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Avada Software Infrared360 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

Avada Software Infrared360
Ranking in Business Activity Monitoring
6th
Ranking in Message Oriented Middleware (MOM)
12th
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (70th), Server Monitoring (35th)
IBM MQ
Ranking in Business Activity Monitoring
1st
Ranking in Message Oriented Middleware (MOM)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
174
Ranking in other categories
Message Queue (MQ) Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Business Activity Monitoring category, the mindshare of Avada Software Infrared360 is 7.3%, down from 9.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM MQ is 20.4%, down from 43.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Activity Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM MQ20.4%
Avada Software Infrared3607.3%
Other72.3%
Business Activity Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

WK
ICT Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Role-based access to queues, giving us more insights into problems
* We now have the possibility of getting a central perspective on all tenants. * We have defined access roles for developers. Therefore, they can 'read in' their queues on the development and testing stages. With special roles, they may also write. This improves our development and testing cycle. * For operative systems, we have restricted the access. Still, selected people can react if something is happening in the various BOQs.
MK
SWIFT manager at Raiffeisen Bank Aval
Reliable payment processing is achieved with minimal disruption
Currently, we have some disadvantages; it's a bit difficult to use IBM ID to access support from the IBM site. To get nice support from IBM, we need to use IBM ID, and it's a bit complicated to integrate it with IBM support. Support can be better because sometimes we need explanations for some behaviors of the product, and it's not easy to reach the proper person in IBM support. They could add some new features into IBM MQ to make it better. A graphical user interface in addition to MQ Explorer could be useful, but we are satisfied with MQ Explorer as well.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability for development teams to have access to their MQ queues has freed us up as administrators to do things other than chase down an application’s message for research purposes."
"It's what we use for monitoring our MQ system, so the features that they provide are just really, really good."
"Monitoring that ties into our incident management system"
"It allows non-technical users to inspect their individual components within the total infrastructure without disturbing other components and without bothering the technical teams."
"IR360 does not require a large team to manage our entire middleware estate and allows the leveraging of a logical model of reuse."
"One way it's helped the business is how you're able to empower MQ users, without your administrators, to be able to do different types of processes in the environment."
"Role-based access to queues, giving us more insights into problems."
"I highly recommend Infrared360 for an all-in-one IBM MQ tool."
"There are a lot of extensible options for security, i.e., various things you can do. It's pretty easy to navigate."
"The major thing we like about it is zero transaction loss."
"Stability-wise, it's very good. People have been using it for 15 to 20 years. MQ and IIB are the most stable products from IBM."
"The best features of IBM MQ were stability and straightforward application functionality; it has vendor support, which was a significant advantage, and in case of any production issues, we definitely get vendor support, whereas with Kafka and others, we have to rely on open community and our research."
"The solution is stable."
"One of the most important features is data persistence."
"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."
"It is stable, reliable, and scalable."
 

Cons

"The UI can be cumbersome - but we are still using the Viper interface and we have not had the time to check out the Alloy interface which is supposed to be much improved."
"Some of the graphics in the interface could be improved. It's pretty basic."
"We are still working with the FTE/MFT subscription monitoring and reporting functionality. That is an area in which we would like to see further development taking place."
"The user interface could be sexier and more ergonomic."
"Some of the graphics in the interface could be improved. It's pretty basic. Some interfaces are not up to what you're used to seeing on other, more Windows-like tools."
"The user interface could be sexier and more ergonomic. The competing products have similar problems."
"One area where they could improve is with their documentation. Some sections are not up to date with new release information and providing additional samples in some areas would be very helpful."
"We definitely need a better overview in terms of a dashboard giving us insights."
"The solution requires a lot of work to implement and maintain."
"It's not always easy for applications to connect to IBM MQ, but I think it's fine in general."
"We have used the technical support, but we are more concerned about the response time."
"I would like to see it integrate with the newer ways of messaging, such as Kafka."
"If it was a little bit more user friendly, or more gen-x friendly maybe, that would be the best benefit."
"I believe there is too much code to be done in order to handle the elements that you develop."
"The installation of product upgrades and patches is very difficult. It requires the use of the IBM Installation Manager (IM)."
"Scalability is lacking compared to the cloud native products coming into the market."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Avada Software's licensing metric is very good because the license fees are based on the number of connections (which have not increased for us very much over the years) rather than the CPU processing power (which increases significantly whenever our hardware is upgraded) or the number of users (which has increased for us a lot since our original purchase)."
"Our internal budget calculation model incorporates the pricing per endpoint for any new projects. However, as our footprint for distributed queue managers shrinks as part of our shared middleware hub deployment, the initial licensing and support costs have been reduced over the last five years."
"Start small, then increase licensing later as per your demand."
"Because the licensing is at the QMGR level, you need to have at least a small cushion of licenses for occasional enterprise needs."
"Small-scale companies may not want to buy IBM MQ because of its high cost."
"It is a very expensive product compared to the open source products in the market."
"IBM MQ appliance has pricing options, but they are costly."
"It would be a 10 out of 10 if it wasn't so expensive."
"The price of IBM MQ could improve by being less expensive."
"IBM MQ is expensive and they charge based on the CPU."
"The solution costs are high, it is going to cost a fair bit for annual operating costs and support."
"Pricing could be better, as with all IBM products. But their performance in production, along with security and scalability, will pay returns in the long run."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Construction Company
12%
Printing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Marketing Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise147
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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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...
 

Also Known As

Infrared360
WebSphere MQ
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

USBank, Southwest Airlines, Visiting Nurse Services of New York, Aon Hewitt, Parker Hannifin,  Cantonal Bank of Zurich (ZKB), Hagemeyer NA, and many others
Deutsche Bahn, Bon-Ton, WestJet, ARBURG, Northern Territory Government, Tata Steel Europe, Sharp Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about Avada Software Infrared360 vs. IBM MQ and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
892,943 professionals have used our research since 2012.