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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 product has a small footprint on our system, they're very knowledgeable of MQ, which we use, and the features that they provide for monitoring our MQ system are just really, really good."
"We have easily created use case testing harnesses for specific flows that incorporate various message types."
"IR360 does not require a large team to manage our entire middleware estate and allows the leveraging of a logical model of reuse."
"Role-based access to queues, giving us more insights into problems."
"Monitoring that ties into our incident management system"
"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."
"It has role-based access to queues, giving us more insights into problems."
"It's what we use for monitoring our MQ system, so the features that they provide are just really, really good."
"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 way we use this solution, there is nothing else that even comes close to it."
"It runs everywhere, from the mainframe in the US to the PCs in the Gobi desert attached to an analog modem."
"The most valuable feature is that it's a very strong integration platform but it is quite a monolithic solution. It's got everything."
"From our experience with the functionality and the stability of the product, it's going to be difficult to find something that rivals it in the industry right now."
"It is useful for exchanging information between applications."
"Currently, we are not using many advanced features. We are only using point-to-point MQ. I have previously used features like context-based authentication, SSL authentication, and high availability. These are good and pretty cool features. They make your business reliable. For critical business needs, everyone uses only IBM MQ. It is the first choice because of its reliability. There is a one-send-and-one-delivery feature. It also has a no-message-loss feature, and because of that, only IBM MQ is used in banking or financial sectors."
"Overall the solution operates well and has good integration."
 

Cons

"We definitely need a better overview in terms of a dashboard giving us insights."
"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."
"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."
"We desire a dashboard that could accumulate BOQ lengths per tenant on one screen for all tenants."
"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."
"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."
"The user interface could be sexier and more ergonomic. The competing products have similar problems."
"Some of the graphics in the interface could be improved. It's pretty basic."
"It is expensive. The cost is high. There should be more improvement in the new age of technologies."
"It's super expensive, so ask them if they can consolidate some other licensing costs."
"Sometimes the applications people don't really understand MQ."
"Everything in the solution could be simplified a little. We have trouble with the configuration and cost which is mostly an internal issue, but nevertheless, the errors do come up when there are configuration changes across a specific version. We have slightly different versions, which may have slightly different configurations which cause issues."
"It could always be more stable and secure."
"With IBM products, there's less marketing. If they do more demos and more seminars on their products, it will be very useful. On a given day. I get seminar invites for many vendors and products, but for IBM, I may get an invite once or twice a year."
"IBM MQ could improve capacity, monitoring, and automatization."
"I haven’t given it a perfect rating because there's always room for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Because the licensing is at the QMGR level, you need to have at least a small cushion of licenses for occasional enterprise needs."
"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."
"It is a licensed product. As compared to an open-source solution, such as RabbitMQ, it is obviously costly. If you're using IBM Message Broker, which is a licensed product, IBM MQ is included in the same license. You don't have to pay separately for IBM MQ. The license cost of IBM MQ is lesser than IBM Message Broker."
"The pricing seems good according to the functionality that the solution provides."
"You have to license per application installation and if you expand vertically or horizontally, you will be paying for more licenses. The licenses are approximately $10,000 to $15,000 a license, it can get expensive quite quickly."
"The fee for this solution is on the higher end of the scale."
"There is real money involved here. As compared to RabbitMQ, IBM MQ is on the higher side in terms of cost."
"Our costs haven't increased but they also have not improved."
"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 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
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.