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Mule ESB vs MuleSoft Anypoint Platform 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.3
Departments struggle to quantify ROI, acknowledging qualitative benefits, with positive feedback and contract expansions reflecting perceived value.
Sentiment score
7.2
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform reduces TCO, simplifies integration, and offers high ROI, though pricing may challenge smaller companies.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Mule ESB's customer service is effective and resourceful, though support consistency varies based on subscription levels and user feedback.
Sentiment score
6.8
Users praise MuleSoft's responsive support but suggest documentation and response time improvements; satisfaction varies with support levels.
We have a good relationship with our vendor, and they are ready to help us with any technical issues.
The technical support of Mule ESB can be rated from nine to ten.
The Salesforce team offers different levels of support.
The support team is responsive and helpful.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Mule ESB is scalable, ideal for cloud deployments, and suits medium to large enterprises with proper configuration.
Sentiment score
7.6
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform is highly flexible and scalable but faces challenges with file sizes and scaling costs.
Mule ESB is a scalable solution.
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform is quite scalable, and it meets our use cases with no issues preventing implementation.
MuleSoft provides the ability to scale, yet it is costly to do so.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Mule ESB is generally stable and reliable, but improvements are needed in clustering, large files, and CloudHub stability.
Sentiment score
7.9
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform shows improved stability, minimal issues, and high reliability with optimized resource management in cloud environments.
 

Room For Improvement

Mule ESB faces criticism over documentation, setup complexity, pricing, stability, scaling issues, regulatory challenges, and frequent release versioning.
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform needs enhancements in processing, support, integration, and user interface for improved efficiency and usability.
More information is needed from MuleSoft.
From my perspective, Mule ESB is lightweight, but it can be improved when it comes to the agility of the system.
Currently, it uses other standards, but adopting OpenAPI, the standard in the market, would be beneficial.
When dealing with multiple transactions or trading, the system can lose control, and tracking becomes hectic.
MuleSoft is considered expensive, so pricing is a major concern.
 

Setup Cost

Mule ESB is costly, especially for small businesses, but its robust features and integration support offer significant value.
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform's pricing is complex and high, potentially deterring smaller organizations despite offering enterprise support.
I do not know the specific costs, but given that it is part of MuleSoft, I suspect it is not cheap.
MuleSoft is considered one of the more expensive products in the market.
The platform reduces manual workload in maintaining infrastructure, but it does come with some cost considerations.
 

Valuable Features

Mule ESB offers user-friendly integration with robust features like connectors, data transformation, cloud integration, and microservices support.
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform excels with API management, integration features, a user-friendly interface, and robust data management capabilities.
They have their own language called DataWeave, which helps transform data and is efficient enough to handle any kind of transformation.
The best features of Mule ESB are that it's very robust and solid; I find that even our legacy systems go well with ESB.
The most valuable feature is the full lifecycle management, including Anypoint Designer and Exchange, as well as Discofolio API.
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform helps to standardize data integration approaches, making it easier to implement integration projects.
The platform is integrated with Salesforce, making it preferable when using Salesforce products.
 

Categories and Ranking

Mule ESB
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (2nd)
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Message Queue (MQ) Software (3rd), Business-to-Business Middleware (1st), Workload Automation (4th), Cloud Data Integration (4th), Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Application Integration solutions, they serve different purposes. Mule ESB is designed for Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and holds a mindshare of 19.3%, down 22.4% compared to last year.
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform, on the other hand, focuses on Business-to-Business Middleware, holds 11.1% mindshare, down 14.8% since last year.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
Business-to-Business Middleware
 

Featured Reviews

PurbayanSaha - PeerSpot reviewer
Has API-led architecture and provides a unique, user-friendly, and scalable architecture for hosting APIs
There's room for improvement in multi-file transfer functionality. It's not convenient when using MuleSoft, and it should have better capability for handling large amounts of data. For example, applications like GoAnywhere can handle huge chunks of data, so the tool should also have something to facilitate that aspect of integration.
Tolulope A. Adeniji - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides application integration and reduces time and effort during upgrades
One of the most valuable aspects was its impact on reducing time and effort during upgrades. Previously, SAP upgrades required significant coordination with multiple teams. Now, thanks to our streamlined integration approach, the SAP team interacts primarily with the integration team. When changes are needed, we simply create a new version. This allows application teams to migrate gradually from the old version to the new one, without extensive involvement from the SAP team. Moreover, our approach has improved reliability by eliminating duplicated efforts. Previously, different teams would often duplicate data sets due to inefficiencies in data naming conventions. We centralized data integration, ensuring that all applications use the same data set.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Migration from IBM Integration Bus to Mulesoft ESB for a large enterprise tech services company
I was previously part of the Oracle SOA/OSB development team. In my current capacity I architected solutions using MuleSoft Anypoint Platform on cloud / on-premises and hybrid modes and on PCE/RTF ...
IBM Integration Bus vs Mule ESB - which to choose?
Our team ran a comparison of IBM’s Integration Bus vs. Mule ESB in order to determine what sort of ESB software was the best fit for our organization. Ultimately we decided to choose IBM Integratio...
What do you like most about Mule ESB?
The solution's drag-and-drop interface and data viewer helped us quite a lot.
What advice do you have for others considering Mule Anypoint Platform?
I architected solutions using Oracle SOA/OSB, Spring Boot, MuleSoft Anypoint Platform on cloud / on-premises and hybrid modes; What I see is though if you are an enterprise and have enough money th...
How does TIBCO BusinessWorks compare with Mule Anypoint Platform?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether TIBCO BusinessWorks or Mule Anypoint platform integration and connectivity software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Mule...
What can Mule Anypoint Platform be used for and what do you use it for most often?
This is a very flexible solution that comes with multiple uses. My organization mostly uses Mule Anypoint Platform for API management, as it lets us build new APIs easily and design new interfaces...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Data Integrator, Anypoint MQ
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot
VMware, Gucci, MasterCard, Target, Time Inc, Hershey's, Tesla, Spotify, Office Depot, Intuit, CBS, Amtrak, Salesforce, Gap, Ralph Lauren
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM, Salesforce, Oracle and others in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.