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IBM Integration Bus vs Mule ESB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.8
IBM Integration Bus enhances ROI through effective integration, long-term value, cost savings, and sustained market readiness.
Sentiment score
6.2
Mule ESB ROI is challenging to calculate but favorable with effective design, despite high licensing costs affecting returns.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
IBM Integration Bus' customer service is generally praised but has issues with costs, response time, and varying support quality.
Sentiment score
6.6
Mule ESB support is praised for expertise, but response times vary with some users needing more comprehensive solutions.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
IBM Integration Bus offers scalable, efficient integration for enterprise applications, with strong adaptability and performance in high-volume environments.
Sentiment score
7.6
Mule ESB ensures high scalability, suitable for enterprises, enabling seamless cloud deployment and accommodating extensive user growth effectively.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
IBM Integration Bus is reliable and stable, rated highly by users, despite occasional Oracle connectivity and latency issues.
Sentiment score
7.2
Mule ESB is generally stable, especially in newer versions, but issues exist with large files and resource demands.
 

Room For Improvement

IBM Integration Bus needs interface, performance, and cloud improvements, plus enhanced support, flexibility, resources, and better pricing.
Mule ESB requires better documentation, stable releases, improved connectors, coding features, and performance enhancements, despite high memory and licensing costs.
 

Setup Cost

IBM Integration Bus pricing is competitive yet costly, varying by license, making it viable for larger enterprises.
Mule ESB is costly for SMEs despite a free version, due to licenses and additional fees for certain features.
 

Valuable Features

IBM Integration Bus offers excellent protocol support, performance, scalability, and integration capabilities with systems like SAP and Oracle.
Mule ESB excels in flexibility, integration, user-friendly design, and scalability, featuring diverse deployment and robust support.
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Integration Bus
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
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
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM Integration Bus is 22.4%, up from 20.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Mule ESB is 21.0%, down from 22.6% 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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
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
 

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: March 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.