IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs webMethods.io comparison

IBM WebSphere Message Broker and webMethods.io are both solutions in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category. IBM WebSphere Message Broker is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.0, while webMethods.io is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.1. IBM WebSphere Message Broker holds a 3.9% mindshare in E, compared to webMethods.io’s 10.7% mindshare. Additionally, 84% of IBM WebSphere Message Broker users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of webMethods.io users who would recommend it.

IBM WebSphere Message Broker

Read 13 IBM WebSphere Message Broker reviews

934 Views
773 Comparison Views

84% willing to recommend

webMethods.io

Read 92 webMethods.io reviews

2,134 Views
1,518 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

IBM WebSphere Message Broker

webMethods.io

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 2025

IBM WebSphere Message Broker and webMethods.io compete in the integration space. webMethods.io seems to have the upper hand due to its modern features and flexibility, particularly in cloud environments.

Features: IBM WebSphere Message Broker is recognized for its secure communication protocols, scalability, and robust message processing capabilities. webMethods.io offers dynamic integration capabilities, easy-to-use APIs, and extensive cloud support, making it ideal for businesses integrating cloud applications.

Room for Improvement: IBM WebSphere Message Broker could benefit from a more streamlined deployment process and reduced complexity in setup. Enhancing cloud compatibility may also be advantageous. webMethods.io could improve by expanding support for legacy systems and offering more robust documentation. Integration with non-standard protocols could also be enhanced.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM WebSphere Message Broker requires more traditional deployment methods, which can be complex and time-consuming but offers deep and prompt customer support. webMethods.io, being cloud-native, allows a streamlined and efficient deployment process with customer service known for swift issue resolution.

Pricing and ROI: IBM WebSphere Message Broker has a high initial cost but is designed for long-term value in large-scale implementations. webMethods.io offers a flexible pricing model with lower initial costs, attractive to small and medium businesses, and provides quick ROI through its agile deployment model.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs. webMethods.io Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs. webMethods.io

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 WebSphere Message Broker

Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

8th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Infrastructure (16th)

webMethods.io

Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

3rd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Business-to-Business Middleware (3rd), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (10th), API Management (10th), Cloud Data Integration (7th), Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM WebSphere Message Broker is 3.9%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of webMethods.io is 10.7%, up from 9.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

Featured Reviews

BrajendraKumar

Technical Architect at HCL Technologies

Offers large-sized business information processing with a time-saving setup and impressive stability

I primarily use two previews of the product for Dev and two for QA as part of the production process. Whatever tools our company is using, the cost of a license in IBM WebSphere Message Broker is about 80% of all these software or tools. The message routing capabilities satisfy workflow efficiency. The product supports message formats of XML, JSON, and SSID, which are around 24 KB to 50 KB in size. The solution supports communication protocols like STTP and TCP. Features like DataGraph need to be introduced in IBM WebSphere Message Broker. Some of the clients of our organization are using an outdated version of IBM WebSphere Message Broker for which the vendor doesn't provide direct support anymore. For the aforementioned version, our company professionals can solve the queries on their own without seeking support from IBM. During the installation of a prior version of IBM WebSphere Message Broker, sometimes I have to configure the failovers through the cluster, where issues arise, and I often seek help from the support team. The solution is being used by some medicine companies in our organization that receive sales orders from the EDR or JDE. I would not recommend the product to others as its becoming obsolete and they can rather choose a middleware solution from Amazon or Azure. But I would overall rate the product a nine out of ten.

