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Mule ESB vs WSO2 Enterprise Integrator 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)
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
WSO2 Enterprise Integrator
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
7th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (28th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of Mule ESB is 17.2%, down from 20.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WSO2 Enterprise Integrator is 5.7%, up from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Mule ESB17.2%
WSO2 Enterprise Integrator5.7%
Other77.1%
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

Featured Reviews

Srinivas-Kanduri - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise integrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Integration architecture has enabled reliable multi-channel messaging and secure API management but now needs better analytics and simpler development
In my opinion, the real-time analytics part of Mule ESB is not up to the mark for the decision-making process. While there are some analytics features, they lack the standards needed for enterprise use. Compared to other analytics tools such as Power BI, MuleSoft falls short.Points for improvement in Mule ESB definitely include enhancing the analytics capabilities because currently, they rely on external logging tools such as Splunk or ELK, which is lagging behind compared to other tools such as Workato that offer more analytical features. Additionally, issues arise with AI-based use cases due to dependencies on Salesforce tools such as agent force, making development more complicated when it should be more independent. Developing AI-based agents without being tied to Salesforce applications could also enhance functionality.
AC
Technical director at Cremete
Effective data transformation and integration in complex environments with high functionality
Something that could be improved in WSO2 Enterprise Integrator is that the problem is not a lack of capability or functionalities. The problem is that it is a very complex environment. To put your hand on this environment is a very demanding task. This is the real problem. The problem is not about the product, but about the complexity to manage, to configure, to decide what to do. I have some experience using SAP R/3. It seems to me something similar. When you have to configure a situation with a client, especially for a client not in an industrial sector, but in a service sector, it is quite usual that you are in trouble for some reason. This is always the story that I found in the implementations I have done. Maybe there are only three or four big problems, in some other cases there are more than that, but this is the situation usually. For WSO2 Enterprise Integrator, not the same, but I must say it is quite often there is a need to put together some pieces and make it work in a coordinated way.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"When we bought the solution, it was an in-the-cloud or PaaS solution, and because of that, I didn't have to take care of the infrastructure, which was a big plus, and it was pretty fast to develop APIs on this platform, so the time to value was pretty good."
"The architecture based on events has several connectors which allow integration from external and internal applications of the company."
"For complex cases, we employ the SSLi engine, whereas for simpler ones like healthcare or response data, such as EDI 270 or 271. We prefer to use an external XRT engine instead of handling it within the ESB for ease of management."
"Mule Expression Language"
"I like that it's user-friendly. Compared to other ESBs, I find it easier to use. I like it better than other ESBs. I like the connectors, which make calling the APIs through the routers easier."
"Writing your complex business logic as a simple workflow which can be understood by not so technical people, with hot deployment and a variety of free connectors, makes Mule ESB a powerful and accessible integration solution."
"The connectors help to connect with a variety of applications."
"It's open source, and there are a lot of community resources. Mule ESB makes it easy to connect to other software applications."
"The productivity is the most valuable feature. It is very easy to write remediations."
"It's a very complete product. It allows us to network security and add more layers of security to the system."
"The installation process is easy."
"WSO2 Enterprise Integrator may cost you about twenty-five thousand dollars annually per year compared to IBM Cloud Pak, which would cost you around one million dollars."
"From the capabilities and functional possibility and anything else technical, it is a very well-done product, I have to say."
"The built-in connectors help with quick connectivity to the platforms, and we are using this for both our banking and insurance clients."
"While I am still exploring the solution, I've so far been pretty satisfied with it."
"In my opinion, the most valuable aspect of this solution is its extensive range of adaptors and connectors. This feature holds significant importance and provides great value to users."
 

Cons

"It would be great to see implementing security modules as a feature."
"In an upcoming release, I would like to see more additional concept for exception handling, batch processing, and increased integration with other application."
"The documentation is not extensive and is limited to examples which are too basic."
"Support, and with respect to licensing cost. Many of the customers feel that the licensing cost is much."
"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."
"From the product perspective, it was sometimes hard to manage the dependencies. When we had to add dependencies on a couple of different packages, it was sometimes confusing. It was hard to update them with Anypoint Studio, as well as with MuleSoft. There were challenges with that. So, that's one of the areas that could be improved."
"The initial setup could be more straightforward."
"I would like to see support for BPM in the next release of this solution."
"You cannot include the validation of XPath."
"If I have to buy software, then it becomes expensive for me."
"They should release upgrades more frequently."
"The setup can be difficult for those not familiar with the solution."
"The micro integrator should be improved. There is room for enhancement considering alternative integration components."
"The main issue with the product is pricing. It uses core-based pricing for WSO2 Enterprise Integrator and API Manager. It would be best if you had APIM by default. It provides many connectors for easy integration with third-party systems."
"They should introduce better pricing for small companies."
"One of the reasons that we are looking for a replacement is their way of defining integration. The language of the XML structures that I use to describe the integrations are not that standard, and it's not easy to find people who are familiar with this approach."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Mule ESB is an expensive solution."
"Plan your licensing model (cloud or on-premises or hybrid) that will allow seamless integration with new partners."
"Regarding licensing and pricing, I find it somewhat flexible. They are more flexible with larger customers compared to small and medium ones, as their licensing model depends on ports and other factors. Large customers benefit from more flexibility in implementation and renewal compared to smaller ones."
"The price of the Mule ESB commercial version is expensive. However, they have a free community version."
"Mule ESB is a costly solution. We pay approximately $80,000 annually for the system. The cost of the number of instances, annual subscription, and cloud hosting services are expensive."
"This is expensive. In my next project, we had to go to other vendor."
"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."
"You will not get any support from Mule ESB's team for the tool's community edition...You can get support with the licensed version of Mule ESB."
"The solution costs about 20,000 or 30,000 euros per year, per instance."
"The cost is better than IBM Cloud Pak."
"I rate the product price a six on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"The open-source, unsupported version is available free of charge."
"It is a low-cost solution."
"The pricing of WSO2 Enterprise Integrator for enterprise subscriptions can be considered expensive, especially from the perspective of someone who prefers open-source software."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Construction Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise39
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise11
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Mule ESB?
In terms of costing, I consider it 50-50; I would not say it's 100% cost-effective because the platform itself is a little costly. We are trying to improve how efficiently we make our ecosystem. It...
What needs improvement with WSO2 Enterprise Integrator?
Something that could be improved in WSO2 Enterprise Integrator is that the problem is not a lack of capability or functionalities. The problem is that it is a very complex environment. To put your ...
What is your primary use case for WSO2 Enterprise Integrator?
A typical use case for WSO2 Enterprise Integrator is when I am in an interoperability environment with healthcare facilities and I have to put together a lot of applications that share some HL7 mes...
What advice do you have for others considering WSO2 Enterprise Integrator?
For simpler tasks or simpler use cases, we avoid using WSO2 Enterprise Integrator because it is quite complex. So it is easier to manage some more simple solutions than that. WSO2 Enterprise Integr...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot
West
Find out what your peers are saying about Mule ESB vs. WSO2 Enterprise Integrator and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,417 professionals have used our research since 2012.