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Mule ESB vs TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 2025

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

Mule ESB
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of Mule ESB is 21.0%, down from 22.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus is 3.9%, up from 3.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

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.
Mustofa Yonus - PeerSpot reviewer
A robust product that needs to improve the functionality it offers related to API lifecycle management
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a six to seven out of ten. My company consists of around 7000 employees, and we use the solution as an integrated service in around 300 to 400 systems, both internally and externally, making it a huge number. Our company uses the solution every minute and every second, and we can't function without it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What Mule provides out-of-box is a sufficient product."
"The most beneficial features of Mule ESB are the control plane and runtime plane."
"We can use Java expressions anywhere in the flow."
"I'm not using ESB directly. It is the integration layer, so it's running under the hood. However, the conversion and transformation performance is excellent. Anypoint Enterprise Security is also solid."
"Mule Expression Language"
"The connectors help to connect with a variety of applications."
"It was pretty fast to develop APIs on this platform, which is something I liked about it. So, the time to value was pretty good."
"I am impressed with the product's connectors and scalability."
"The technology is really easy to learn."
"TIBCO has the platform in terms of speed and ease of use."
"The stability of this solution is excellent."
"The most attractive and beneficial feature is the ease of development."
"It is easy to develop. It has a very wide range of features. The older versions are very stable, and there are no issues with the product."
"The product’s most valuable feature is stability."
"The most valuable feature is that it is a service-oriented architecture, SOA-based."
"It's very stable and reliable."
 

Cons

"In India, particularly in the banking sector, clients do not prefer cloud solutions due to regulatory and compliance requirements."
"In an upcoming release, I would like to see more additional concept for exception handling, batch processing, and increased integration with other application."
"We would like the ability to use our own code. This would allow us to develop customizations with ease. Additionally, it would be nice to have more analytics or insights on the exchanged information between databases."
"In the next release, I would like to see improvement in the generator for the DataWeave language so that it's a little more graphic."
"From an improvement perspective, there should be fewer coding challenges for users in Mule ESB."
"It needs more samples. Also, the dependency on Maven should be removed."
"MuleSoft isn't as mature as some other integration technologies out there like IBM WebSphere. There's room for growth, and MuleSoft is working toward that."
"The solution's setup needs to be a bit more straightforward and its support needs to respond faster."
"The intermediate version that we are using has stability issues. These stability issues should be resolved, but it seems like TIBCO is not focusing on resolving these issues. The resolution timelines are quite high even for high-priority incidents. Its price should be lower. Its licensing cost is considerably high as compared to other ESBs."
"Issues with the support, the fees, and the termination of the professional services are reasons we are looking for other solutions."
"Our version does not have cloud capabilities."
"The stability of their latest version is not on par with their classic version 5.X."
"In the configuration, where we need to customize, it takes more time that we expect it to, ideally."
"The initial setup process could be easier."
"In the next release, there should be improvements made to the API manager."
"We'd like to see improvements in product support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is yearly, and there are additional fees for services."
"The price of the Mule ESB commercial version is expensive. However, they have a free community version."
"The solution is expensive."
"Mule ESB is an expensive solution."
"This product is cheaper than some offered by other vendors, although there is a problem because you have to pay for some third-party adapters."
"The pricing must be improved."
"Most of the challenges that I had with this solution were for smaller customers. There is not a good licensing model or pricing model. It is more expensive than other solutions, and that's the downside of MuleSoft. I had to be creative to be able to sell it to the business, but we did. This is something they have to work on because for large companies, it's affordable, but for small and medium businesses, it's very hard to sell."
"The various features and components for this solution are no longer free."
"The licensing cost is a challenge for quite a few customers."
"Its licensing cost is considerably high as compared to other ESBs."
"The biggest issue disadvantage of TIBCO is that it is expensive."
"When it comes to cost, TIBCO is much more competitive than a product like Pega."
"Price-wise, I would say that the product is expensive."
"The price is on the higher side. For the same price, if I go to the previous version, I would have got a lot more capacity with similar kinds of features."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Retailer
7%
 

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 do you like most about TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus?
The most valuable feature of the solution is that the performance is robust.
What needs improvement with TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus?
I don't like the product's API management platform, as it doesn't offer users enough functionality to help with API lifecycle management, making it a product that is way behind its competitors. The...
 

Also Known As

No data available
ActiveMatrix Service Bus
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot
Colonial Life, CTBC Bank, New World Mobility, QUALCOMM, Swisscom Mobile, T-Mobile USA, Tata Teleservices, Telecom Italia
Find out what your peers are saying about Mule ESB vs. TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.