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Michele Illiano

Head of Division at Innovery

Can function as an ESB along with the core product, with decent integration of message protocols

I have noticed that webMethods ActiveTransfer has had problems when handling large files. For example, when we receive (and perform operations on) files that are larger than about 16 MB, the software starts losing performance. This is why, for most customers who have to deal with big files, I suggest that they use a product other than ActiveTransfer. I would like to note that this problem mainly concerns large files that undergo extra operations, such assigning, unassigning, or file translation. When these operations take place on large files, ActiveTransfer will use up a lot of resources. Within the product itself, I also believe that there is room for improvement in terms of optimization when it comes to general performance. I suspect that the issues underlying poor optimization are because it is all developed in Java. That is, all the objects and functions that are used need to be better organized, especially when it comes to big files but also overall. webMethods ActiveTransfer was born as an ESB to handle messages, and these messages were typically very short, i.e. small in size. A message is data that you have to send to an application, where it must be received in real-time and possibly processed or acknowledged elsewhere in the system as well. So, because it was initially designed for small messages, it struggles with performance when presented with very large files. All this to say, I suggest that they have an engineer reevaluate the architecture of the product in order to consider cases where large files are sent, and not only small ones. As for new features, compared to other products in the market, I think Software AG should be more up to date when it comes to extra protocol support, especially those protocols that other solutions have included in their products by default. Whenever we need to add an unsupported protocol, we have to go through the effort of custom development in order to work with it. Also, all the banks are obligated to migrate to the new standards, and big companies are all handling translations and operating their libraries with the new protocol formats. But webMethods ActiveTransfer doesn't seem to be keeping up with this evolution. Thus, they should aim to be more compliant in future, along the lines of their competitors such as IBM and Primeur.

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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

"The transactions and message queuing are the most valuable features of the solution."

"The most valuable feature of IBM WebSphere Message Broker is the ability to facilitate communication with legacy systems, offering a multitude of great capabilities. For example, if there is a mainframe system in place with a web service serving as the front end. In that case, the solution enables efficient protocol transformations to convert all request payloads into a format that the legacy systems can accept, rendering the integration and transformation processes seamless and highly effective."

"We only use the basic features, but the most valuable one for us is the Publish-subscribe pattern."

"The solution has good integration."

"Straightforward development and deployment."

"It is a scalable solution...The setup is easy."

"Performance-wise, this solution is really good."

"Message Broker is valuable because most of the applications are using MQ. Even in my current engagement, the few applications which I audit to onboard the bank are using MQ."

More IBM WebSphere Message Broker pros

"Clients choose webMethods.io API for its intuitive interface, promoting seamless interaction and quick communication between systems."

"The developer portal is a valuable feature."

"It frankly fills the gap between IT and business by having approval and policy enforcement on each state and cycle of the asset from the moment it gets created until it is retired."

"We needed a tool that was able to orchestrate and help us configure our APIs so that we could maintain and see the heartbeat, traffic, trends, etc."

"There were no complexities involved in the setup phase...The product is able to meet my company's API protection needs."

"The Software AG Designer has been great. It's very intuitive."

"The tool helps us to streamline data integration. Its BPM is very strong and powerful. The solution helps us manage digital transformation."

"It has a good integration server, designer, and a very good API portal."

More webMethods.io pros

Cons

"The solution can add container engines such as docker."

"Technical support is very slow and needs to be improved."

"As our business requirements evolve, we require more dynamic capabilities to adapt and scale our services accordingly."

"The installation configuration is quite difficult."

"Technical support is good but they could have a better response time."

"It is currently a weighty product."

"There is some lag in the GUI. There have been some performance issues and maybe it's because of the application data."

"The images and size of the containers are too big and I think that they should be more lightweight."

More IBM WebSphere Message Broker cons

"The product must add more compatible connectors."

"We'd like for them to open up to a more cloud-based solution that could offer more flexibility and maybe a better rules engine or more integration with rules engines."

"Perhaps in the area of Microservices, where I think Trading Networks could benefit from some improvements."

"The on-premises setup can be difficult."

"This solution could be improved by offering subscription based licensing."

"When migration happens from the one release to an upgraded release from Software AG, many of the existing services are deprecated and developers have to put in effort testing and redeveloping some of the services. It would be better that upgrade releases took care to support the lower-level versions of webMethods."

"In terms of improvement, it would be better if it adapted quicker to open standards. It took a while for API specification before the last version was available. The spec of version two was rather quick."

