Amazon SNS vs IBM MQ comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and IBM are both solutions in the Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #5 with an average rating of 9.0, while IBM is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.5. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 6.6% mindshare in MOM, compared to IBM’s 28.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Amazon SNS

Read 11 Amazon SNS reviews

691 Views
307 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM MQ

Read 163 IBM MQ reviews

1,734 Views
1,151 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Amazon SNS

IBM MQ

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Amazon SNS and IBM MQ based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon SNS vs. IBM MQ Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon SNS vs. IBM MQ

March 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 839,422 peers since 2012

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

Amazon SNS

Ranking in Message Oriented Middleware (MOM)

5th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

IBM MQ

Ranking in Message Oriented Middleware (MOM)

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

163

Ranking in other categories

Business Activity Monitoring (1st), Message Queue (MQ) Software (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) category, the mindshare of Amazon SNS is 6.6%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM MQ is 28.7%, up from 24.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Message Oriented Middleware (MOM)

Featured Reviews

Bireshwar Adhikary

Senior Consultant at ATOS

The best service available with easy message flow and a pay-as-you-go model

Messages easily flow from publisher or application to subscriber. You can also flow messages from publisher to SNS with an https-like mediator. Amazon SQS is there, so message queue services are also there. The message transports to the service provider such as Redshift, the SQ bucket, Teams, Splunk, or any other message service. The solution has no up-front costs. Messages flow much more quickly than in the past. They used to run a bit late after being published.

Read full review

SelvaKumar4

System Analyst at Walmart

Offers the ability to batch metadata transfers between systems that support MQ as the communication method

We find it scalable for internal applications, but not so much for external integrations. It should support a wider range of protocols, not just a few specific ones. Many other products have broader protocol support, and IBM MQ is lagging in that area. IBM MQ needs to improve the UI for quicker logging. Users should also have a lot more control over logging, with a dashboard-like interface. That's something they should definitely work on.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Amazon SNS is speed. It's really fast."

"Amazon SNS has SMS notifications as well. Most of the other solutions have only email notifications."

"It's a simple communication service that allows us to communicate with customers."

"Stability has been good for us. It is quite high."

"The mobile push notifications are the most valuable. Previously, we used to use Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) for this functionality. It is a Google service for sending push notifications. Android did not have a good service for sending push notifications, but now, Amazon SNS integrates with FCM. Under the road, it is actually using FCM, but we can see all the metrics on our AW service itself, which makes it a lot easier instead of using a third-party service for this particular functionality."

"The initial setup of Amazon SNS was easy."

"The integration between the features is excellent."

"The best aspect of this solution is its simplicity. We just have to create topics and can have as many subscriptions as we want under any topic we create."

More Amazon SNS pros

"All the features are valuable."

"IBM MQ deals mainly with the queuing mechanism. It passes the data and it publishes it. These two abilities are the most valuable features."

"The message queue and the integration with any development platform/language, i.e., NET and Java, are the most valuable features."

"The most valuable feature is the stability. It's perfect in this way."

"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"Setting up MQ is easy. We had a "grow as you go" implementation strategy. We started with a single channel and progressed to multiple queues and channels depending on the systems and integrations with other systems. It was a gradual deployment and expansion as we grew the services interacting with the core system using MQ."

"I like the MQ's simplicity and rock-solid stability. I've never experienced a failure in two decades caused by the product itself. It has only failed due to human error."

"The thing that I like about MQ most is its reliability. It's one of those types of products that just works. You don't have to tinker around with it too much."

More IBM MQ pros

Cons

"Messages should flow through a gateway without the need for a mediator."

"A major issue with AWS as a whole is that it has a lot of services that do the same thing, and people get confused about which one to use in which scenario. Previously, we used to use SNS for connecting microservices. SNS has around six types of subscribers. We can subscribe to Lambda, HTTP, HTTPS, SMS, email, and push notifications. We used to use HTTP endpoints and Lambda for connecting to microservice systems. Now we have something called EventBridge, which actually does that for you. For connecting to services, we should just use EventBridge rather than SQS, SNS. I hear a lot of complaints from people wherein they do not understand when to use EventBridge and when to use SQS, SNS. They can remove these features so that it doesn't confuse users about when to use SQS, SNS, or EventBridge."

