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IBM MQ vs Red Hat JBoss A-MQ for xPaaS 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

IBM MQ
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
174
Ranking in other categories
Business Activity Monitoring (1st), Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) (1st)
Red Hat JBoss A-MQ for xPaaS
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of IBM MQ is 20.7%, down from 26.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat JBoss A-MQ for xPaaS is 1.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Message Queue (MQ) Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM MQ20.7%
Red Hat JBoss A-MQ for xPaaS1.8%
Other77.5%
Message Queue (MQ) Software
 

Featured Reviews

David Pizinger - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise Technical Leader at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Has faced unexpected VM restarts but continues to deliver messages reliably
I'm not sure if we've utilized IBM MQ's high availability. Our MQ VMs are set up in clusters, and I think our queue managers are set up in pairs. However, I don't know if we actually use any specific high availability features of IBM MQ that are out of the box. We have it architected with high availability because we use F5 load balancers, and everything about our architecture is highly available. I haven't personally used the management tools with IBM MQ, but we do have them, and our middleware folks leverage them. I can't really comment on them because I don't use them myself. I don't think the management tools help optimize message flows, and I'm not really aware of how they help in this. I'm not familiar with dynamic routing for IBM MQ.
AR
System Administrator at BH Bank
It's scalable and easy to use, and we have local support here in Tunisia
We have an application-presentation layer, and we use JBoss to communicate with the application layer. The interceptors use Active MQ.  JBoss is easy to use, and we have a good partner here in Tunisia to provide local support.  JBoss could add more automation. We have been using JBoss for five…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Assists with our apps and has great message processing."
"Applications are time critical, and IBM MQ has played a significant role in ensuring fast, reliable message transmissions."
"Stability and reliability are the most valuable features; it's very reliable and very stable, and you can do a fast recovery in case of any failure."
"The MQ appliance has very good performance."
"IBM MQ is very stable, which is important for our core banking application."
"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."
"The most valuable features of IBM MQ are its guarantee of delivery, ability to handle high volume while maintaining high availability, and robust security measures such as SSL, TLS, and RBAC."
"Support for JMS 2.0, because we develop solutions compatible with Java EE7."
"JBoss is easy to use, and we have a good partner here in Tunisia to provide local support."
 

Cons

"the level of training as well as product marketing for this product are not that great. You rarely find a good training institute that provides training. Many of the architects in several organization are neither aware of the product nor interested in using it. IBM should provide good training on products like this."
"Maybe it should have something with respect to being able to provide a graphical view of the data elements that we are processing."
"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."
"In terms of volume, it is not able to handle a huge volume. We also have limitations of queues related to IBM MQ. We often need to handle a very big volume, but currently we do have limitations. If those kinds of limitations could be relaxed, it would help us to work better."
"But, the initial launch of the application seems to be pretty slow."
"IBM MQ has limitations regarding scaling options. The licensing costs associated with scaling up and down were significant, which is why we are moving to Apache-based services such as Kafka."
"The tool is expensive."
"It could provide more monitoring tools and some improvement to the UI. I would also like to see more throughput in future versions."
"JBoss could add more automation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"I think IBM needs to look at its pricing. The prices of IBM products should be simple. The old way of pricing should now be moving on to the cloud to be pay as you go, a plan-based kind of pricing."
"IBM products, in general, have high licensing costs and support costs are too high."
"IBM MQ appliance has pricing options, but they are costly."
"Licensing for this software is on a yearly basis. The standard fee includes the maintenance and updates that are released periodically."
"Most of our customers are quite happy with the solution but they have an issue with the cost. They want to move to cheaper solutions."
"In terms of cost, IBM MQ is slightly on the higher side."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Marketing Services Firm
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise147
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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Also Known As

WebSphere MQ
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Deutsche Bahn, Bon-Ton, WestJet, ARBURG, Northern Territory Government, Tata Steel Europe, Sharp Corporation
E*TRADE, CERN, CenturyLink, AECOM, Sabre Holdings
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM, Apache, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in Message Queue (MQ) Software. Updated: May 2026.
896,942 professionals have used our research since 2012.