IBM MQ vs TIBCO Enterprise Message Service comparison

IBM and TIBCO are both solutions in the Business Activity Monitoring category. IBM is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.5, while TIBCO is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.0. IBM holds a 42.8% mindshare in BAM, compared to TIBCO’s 20.0% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of TIBCO users who would recommend it.

IBM MQ

Read 164 IBM MQ reviews

765 Views
507 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

TIBCO Enterprise Message Se...

Read 5 TIBCO Enterprise Message Service reviews

390 Views
303 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM MQ

TIBCO Enterprise Message Se...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM MQ and TIBCO Enterprise Message Service based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Business Activity Monitoring solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM MQ vs. TIBCO Enterprise Message Service Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM MQ vs. TIBCO Enterprise Message Service

March 2025

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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 Business Activity Monitoring

1st

Ranking in Message Oriented Middleware (MOM)

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

164

Ranking in other categories

Message Queue (MQ) Software (1st)

TIBCO Enterprise Message Se...

Ranking in Business Activity Monitoring

2nd

Ranking in Message Oriented Middleware (MOM)

4th

Average Rating

8.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Business Activity Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM MQ is 42.8%, up from 42.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO Enterprise Message Service is 20.0%, down from 27.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Business Activity Monitoring

Featured Reviews

SelvaKumar4

System Analyst at Walmart

Offers the ability to batch metadata transfers between systems that support MQ as the communication method

We find it scalable for internal applications, but not so much for external integrations. It should support a wider range of protocols, not just a few specific ones. Many other products have broader protocol support, and IBM MQ is lagging in that area. IBM MQ needs to improve the UI for quicker logging. Users should also have a lot more control over logging, with a dashboard-like interface. That's something they should definitely work on.

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Ray Ochieng

Integration Lead at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

A value-for-money solution with the requisite features to facilitate efficient communication within an organization

We have been struggling with the stability of TIBCO Enterprise Message Service (EMS), but now I don't know how to differentiate whether the issues are caused by the infrastructure or the product itself. So, I am hesitant to provide a rating because I suspect that it might be due to my setup or environment. I really don't know how to evaluate the product independently. We have faced challenges with EMS, but I am unsure if it is related to infrastructure or the product itself. Even if I reach out for support, I am uncertain if the issue will be resolved since it could be partly related to the product. It's a tough situation.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Integrates between distributed systems: For example, it can help integrate processing between mainframe, client-server, web-based applications by integrating the messages, supporting Service Oriented Architecture."

"Reliable integration between MQ servers is the most valuable feature."

"Assists with our apps and has great message processing."

"It offers better reliability and monitoring compared to other tools."

"What is quite useful is the asynchronous function which means we don't lose everything in the bank. Although we use a lot of things synchronously, asynch is the best thing so that no banking information is ever lost, even when the network goes down and comes up."

"This initial setup is not complex at all. Deploying it was very easy."

"It's ability to scale, it's ability to do guaranteed delivery and it's ability to do point-to-point of what we subscribe are the most valuable features."

"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."

More IBM MQ pros

"We have implanted the core middleware solution for the organization using this product and it is responsible for communication between different applications."

"TIBCO Enterprise Message Service's most valuable features are rapid zero-code integration and its large number of adapters and plugins."

"It allows us to achieve synchronous as well as asynchronous communication with the added advantage of making the communication reliable."

"It is very useful tool. It is also very easy to learn and implement."

"The setup was done by TIBCO. It has been stable and has a server."

"The initial setup is straightforward and the product documentation is very good."

"The Enterprise Messaging Server will store the message and wait for other subscribers to come onto the network."

"I like TIBCO's ability to create versioned queues and persistent messages."

Cons

"The solution requires a lot of work to implement and maintain."

"The tool is expensive."

"I would like to see faster monitoring tools for this solution."

"It's hard to put in a nutshell, but it's sort of developed as more of an on-premise solution. It hasn't moved much away from that."

"IBM MQ could improve by adding more protocols or APIs for a standard application, such as MuleSoft."

"In IBM MQ, the channel connection is an area where my company faces some limitations. At times, we hit limitations on the connection, meaning the connection is fully occupied."

"I'm not sure that current version has event-driven mechanism requests that people go for. I would like the latest version to come with both type of event mechanisms: an email server and a POP server. If that is not there, then that would be a great addition."

"I believe the stability of the product has decreased since we began using it initially."

More IBM MQ cons

"TIBCO also has its proprietary line of cloud-based applications, but specifically, these two products are not cloud compatible."

"I would like to see better integration with Java and Apache Kafka."

"An area for improvement would be integration with the API layer."

"Since all the communications goes through this product, it acts as a single point of failure."

"Overall, my experience with the support team has been disappointing."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 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."

"I rate the product price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."

"The price of the solution could be reduced, and we are on an annual subscription."

"It's a very expensive product."