"It would be nice if they had a change management system offering. We built our own deployer application because the one built into webMethods couldn't enforce change management rules. Integration into a change management system, along with the version control system, would be a good offering; it's something that they're lacking."

More webMethods.io cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"IBM software can be costly, but having a contract has helped manage and potentially lower costs over time."

"The licensing cost of IBM WebSphere Message Broker needs to be reduced"

"This product is more expensive than competing products."

"The solution is expensive."

"IBM products are generally more stable and have more features, but also come at a greater cost."

"The price is very high and it's the main reason that we are searching for alternatives."

"I feel with IBM, when you want certain functions or features, you have to continuously purchase add-ons. There are always additional fees."

"Sometimes we don't have a very clear idea what the licensing will entail at first, because it can be very customizable. On one hand, this can be a good thing, because it can be tailored to a specific customer's needs. But on the other hand it can also be an issue when some customer asks, "What's the cost?" and we can't yet give them an accurate answer."

"webMethods Trading Networks is a bit costly compared to others solutions."

"There are no hidden costs in addition to the standard licensing fees for webMethods. For corporate organizations, it's a very cheap or fairly priced product, but for growing or small businesses, it's quite expensive. These businesses would probably need to consider an enterprise services bus at some point. Thus, from a pricing point, it closes out non-cooperate businesses."

"Based on our team discussions and feedback, it is pretty costly because they charge us for each transmission."

"The solution’s pricing is too high."

"The product is very expensive."

"There is a license needed to use the webMethods Integration Server."

"With our current licensing, it's very easy for us to scale. With our older licensing model, it was very hard. This is definitely something that I would highlight."

More webMethods.io pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

33%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM WebSphere Message Broker?

It is a scalable solution...The setup is easy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM WebSphere Message Broker?

IBM software can be costly, but having a contract has helped manage and potentially lower costs over time.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM WebSphere Message Broker?

There could be greater flexibility and agility in service creation for the product. As our business requirements evolve, we require more dynamic capabilities to adapt and scale our services accordi...

See all answers

What do you like most about Built.io Flow?

The tool helps us to streamline data integration. Its BPM is very strong and powerful. The solution helps us manage digital transformation.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Built.io Flow?

webMethods.io is expensive. We have multiple components, and you need to pay for each of them.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Built.io Flow?

webMethods.io needs to incorporate ChatGPT to enhance user experience. It can offer a customized user experience.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 47% of the time

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Compared 13% of the time

IBM DataPower Gateway vs IBM WebSphere Message Broker

Compared 12% of the time

IBM BPM vs IBM WebSphere Message Broker

Compared 7% of the time

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IBM App Connect vs webMethods.io

Compared 8% of the time

IBM Integration Bus vs webMethods.io

Compared 8% of the time

Apigee vs webMethods.io

Compared 8% of the time

IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services vs webMethods.io

Compared 4% of the time

Boomi iPaaS vs webMethods.io

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM WebSphere Message Broker

March 2025

Download IBM WebSphere Message Broker product report

Buyer's Guide

webMethods.io

March 2025

Download webMethods.io product report

Also Known As

WebSphere Message Broker

Built.io Flow, webMethods Integration Server, webMethods Trading Networks, webMethods ActiveTransfer, webMethods.io API

Overview

WebSphere Message Broker is an enterprise service bus (ESB) providing connectivity and universal data transformation for service-oriented architecture (SOA) and non-SOA environments. It allows businesses of any size to eliminate point-to-point connections and batch processing regardless of platform, protocol or data format.

IBM

webMethods.io Integration is a powerful integration platform as a service (iPaaS) that provides a combination of capabilities offered by ESBs, data integration systems, API management tools, and B2B gateways.

IBM

Sample Customers

WestJet, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Sharp Corporation, Michelin Tire

Cisco, Agralogics, Dreamforce, Cables & Sensors, Sacramento Kings

Buyer's Guide

IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs. webMethods.io

March 2025

Free Report: IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs. webMethods.io

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs. webMethods.io and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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