate the way we want ActiveMQ. We can create partitions and clusters, but AP is not providing such options currently. It only provides time, request response timing, the number of requests that need to be handled, and protocol types. The configuration needs to be broadened inside AP to perform in a better way. Sometimes issues arise in production with ActiveMQ due to the number of requests. For example, if you have configured one thousand requests at a time and it receives one thousand and one messages at a time, it breaks. The configuration aspect is tricky. When configurations are proper, ActiveMQ almost has zero errors.

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reviewer2714190

freelancer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Offers a seamless way to decouple applications, providing impressive performance and flexibility

Regarding improving the PubSub+ Platform, I'm not sure about the pricing aspect, but I heard that it is quite expensive compared to Kafka. That's the only concern I can mention; otherwise, it was as impressive as Kafka, better than Kafka based on my experience working on the Solace and Kafka white paper.

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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

"The initial setup and first deployment of ActiveMQ is fairly simple."

"Message broadcasting: There could be a use case sending the same message to all consumers. So as a producer, I broadcast the message to a topic. Then, whichever consumers are subscribed to the topic can consume the same message."

"For reliable messaging, the most valuable feature of ActiveMQ for us is ensuring prompt message delivery."

"It provides the best support services."

"ActiveMQ demonstrates excellent stability and sturdiness."

"The initial setup is straightforward and only takes a few minutes."

"There is a vibrant community, and it is one of the strongest points of this product. We always get answers to our problems. So, my experience with the community support has been good."

"I appreciate many features including queue, topic, durable topic, and selectors. I also value a different support for different protocols such as MQTT and AMQP. It has full support for EIP, REST, Message Groups, UDP, and TCP."

More ActiveMQ pros

"As of now, the most valuable aspects are the topic-based subscription and the fanout exchange that we are using."

"The most valuable feature of PubSub+ Event Broker is the scaling integration. Prior to using the solution, it was done manually with a file, and it can be done instantly live."

"This solution reduces the latency to access changes in real-time and the effort required to onboard a new subscriber. It also reduces the maintenance of each of those interfaces because now the publisher and subscribers are decoupled. Event Broker handles all the communication and engagement. We can just push one update, then we don't have to know who is consuming it and what's happening to that publication downstream. It's all done by the broker, which is a huge benefit of using Event Broker."

"We like the seamless flexibility in protocol exchange offering without writing a code."

"The event portal and the diversity of deployment options in a hybrid landscape are the most valuable features."

"The way we can replicate information and send it to several subscribers is most valuable. It can be used for any kind of business where you've got multiple users who need information. Any company, such as LinkedIn, with a huge number of subscribers and any business, such as publishing, supermarket, airline, or shipping can use it."

"Some valuable features include reconnecting topics, placing queues, and direct connections to MongoDB. The platform provides a dashboard to monitor the status of messages, such as how many have been processed or delivered, which is helpful for tracking performance."

"Going from something where we had outages and capacity issues constantly to a system that was able to scale with the massive market data and messaging spikes that happened during the initial stages of the COVID crisis in March, we were able to scale with 40 plus percent growth in our platform over the course of days."

More PubSub+ Platform pros

Cons

"Distributed message processing would be a nice addition."

"Message Management: Better management of the messages. Perhaps persist them, or put in another queue with another life cycle."

"The solution's stability needs improvement."

"AI capabilities require improvement in future updates."

"The tool needs to improve its installation part which is lengthy. The product is already working on that aspect so that the complete installation gets completed within a month."

"Sometimes issues arise in production with ActiveMQ due to the number of requests. For example, if you have configured one thousand requests at a time and it receives one thousand and one messages at a time, it breaks."

"There are some stability issues."

"I would rate the stability a five out of ten because sometimes it gets stuck, and we have to restart it. We"

More ActiveMQ cons

"The deployment process is complex."

"The licensing and the cost are the major pitfalls."

"If you create one event in the past, you cannot resend it."

"We have requested to be able to get into the payload to do dynamic topic hierarchy building. A current workaround is using the message's header, where the business data can be put into this header and be used for a dynamic topic lookup. I want to see this in action when there are a couple of hundred cases live. E.g., how does it perform? From an administration perspective, is the ease of use there?"

"For improvements, I would suggest increasing the max payload size to a limit of 100MB or more. The current max payload size is limited to 5MB."

"The section on observability pertains to understanding the functioning of an event crash. Instead of focusing on how the crash occurs, attention is given to the observable aspects, such as a memory pipeline where one person pushes messages and another reads them. However, this pipeline often encounters issues, such as the reader being unavailable, causing the system to become stuck and preventing the messages from moving forward. This can lead to the pipeline being permanently stalled."

"Some of the feature's gaps with some of the open-source vendors have been closed in a lot of ways. Being more agile and addressing those earlier could be an area for improvement."

"I heard that it is quite expensive compared to Kafka."

More PubSub+ Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's pricing is reasonable and competitive compared to other solutions."

"ActiveMQ is open source, so it is free to use."

"It’s open source, ergo free."

"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."

"We are using the open-source version, so we have not looked at any pricing."

"There are no fees because it is open-source."

"We use the open-source version."

"I think the software is free."

More ActiveMQ pricing and cost advice

"It could be cheaper. Its licensing is on a yearly basis."

"The pricing and licensing were very transparent and well-communicated by our account manager."