"IBM products, in general, have high licensing costs and support costs are too high."

"This solution requires a license and we have purchased an enterprise license."

"The solution costs are high, it is going to cost a fair bit for annual operating costs and support."

More IBM MQ pricing and cost advice

"The cost of licensing is very high. One should go for the product only if they need to ensure message reliability and they cannot afford to lose messages."

"In our case, we didn't pay for each product separately. We simply paid for all those companies that provided the components."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

38%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

44%

Computer Software Company

14%

Transportation Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

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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...

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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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What do you like most about TIBCO Enterprise Message Service?

The setup was done by TIBCO. It has been stable and has a server.

See all answers

What needs improvement with TIBCO Enterprise Message Service?

Maybe the capability to undergo training for specific functionalities, such as implementing Kaspersky for handling high volume transactions in TIBCO Enterprises Message Service. Occasionally, we su...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for TIBCO Enterprise Message Service?

I use TIBCO Enterprise Message Service for some of my internal communications. For instance, if there is an API called A that needs to communicate with an API referred to as B, we prefer to use mes...

See all answers

Comparisons

ActiveMQ vs IBM MQ

Compared 44% of the time

Apache Kafka vs IBM MQ

Compared 9% of the time

Red Hat AMQ vs IBM MQ

Compared 8% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs IBM MQ

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon SQS vs IBM MQ

Compared 3% of the time

More IBM MQ Competitors

TIBCO FTL vs TIBCO Enterprise Message Service

Compared 29% of the time

More TIBCO Enterprise Message Service Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM MQ

March 2025

Download IBM MQ product report

Buyer's Guide

Business Activity Monitoring

March 2025

Download TIBCO Enterprise Message Service product report

Also Known As

WebSphere MQ

Enterprise Message Service

Overview

IBM MQ is a middleware product used to send or exchange messages across multiple platforms, including applications, systems, files, and services via MQs (messaging queues). This solution helps simplify the creation of business applications, and also makes them easier to maintain. IBM MQ is security-rich, has high performance, and provides a universal messaging backbone with robust connectivity. In addition, it also integrates easily with existing IT assets by using an SOA (service oriented architecture).

IBM MQ can be deployed:

On-premises
In the cloud
Hybrid cloud

IBM MQ supports the following APIs:

MQI (Message Queue Interface)
REST
.NET
MQTT
JMS
IBM MQ Light

IBM MQ Features

Some of the most powerful IBM MQ features include:

High availability
Stability and scalability
Flexible deployment options
Uniform clusters
Automated and intelligent workload balancing
Broad language, API, and messaging protocol support
Administrative features that simplify messaging management
Open standards development tools
Simple management tools

IBM MQ Benefits

Some of the benefits of using IBM MQ include:

Multi-style messaging: IBM MQ supports simple multi-style messaging, making it easy to connect diverse systems with support for message queuing, transactions, and more.
Reduced risk: With IBM MQ you will never lose a message, and messages are never delivered more than once.
Cloud-native: Because IBM MQ has a minimal infrastructure, it is suitable to be cloud-native, and therefore has the capability to always remain on.
Available anywhere: Using IBM MQ, you have access to secure messaging anywhere, at any time.
Secure: IBM MQ makes sure to keep your data safe by using TLS secured communications, providing access identity management, message-level security, and more measures to protect your information.
Easy for application programmers: To use IBM MQ, application programmers do not need to have any knowledge of communications programming.
Technical support: IBM MQ has a large user community and also provides support 24/7 as needed.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by IBM MQ users who are currently using the solution.

PeerSpot user Sunil S., a manager at a financial services firm, explains that they never lose messages are never lost in transit, mentioning that he can store messages and forward them as required: "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."

Another PeerSpot reviewer, Luis L. who is a solutions director at Thesys Technologies, says that IBM MQ is a valuable solution and is "A stable and reliable software that offers good integration between different systems."

The head of operations at a financial services firm notes that "I have found the solution to be very robust. It has a strong reputation, is easy to use, simple to configure in our enterprise software, and supports all the protocols that we use."

In addition, a Software Engineer at a financial services firm praises the security benefits of it and states that “it has the most security features I've seen in a communication solution. Security is the most important thing for our purposes."

IBM

TIBCO Enterprise Message Service is a standards-based messaging solution that can serve as the backbone of an SOA by providing Java Message Service (JMS) compliant communications across a wide range of platforms and application technologies.

TIBCO

Sample Customers

Deutsche Bahn, Bon-Ton, WestJet, ARBURG, Northern Territory Government, Tata Steel Europe, Sharp Corporation

BNL, SunGard, TUI Group, UTi Worldwide, Yellow Pages Group

Buyer's Guide

IBM MQ vs. TIBCO Enterprise Message Service

March 2025

Free Report: IBM MQ vs. TIBCO Enterprise Message Service

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM MQ vs. TIBCO Enterprise Message Service and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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