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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 February 2025, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of Amazon SQS is 9.1%, down from 12.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM MQ is 23.6%, up from 20.8% 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

"All Amazon Web Services resources are easy to configure."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon SQS is its scalability."
"We used SQS for the Kapolei system to ensure that certain tasks were executed precisely once. The first-in, first-out (FIFO) capability was a great feature for us. Additionally, its redundancy out of the box meant we didn't have to worry about missing messages. It provided peace of mind and automatically instilled trust, relieving us of any concerns."
"I think the tool is very reliable."
"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."
"It works consistently and is economical under a standard non-FIFO model."
"I am able to find out what's going on very easily."
"I appreciate that Amazon SQS is fully integrated with Amazon and can be accessed through normal functions or serverless functions, making it very user-friendly. Additionally, the features are comparable to those of other solutions."
"Secure, safe, and very fast."
"I like the architecture it provides seamlessly for assured delivery."
"We have implemented business to business transactions over MQ messaging. The guaranteed and once only delivery ensures business integrity."
"The solution is easy to use and has good performance."
"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 solution is very easy to work with."
"It's ability to scale, it's ability to do guaranteed delivery and it's ability to do point-to-point of what we subscribe are the most valuable features."
"It offers better reliability and monitoring compared to other tools."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in the pricing, especially for the FIFO model."
"It would be easier to have a dashboard that allows us to see everything and manage everything since we have so many queues."
"Packages sometimes have delays in dropping, indicating reliability issues."
"I cannot send a message to multiple people simultaneously. It can only be sent to one recipient."
"Support could be improved."
"A primary area of improvement for Amazon SQS is the message size limitation, which is currently restricted to 256 kilobytes per message."
"I do not think that this solution is easy to use and the documentation of this solution has a lot of problems and can be improved in the next release. Most of the time, the images in the document are from older versions."
"There is room for improvement by making use of Kafka services to create more flexible data streams."
"The tool is expensive."
"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."
"The pricing needs improvement."
"I would like to see it integrate with the newer ways of messaging, such as Kafka. They might say that you have IBM Integration Bus to do that stuff, but it would be great if MQ could, out-of-the-box, listen to public Kafka."
"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."
"The monitoring could be improved. It's a pain to monitor the throughput through the MQ. The maximum throughput for a queue or single channel isn't clear. We could also use some professional services by IBM to assess and tune the performance."
"The solution requires a lot of work to implement and maintain."
"We have had scalability issues with some projects in the past."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 more affordable compared to other solutions."
"I rate the tool's pricing a nine out of ten."
"The pricing of Amazon SQS is reasonable. The first million requests are free every month, and after, it's cost 40 cents for every million requests. There are not any additional fees."
"Amazon SQS is moderately priced."
"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."
"Compared to EC2 and other services, Amazon SQS' pricing is cheaper."
"It is a very expensive product compared to the open source products in the market."
"The problem with this product is that it's a little bit expensive."
"The licensing fees are paid quarterly and they are expensive."
"Licensing for this software is on a yearly basis. The standard fee includes the maintenance and updates that are released periodically."
"IBM's licensing model seems more reasonable than some competitors. They charge based on usage, which is good."
"There is a different platform price between Windows, z/OS, and iSeries."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
38%
Computer Software Company
12%
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?
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: January 2025.
838,640 professionals have used our research since 2012.