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Amazon SQS vs IBM MQ comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
6.7
Number of Reviews
163
Ranking in other categories
Business Activity Monitoring (1st), Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of Amazon SQS is 11.3%, down from 18.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM MQ is 29.8%, up from 26.3% 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 most valuable features include the ability to handle a huge number of messages and the presence of a dead letter queue."
"We use SNS as the publisher, and our procurement service subscribes to those events using SQS. In the past, we relied on time-based or batch-based processes to send data between services on-premises. With SQS, we can trigger actions based on real-time changes in business processes, improving reliability."
"Amazon SQS provides faster search through indexing via OpenSearch."
"I think the tool is very reliable."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon SQS is its scalability."
"SQS is very stable, and it has lots of features."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to decouple components."
"One of the useful features is the ability to schedule a call after a certain number of messages accumulate in the container. For example, if there are ten messages in the container, you can perform a specific action."
"Encryption and the fact that we have not had any data loss issues so far have been very valuable features. IBM MQ is well encrypted so that we are well within our compliance and regulatory requirements, so that is a plus point as well."
"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 can scale well."
"The solution is stable."
"The solution is fast with end data compared to other messaging tools."
"Assists with our apps and has great message processing."
"Overall the solution operates well and has good integration."
 

Cons

"Be cautious around pay-as-you-use licensing as costs can become expensive."
"There could be improvements in the UI for security and scalability."
"Amazon SQS is costly. I think there could be improvements in how it facilitates comparisons between different AWS products. A calculator would be helpful. The calculator for Kafka is based on factors like throughput or storage used in the last month. In contrast, the calculator for Amazon SQS is based on the number of transactions processed. These different approaches make it challenging to compare them directly. I suggest AWS provide a straightforward calculator where I can input one aspect, and it calculates costs for multiple solutions."
"As a company that uses IBM solutions, it's difficult to compare Amazon SQS to other solutions. We have been using IBM solutions for a long time and they are very mature in integration and queuing. In my role as an integration manager, I can say that Amazon SQS is designed primarily for use within the Amazon ecosystem and does not have the same level of functionality as IBM MQ or other similar products. It has limited connectivity options and does not easily integrate with legacy systems."
"Packages sometimes have delays in dropping, indicating reliability issues."
"There is room for improvement by making use of Kafka services to create more flexible data streams."
"A primary area of improvement for Amazon SQS is the message size limitation, which is currently restricted to 256 kilobytes per message."
"It would be beneficial to have the ability to peek at messages currently in Amazon SQS without needing to monitor incoming messages."
"The GUI part could be better."
"It could get a face lift with a modern marketing campaign."
"I would like to see faster monitoring tools for this solution."
"IBM MQ's pricing is higher than its competitors'."
"I'm not sure that current version has event-driven mechanism requests that people go for. I would like the latest version to come with both type of event mechanisms: an email server and a POP server. If that is not there, then that would be a great addition."
"The user interface should be enhanced to include more monitoring features and other metrics. The metrics should include not only those from the IBM MQ point of view but also CPU and memory utilization."
"In IBM MQ, the channel connection is an area where my company faces some limitations. At times, we hit limitations on the connection, meaning the connection is fully occupied."
"The memory management is very poor and it consumes too much memory."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Amazon SQS is more affordable compared to other solutions."
"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."
"Compared to the other options and based on what I have heard, Amazon SQS is relatively more expensive, but it is not insanely expensive."
"Compared to EC2 and other services, Amazon SQS' pricing is cheaper."
"Amazon SQS is moderately priced."
"Amazon SQS is quite expensive and is at the highest price point compared to other solutions."
"It's quite expensive."
"SQS's pricing is very good - I would rate it nine out of ten."
"Licensing for this software is on a yearly basis. The standard fee includes the maintenance and updates that are released periodically."
"The price of the solution could be reduced, and we are on an annual subscription."
"I rate the product price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"Most of our customers are quite happy with the solution but they have an issue with the cost. They want to move to cheaper solutions."
"The price is high."
"Small-scale companies may not want to buy IBM MQ because of its high cost."
"There is a different platform price between Windows, z/OS, and iSeries."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
38%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon SQS?
A primary area of improvement for Amazon SQS is the message size limitation, which is currently restricted to 256 kilobytes per message. If this could be increased, it would benefit many use cases....
What is your primary use case for Amazon SQS?
I have been heavily using Amazon SQS for the last more than four years in serverless and decoupled solutions. We use it in workflows like order creation, where the order creation task is queued, al...
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: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.