"We have been really happy with the product licensing rates. It has been free for us, up to a 100,000 transactions per second, and all we have to do is pay for support. Making their product available and accessible to us has not been a problem at all."

"There are different tiers where you can choose what would work for you. As a customer, you need to know roughly how many messages a month you will use."

"Having a free version of the solution was a big, important part of our decision to go with it. This was the big driver for us to evaluate Solace. We started using it as the free version. When we felt comfortable with the free version, that is when we bought the enterprise version."

"The licensing is dependent on the volume that is flowing. If you go for their support services, it will cost some more money, but I think it is worth it, especially if you are just starting your journey."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"We are looking for something that will add value and fit for purpose. Freeware is good if you want to try something quickly without putting in much money. However, as far as our decision is concerned, I don't think it helps. At the end of the day, if we are convinced that a capability is required, we will ask for the funding. Then, when the funding is available, we will go for an enterprise solution only."

More PubSub+ Platform pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

30%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

26%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Retailer

10%

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	17

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	14

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ActiveMQ?

For reliable messaging, the most valuable feature of ActiveMQ for us is ensuring prompt message delivery.

See all answers

What needs improvement with ActiveMQ?

Pricing is something to consider with ActiveMQ, though cloud pricing is not costly and depends upon the compute selection. Focusing on AI is essential nowadays. AI capabilities require improvement ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for ActiveMQ?

In my current organization, I'm only working with ActiveMQ. I previously worked with IBM WebSphere MQ.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PubSub+ Event Broker?

I do not know about the pricing of PubSub+ Platform because I did not manage the instance.

See all answers

What needs improvement with PubSub+ Event Broker?

Additional in-line information about certain things on PubSub+ Platform could be more beneficial for new users who are just starting to use this technology. The analytics tools integrated within Pu...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for PubSub+ Event Broker?

I describe the main use cases for PubSub+ Platform as wanting to use it as a messaging queue pipeline for managing the data stream events in our IoT platform while I was working at an IoT-based com...

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM MQ vs ActiveMQ

Compared 51% of the time

Red Hat AMQ vs ActiveMQ

Compared 16% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs ActiveMQ

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon SQS vs ActiveMQ

Compared 5% of the time

Aurea CX Messenger vs ActiveMQ

Compared 3% of the time

More ActiveMQ Competitors

Apache Kafka vs PubSub+ Platform

Compared 13% of the time

IBM MQ vs PubSub+ Platform

Compared 9% of the time

Software AG Universal Messaging vs PubSub+ Platform

Compared 7% of the time

Confluent vs PubSub+ Platform

Compared 7% of the time

Amazon SQS vs PubSub+ Platform

Compared 5% of the time

More PubSub+ Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ

January 2026

Download ActiveMQ product report

Buyer's Guide

PubSub+ Platform

January 2026

Download PubSub+ Platform product report

Also Known As

AMQ

PubSub+ Event Broker, PubSub+ Event Portal

Overview

Apache ActiveMQ is the most popular and powerful open source messaging and Integration Patterns server.

Apache ActiveMQ is fast, supports many Cross Language Clients and Protocols, comes with easy to use Enterprise Integration Patterns and many advanced features while fully supporting JMS 1.1 and J2EE 1.4. Apache ActiveMQ is released under the Apache 2.0 License

Apache

PubSub+ Platform is designed for real-time message publishing and outstanding interoperability. With features like intuitive administration and topic filtering, it offers both stability and high performance for scalable deployments across diverse scenarios.

PubSub+ Platform enhances data integration with its event mesh and seamless protocol compatibility, providing a comprehensive solution for organizations tracking shipments, generating reports, and managing transactions. Its granular topic filtering and WAN optimization ensure high utility in event-driven applications and cloud deployments. Users highlight the platform's intuitive administration and ease of management, though some seek improved integration with third-party tools and enhanced observability. Concerns include scalability for large payloads and training resource availability. Despite its interface complexity, PubSub+ remains valuable for trading and market data distribution.

What are the key features of PubSub+ Platform?

Real-time messaging: Facilitates seamless communication across platforms.
Flexible topic hierarchy: Supports dynamic topic taxonomy for efficient data management.
Event mesh: Enhances integration and interoperability with diverse protocols.
Intuitive administration: Simplifies system management and configuration.
WAN optimization: Ensures efficient connectivity for global deployment.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Messaging stability: Offers consistent performance in dynamic environments.
Scalability: Provides seamless expansion to accommodate growing data volumes.
Security: Maintains robust protection for sensitive information.
Support and configuration: Accessible, reliable support, and UI-driven setup streamline the management.

PubSub+ Platform is widely implemented for asynchronous messaging in industries like finance for trading and market data, logistics for shipment tracking, and tech operations management. It enables companies to modernize applications while ensuring data accuracy and efficiency across global systems.

Solace

Sample Customers

University of Washington, Daugherty Systems, CSC, STG Technologies, Inc.

FxPro, TP ICAP, Barclays, Airtel, American Express, Cobalt, Legal & General, LSE Group, Akuna Capital, Azure Information Technology, Brand.net, Canadian Securities Exchange, Core Transport Technologies, Crédit Agricole, Fluent Trade Technologies, Harris Corporation, Korea Exchange, Live E!, Mercuria Energy, Myspace, NYSE Technologies, Pico, RBC Capital Markets, Standard Chartered Bank, Unibet

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ vs. PubSub+ Platform

December 2025

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