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Amazon SQS vs IBM MQ comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 27, 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

Amazon SQS
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM MQ
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
163
Ranking in other categories
Business Activity Monitoring (1st), Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of Amazon SQS is 8.8%, down from 11.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM MQ is 24.7%, up from 20.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Message Queue (MQ) Software
 

Featured Reviews

Ariel Tarayants - PeerSpot reviewer
Powerful queue system facilitates seamless asynchronous operations
A feature I would like to see in Amazon SQS is the ability to view the content of messages without removing them from the queue. Enhanced filtering on the messages would be beneficial, as currently one has to pull all messages out, filter the right one by code, and then re-insert the remaining messages. This solution is not effective with the FIFO queue.
SelvaKumar4 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

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 easy to scale and cost-effective."
"The most valuable features of the solution are AWS Lambda services, ECS, and QuickSight reports, which are beneficial for data analysis."
"It is stable and scalable."
"With SQS, we can trigger events in various cloud environments. It offers numerous benefits for us."
"Amazon SQS is reliable, with no issues to date."
"I think the tool is very reliable."
"The libraries that connect and manage the queues are rich in features."
"Amazon SQS provides faster search through indexing via OpenSearch."
"IBM HQ's stability is great - we send six million messages a day, and we're very satisfied with HQ's ability to handle that volume."
"The most valuable feature of IBM MQ is transaction processing."
"The high availability and session recovery are the most valuable features because we need the solution live all day."
"The solution is easy to understand and even medium developers can easily start using it."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The feature I find most effective for ensuring message delivery without loss is the backup threshold. This feature allows for automatic retries of transactional messages within a specified threshold."
"Data integrity, reliability and security are valuable features that IBM MQ possesses."
"The solution is very easy to work with."
 

Cons

"It would be beneficial to have the ability to peek at messages currently in Amazon SQS without needing to monitor incoming messages."
"There is room for improvement by making use of Kafka services to create more flexible data streams."
"A feature I would like to see in Amazon SQS is the ability to view the content of messages without removing them from the queue."
"It would be easier to have a dashboard that allows us to see everything and manage everything since we have so many queues."
"The cost became an issue, leading us to consider other solutions."
"There could be improvements in the UI for security and scalability."
"Be cautious around pay-as-you-use licensing as costs can become expensive."
"The tool needs improvement in user-friendliness and discoverability."
"The tool is expensive."
"IBM MQ could streamline its complexity to be more like Kafka without the channel complexities of clusters, making it more straightforward."
"I would like to see faster monitoring tools for this solution."
"Should have more integration in the monitoring tools."
"IBM could revamp the interface. The API is huge, but some developers find it limiting because of the cost. They tend to wrap the API course into the JMS, which means they're missing out on some good features. They should work a little bit on the API exposure."
"They need to add the ability to send full messages (header + payload) from the MQ Explorer program, not just the payload."
"MQ needs instruments for connection with new modern queues like Kafka or RabbitMQ."
"IBM MQ could improve capacity, monitoring, and automatization."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's quite expensive."
"Amazon SQS offers a generous free tier, beyond which it remains very cost-effective. The cost per million messages is less than a dollar, making it an economical choice."
"Amazon SQS is more affordable compared to other solutions."
"Compared to the other options and based on what I have heard, Amazon SQS is relatively more expensive, but it is not insanely expensive."
"Amazon SQS is quite expensive and is at the highest price point compared to other solutions."
"The pricing model is pay-as-you-use. It depends on your usage and configuration."
"I rate the tool's pricing a nine out of ten."
"Compared to EC2 and other services, Amazon SQS' pricing is cheaper."
"The license for IBM MQ is commercial and not cheap. You get a multi-platform solution, which is important because it lets you connect systems on mainframes, personal solutions, Unix, Linux, etc."
"Licensing for this software is on a yearly basis. The standard fee includes the maintenance and updates that are released periodically."
"The solution costs are high, it is going to cost a fair bit for annual operating costs and support."
"There is a different platform price between Windows, z/OS, and iSeries."
"The problem with this product is that it's a little bit expensive."
"Our costs haven't increased but they also have not improved."
"I think it's pretty reasonable, but I'm not so too sure of the current pricing strategy from IBM. We use many bundled services, and most often, we go through a service provided by some other third-party implementation. So, I can't really give an honest opinion about that."
"The price is high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
38%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon SQS?
AWS provides another messaging service, which is fine for certain purposes. SQS meets the cloud messaging workload requirements. However, combining the features of both products could be an easier ...
What is your primary use case for Amazon SQS?
I primarily use SQL Server for messaging services, and I need to offer loose couplings. SQS is handy for offloading non-urgent tasks that can be reverted later. I use it as a queue management servi...
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...
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...
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
WebSphere MQ
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

EMS, NASA, BMW, Capital One
Deutsche Bahn, Bon-Ton, WestJet, ARBURG, Northern Territory Government, Tata Steel Europe, Sharp Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon SQS vs. IBM MQ and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.