"There needs to be more documentation on the integration with different platforms."

"The tool needs to have direct integration with AvPro."

"I expect Amazon SNS to provide some capabilities to allow the configuration process to be done in a single script."

"I recently worked with Firebase, and it provides an option to create a marketing campaign with a title and a specific image to inform our audience about something. We just design the campaign and then use the push notifications. It would be good if Amazon also adds a similar feature."

"In future releases, I want to see if the platforms that SMS can reach. It would be a good way to improve it. More platforms to be able to use it."

"We would like the integration with third party applications to be improved within this solution."

More Amazon SNS cons

"If they could have some front-end monitoring tool that could be easily available for the team to use, that could be great."

"The product does not allow users to access data from API or external networks since it can only be used in a closed network, making it an area where improvements are required."

"I would just like a more user-friendly experience to do common administration tasks. I know that you can use MQ Explorer, but having something that's already built in would definitely be useful."

"SonicMQ CAA (continuous availability architecture) functionality on auto failover and data persistence should be made available without a shared drive, as it exists in multi-instance queue managers."

"The worst part is the monitoring or admin, especially in the ACE or Broker. There is always a problem of transparency. In MQ you can observe any process and you know exactly what's going on behind the scenes, but with the ACE or Broker, it's a problem monitoring the HTTP inputs. It's like a black box."

"It needs a User Interface which is better than the aging MQ Explorer. The existing solution MQ Explorer is outdated."

"It could provide more monitoring tools and some improvement to the UI. I would also like to see more throughput in future versions."

"The licensing fees should be more cost-effective so that we can better pitch the product to our clients. With the pricing as it is, they tend to move away from IBM products."

More IBM MQ cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution has no up-front costs because you pay based on the number of messages you publish."

"Amazon SNS is cheap and I would rate it a three out of ten. The pricing is usage-based."

"The pricing of push notifications and everything is quite fair. If you are using FCM under the hood, it is completely free. When you are using push notification on SMS, it is just a nominal price that you need to pay. SMS services are a lot more costly. It is because we don't have proper providers in India. That's why it gets a lot more costly in terms of SMS. This is the reason why we don't use SMS services from SNS itself. We use other third-party services like SMS Horizon. We use a third-party service for email services. It is almost free. It is just around $1 a month. Configuring Lambda is also quite cheap. You only pay for the Lambda usage. You don't pay for SNS itself."

"It is the cheapest solution in the market. It is on a monthly basis. After a month, you are build based on your usage. There are no additional costs to the standard licensing fees."

"One can use the tool for free."

"The pricing is very cheap."

"Their pricing is competitive. I would rate the cost four out of five."

"IBM MQ is an expensive solution compared to other solutions. However, if you pay less you will not receive the same experience or features."

"There is real money involved here. As compared to RabbitMQ, IBM MQ is on the higher side in terms of cost."

"This solution requires a license and we have purchased an enterprise license."

"It would be a 10 out of 10 if it wasn't so expensive."

"It's super expensive, so ask them if they can consolidate some other licensing costs. But, IBM is IBM, so I guess we'll pay for it."

"The price of the solution could be reduced, and we are on an annual subscription."

"The fee for this solution is on the higher end of the scale."

"Use the new and lightweight version (Liberty) to lower licensing costs. It is also easier to upgrade/maintain."

More IBM MQ pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

28%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Real Estate/Law Firm

Financial Services Firm

38%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon SNS?

The most valuable feature of Amazon SNS is speed. It's really fast.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon SNS?

The pricing is very cheap.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon SNS?

In future releases, I want to see if the platforms that SMS can reach. It would be a good way to improve it. More platforms to be able to use it.

See all answers

What is MQ software?

Hi As someone with 45+ years of experience in the Transaction and Message Processing world, I have seen many "MQ" solutions that have come into the market place. From my perspective, while each pro...

See all answers

What are the differences between Apache Kafka and IBM MQ?

Apache Kafka is open source and can be used for free. It has very good log management and has a way to store the data used for analytics. Apache Kafka is very good if you have a high number of user...

See all answers

How does IBM MQ compare with VMware RabbitMQ?

