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IBM MQ vs TIBCO Enterprise Message Service 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 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
5
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 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Ray Ochieng - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features are the point to point messaging and the MQ API."
"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."
"The solution is easy to use and has good performance."
"The most valuable feature of IBM MQ is it has all the features necessary for contemporary messaging, not only for the financial industry but for any application."
"Clustering is one of its most valuable features."
"The scalability of IBM MQ is good."
"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."
"I think the whole product is useful. Their database and all is very good, and the product is fine. The fact that it ensures message delivery is probably the most important thing. I also like that you're able to trace and track everything. If it doesn't arrive at the destination, it will go back to the queue, and no message will be lost."
"TIBCO Enterprise Message Service's most valuable features are rapid zero-code integration and its large number of adapters and plugins."
"We have implanted the core middleware solution for the organization using this product and it is responsible for communication between different applications."
"The setup was done by TIBCO. It has been stable and has a server."
"It allows us to achieve synchronous as well as asynchronous communication with the added advantage of making the communication reliable."
"​The initial setup is straightforward and the product documentation is very good.​"
"I like TIBCO's ability to create versioned queues and persistent messages."
"It is very useful tool. It is also very easy to learn and implement.​"
"The Enterprise Messaging Server will store the message and wait for other subscribers to come onto the network."
 

Cons

"The clustering capabilities have provided some difficulties when it comes to resiliency. This has been a challenge for managing the environment."
"They could integrate monitoring into the solution, a bit more than they do now. Currently, they have opened the REST API so you can get statistic and accounting information and details from MQ and build your own monitoring, if you want. IBM can improve the solution in this direction."
"Customer support response times could be improved."
"They need to add the ability to send full messages (header + payload) from the MQ Explorer program, not just the payload."
"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."
"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."
"I can't say pricing is good."
"The memory management is very poor and it consumes too much memory."
"​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."
"An area for improvement would be integration with the API layer."
"I would like to see better integration with Java and Apache Kafka."
"TIBCO also has its proprietary line of cloud-based applications, but specifically, these two products are not cloud compatible."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"To implement such an IBM solution, a company has to pay a lot in term of licensing and consultancy. A pricing model might be a better option."
"The pricing seems good according to the functionality that the solution provides."
"IBM MQ is an expensive solution compared to other solutions. However, if you pay less you will not receive the same experience or features."
"Use the new and lightweight version (Liberty) to lower licensing costs. It is also easier to upgrade/maintain."
"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."
"Small-scale companies may not want to buy IBM MQ because of its high cost."
"The price of IBM MQ could improve by being less expensive."
"It's a very expensive product."
"In our case, we didn't pay for each product separately. We simply paid for all those companies that provided the components."
"​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.​"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
38%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
44%
Computer Software Company
14%
Transportation Company
5%
Insurance Company
4%
 

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...
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...
What do you like most about TIBCO Enterprise Message Service?
The setup was done by TIBCO. It has been stable and has a server.
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...
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...
 

Also Known As

WebSphere MQ
Enterprise Message Service
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM MQ vs. TIBCO Enterprise Message Service and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.