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IBM Integration Bus vs Mule ESB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Integration Bus
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Mule ESB
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM Integration Bus is 24.2%, up from 22.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Mule ESB is 25.4%, up from 24.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

Featured Reviews

Ashraf Siddiqui - PeerSpot reviewer
Helpful for complex integrations because it has tools and functionality to integrate with other systems
Everything needs to be improved. As far as integration and the cloud are concerned, things are moving to the cloud side. When you use Kubernetes and similar technologies, IBM Integration Bus doesn't greatly facilitate these environments. Maybe I don't know enough about that, but I feel that when it comes to the DevOps environment, the tool needs to be deployed on production in a way that's just like pods. Cloud integration needs to be more facilitated with the DevOps environment. This IBM technology needs to adapt because in the recent world, in the real world, we see that everything is just a cloud pod. Whenever you need to scale anything, you just put some cloud and pod and improve it, make any server and deploy it. But in IBM Integration Bus, there is a problem because we can't do this as easily. In short, IBM needs to more emphasize or more integrate with the cloud environments as well, similar to DevOps. There are limitations in IBM Integration Bus when it comes to DevOps.
PurbayanSaha - PeerSpot reviewer
Has API-led architecture and provides a unique, user-friendly, and scalable architecture for hosting APIs
There's room for improvement in multi-file transfer functionality. It's not convenient when using MuleSoft, and it should have better capability for handling large amounts of data. For example, applications like GoAnywhere can handle huge chunks of data, so the tool should also have something to facilitate that aspect of integration.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"IBM Integration Bus has a complete set of tools that are implemented between rules when it comes to run time, but it's not easy to understand."
"The product is a user-customized tool so that you can adjust it to your specific needs pretty well with little trouble."
"The most valuable feature is the API integration."
"The solution's features are all quite useful. We use all of them."
"It's easy to develop things, and it's easy to handle."
"IBM Integration Bus' most valuable features are its performance, fast and easy development, and easy support."
"IBM Integration Bus's best feature is integration."
"Seamlessly integrates your different applications."
"The most beneficial features of Mule ESB are the control plane and runtime plane."
"The cloud and integration abilities are most useful allowing us to use applications such as Salesforce and DataWeave."
"The solution offers multiple deployment options."
"The solution's drag-and-drop interface and data viewer helped us quite a lot."
"The solution doesn't require much code writing and we can develop APIs very easily."
"For complex cases, we employ the SSLi engine, whereas for simpler ones like healthcare or response data, such as EDI 270 or 271. We prefer to use an external XRT engine instead of handling it within the ESB for ease of management."
"Mule Expression Language"
"Mule ESB has a user-friendly design, and everything is in one place. The API and architecture are popular right now. Also, MuleSoft has a large and supportive online community."
 

Cons

"I think security should be more simplified."
"IBM Integration Bus isn't particularly user-friendly and has a big learning curve."
"It needs improvement in terms of technical support as well as in terms of integration of data mining. I am not convinced about many things in this solution, such as the conversion of the DFDL or copybook file, which is the conversion from a text file to XML. It is very complex. They should also provide more information about this solution in the IBM Knowledge Center. I can get a lot of information from the IBM Knowledge Center about DataStage, but I don't get that much information about IBM Integration Bus. There is hardly any information even on the internet and various channels such as YouTube. They can provide good step-by-step documentation based on a company's requirements. It would be really helpful. My company is mainly looking for data mining and communicating with multiple servers. IBM Integration Bus is good for communicating with multiple servers, but it needs improvement for XML conversion and data mining. We have a lot of old systems that use XML."
"IBM could improve its connectivity."
"The solution needs instruction or guidance."
"This solution would benefit from improvements to the configuration interface."
"Licensing is too high. It is quite expensive."
"We used a third-party vendor, who help us install the solution and it was not easy."
"The price of Mule ESB could improve."
"In the next release, I would like to see improvement in the generator for the DataWeave language so that it's a little more graphic."
"Community editions need more attention."
"From the product perspective, it was sometimes hard to manage the dependencies. When we had to add dependencies on a couple of different packages, it was sometimes confusing. It was hard to update them with Anypoint Studio, as well as with MuleSoft. There were challenges with that. So, that's one of the areas that could be improved."
"Documentation is cryptic, product releases are far too frequent, and upgrades become troublesome."
"Lacking some connectors that could be included."
"MuleSoft isn't as mature as some other integration technologies out there like IBM WebSphere. There's room for growth, and MuleSoft is working toward that."
"Improvements could be made in performance."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"IBM Integration Bus itself is prices fair but App-Connect is a bit expensive which we use in conjunction with it."
"IBM Integration Bus is expensive."
"IBM Integration Bus solution is expensive and this is one of the reasons we are looking for an alternative, such as MuleSoft."
"The price of the license could be cheaper."
"IBM provides a quite complicated licensing model."
"It is not cheap. It has its cost. It is one of the high-cost solutions."
"The price of this product could be lower."
"The pricing could be improved to make it more competitive."
"You will not get any support from Mule ESB's team for the tool's community edition...You can get support with the licensed version of Mule ESB."
"This is expensive. In my next project, we had to go to other vendor."
"Mule ESB is an expensive solution."
"The pricing must be improved."
"The licensing is yearly, and there are additional fees for services."
"Mule ESB is a costly solution. We pay approximately $80,000 annually for the system. The cost of the number of instances, annual subscription, and cloud hosting services are expensive."
"Most of the challenges that I had with this solution were for smaller customers. There is not a good licensing model or pricing model. It is more expensive than other solutions, and that's the downside of MuleSoft. I had to be creative to be able to sell it to the business, but we did. This is something they have to work on because for large companies, it's affordable, but for small and medium businesses, it's very hard to sell."
"The solution is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Migration from IBM Integration Bus to Mulesoft ESB for a large enterprise tech services company
I was previously part of the Oracle SOA/OSB development team. In my current capacity I architected solutions using MuleSoft Anypoint Platform on cloud / on-premises and hybrid modes and on PCE/RTF ...
IBM Integration Bus vs Mule ESB - which to choose?
Our team ran a comparison of IBM’s Integration Bus vs. Mule ESB in order to determine what sort of ESB software was the best fit for our organization. Ultimately we decided to choose IBM Integratio...
What do you like most about IBM Integration Bus?
The message queue, like, message queue connectors. Then they have a built in connectors for most of the systems, like SAP, oracle database, and this Civil connector is there. Of course, we have thi...
What do you like most about Mule ESB?
The solution's drag-and-drop interface and data viewer helped us quite a lot.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Mule ESB?
Pricing is higher compared to other solutions, and the licensing costs are high.
What needs improvement with Mule ESB?
In India, particularly in the banking sector, clients do not prefer cloud solutions due to regulatory and compliance requirements. This creates a challenge for Mule's adaptability as the control sy...
 

Also Known As

IBM WebSphere ESB
No data available
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Salesbox, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Road Buddy, Swiss Federal Railways, Electricity Supply Board, The Hartree Centre, ESB Networks
Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Integration Bus vs. Mule ESB and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
823,875 professionals have used our research since 2012.