IBM MQ has a great reputation behind it, and this solution is very robust with great stability. It is easy to use, simple to configure and integrates well with our enterprise ecosystem and protocol...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 20% of the time

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Apache Kafka vs IBM MQ

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Red Hat AMQ vs IBM MQ

Compared 8% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs IBM MQ

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TIBCO Rendezvous vs IBM MQ

Compared 1% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon SNS

March 2025

Download Amazon SNS product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM MQ

February 2025

Download IBM MQ product report

Also Known As

No data available

WebSphere MQ

Overview

Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) is a highly available, durable, secure, fully managed pub/sub messaging service that enables you to decouple microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications. Amazon SNS provides topics for high-throughput, push-based, many-to-many messaging. Using Amazon SNS topics, your publisher systems can fan out messages to a large number of subscriber endpoints for parallel processing, including Amazon SQS queues, AWS Lambda functions, and HTTP/S webhooks. Additionally, SNS can be used to fan out notifications to end users using mobile push, SMS, and email.

You can get started with Amazon SNS in minutes by using the AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), or AWS Software Development Kit (SDK).

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

IBM MQ is a middleware product used to send or exchange messages across multiple platforms, including applications, systems, files, and services via MQs (messaging queues). This solution helps simplify the creation of business applications, and also makes them easier to maintain. IBM MQ is security-rich, has high performance, and provides a universal messaging backbone with robust connectivity. In addition, it also integrates easily with existing IT assets by using an SOA (service oriented architecture).

IBM MQ can be deployed:

On-premises
In the cloud
Hybrid cloud

IBM MQ supports the following APIs:

MQI (Message Queue Interface)
REST
.NET
MQTT
JMS
IBM MQ Light

IBM MQ Features

Some of the most powerful IBM MQ features include:

High availability
Stability and scalability
Flexible deployment options
Uniform clusters
Automated and intelligent workload balancing
Broad language, API, and messaging protocol support
Administrative features that simplify messaging management
Open standards development tools
Simple management tools

IBM MQ Benefits

Some of the benefits of using IBM MQ include:

Multi-style messaging: IBM MQ supports simple multi-style messaging, making it easy to connect diverse systems with support for message queuing, transactions, and more.
Reduced risk: With IBM MQ you will never lose a message, and messages are never delivered more than once.
Cloud-native: Because IBM MQ has a minimal infrastructure, it is suitable to be cloud-native, and therefore has the capability to always remain on.
Available anywhere: Using IBM MQ, you have access to secure messaging anywhere, at any time.
Secure: IBM MQ makes sure to keep your data safe by using TLS secured communications, providing access identity management, message-level security, and more measures to protect your information.
Easy for application programmers: To use IBM MQ, application programmers do not need to have any knowledge of communications programming.
Technical support: IBM MQ has a large user community and also provides support 24/7 as needed.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by IBM MQ users who are currently using the solution.

PeerSpot user Sunil S., a manager at a financial services firm, explains that they never lose messages are never lost in transit, mentioning that he can store messages and forward them as required: "Whenever payments are happening, such as incoming payments to the bank, we need to notify the customer. With MQ we can actually do that asynchronously. We don't want to notify the customer for each and every payment but, rather, more like once a day. That kind of thing can be enabled with the help of MQ."

Another PeerSpot reviewer, Luis L. who is a solutions director at Thesys Technologies, says that IBM MQ is a valuable solution and is "A stable and reliable software that offers good integration between different systems."

The head of operations at a financial services firm notes that "I have found the solution to be very robust. It has a strong reputation, is easy to use, simple to configure in our enterprise software, and supports all the protocols that we use."

In addition, a Software Engineer at a financial services firm praises the security benefits of it and states that “it has the most security features I've seen in a communication solution. Security is the most important thing for our purposes."

IBM

Sample Customers

PlayOn! Sports, NASA, Change Healthcare, FCBarcelona

Deutsche Bahn, Bon-Ton, WestJet, ARBURG, Northern Territory Government, Tata Steel Europe, Sharp Corporation

Buyer's Guide

Amazon SNS vs. IBM MQ

March 2025

Free Report: Amazon SNS vs. IBM MQ

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon SNS vs. IBM MQ and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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