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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 scalability of IBM MQ is good."
"It is useful for exchanging information between applications."
"Offers good performance as well as scalability and stability."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"I appreciate the level of control we have over queue managers, queues, and the messaging itself. That provides good security. So, the control and scalability of messaging are important to me."
"Technical support is quite helpful."
"I haven't seen any issues with respect to the message loss."
"This product has good security."
"I like TIBCO's ability to create versioned queues and persistent messages."
"The Enterprise Messaging Server will store the message and wait for other subscribers to come onto the network."
"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.​"
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"I would like to see faster monitoring tools for this solution."
"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."
"The initial setup is difficult. Creating your own cluster is difficult. Working with cluster repositories is difficult. Issue management with IBM MQ is difficult."
"The tool is expensive."
"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."
"The GUI part could be better."
"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."
"Sometimes, not all messages are consumed in the queues. File transfers need improvement."
"I would like to see better integration with Java and Apache Kafka."
"Overall, my experience with the support team has been disappointing."
"TIBCO also has its proprietary line of cloud-based applications, but specifically, these two products are not cloud compatible."
"​Since all the communications goes through this product, it acts as a single point of failure."
"An area for improvement would be integration with the API layer."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution costs are high, it is going to cost a fair bit for annual operating costs and support."
"The price of IBM MQ could improve by being less expensive."
"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the tool's price a seven. The product is expensive."
"I rate the product price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"There is a different platform price between Windows, z/OS, and iSeries."
"Our costs haven't increased but they also have not improved."
"IBM products, in general, have high licensing costs and support costs are too high."
"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.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.