Mule ESB Reviews

• Deployment strategies: Mule supports a wide variety of deployment strategies.
• SOA architectural style: Mule can embrace the architectural style and SOA practices in place where it’s deployed.
• Focused on higher-level concerns: It deals extensively with all the details of integration and provides a wide range of connectors. It has the ability to be an integration framework open to all sorts of protocols.
• They have comprehensive and up-to-date documentation, a subject on which the vendor has made huge progress recently.

It integrates between an ERP (J2EE inventory module), a CRM (PHP) and a new mobile development platform (Angular JavaScript web services).

The aim of the solution was to connect to the inventory application provided by the ERP system, read and send data to the CRM, then hook that to the smartphone with a user-friendly UI.

Some requirements:

• Integrate applications or systems on premise or in the cloud.
• Use out-of-the-box connectors to create SaaS integration applications.
• Build and expose APIs.
• Consume APIs.

I think using Anypoint Studio at the beginning can be seen as not straightforward, especially when dealing with the visual editor. A vertical representation of the flow can really improve the understanding of the case and a good mapping to the use case.

I have been using it for 1-2 years.

Like any application, Mule is constrained by the limits of memory size and CPU performance.

Threading profiles define the overall capacity of your Mule instance in terms of scaling and capacity. The performance of each moving part involved in processing each request will also impact the global throughput of your application.

Setup was realy straightforward as the product is well documented. Also, we should mention the efforts of a good and reactive community.

Before choosing, we also evaluated:

• Oracle SOA Suite
• Open ESB
• JBoss ESB

My advice to organisations looking to implement this product is to begin with the community version as a proof-of-concept and a way to avoid risks. You can then directly migrate to the enterprise edition as the Anypoint Platform offers tools that architects and developers across the enterprise can adapt quickly to design, build, and manage the entire lifecycle of their APIs, applications and products. With Mule as its core runtime engine, Anypoint Platform is built with open technologies to promote reusability, modularity and collaboration, increasing developer productivity and project speed.

We are using the on-premises version of this solution.

The most valuable feature is DataWeave. It allows for the transformation of data, for example to JSON or from JSON. It's very powerful.

There are also many connectors available, which is nice.

We would like to have a built-in logging framework in which we can do auditing. In our case, we are working on-premise. We are not using the cloud solution, so we have MMC, which is not enough in a high transaction environment.

This is a very stable solution. It doesn't require much memory or other resources. Once it is started, we don't see any problems on a day to day basis. Even when you need to make changes, they are easy to do. 

The scalability is easy. It can be done horizontally or vertically. We are scaling horizontally because we don't have any space left in the server. If we need to expand the number of nodes then it depends upon the licensing.

Our development team has three people, and I am the lead.

The community forums for this solution have been very helpful. You find plenty of information there. In the past three or four years, I have only raised three issues. They were related to the VM, and not the product itself, so I did not need product assistance.

We did not use another solution prior to this one. We started with the open source solution, version 3.1.0, and we implemented all of the services. We then paid for a licensed version.

The initial setup is pretty easy. We have multiple applications bounded by that domain, for resource sharing, so it was easy.

I set up the solution myself.

The calculation of ROI is difficult because we work in terms of providing support to other applications. There are many departments involved, and we cannot calculate our support in terms of money.

Before moving to the licensed version of this solution, we had a meeting to discuss the IBM Oracle web method. After looking at everything, including our code and the capability that Oracle has, we decided to continue with Mule ESB because of the ease in moving from the older, open source version, to the newer one. All we had to do is download it and continue with our work.

My advice to others who are implementing this solution is to first become acquainted with the forums. There are always reports coming out about the software, and new technologies. The next thing is that I would suggest always starting with the latest version. Older versions are available, but you should install the most recent one.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We were using it for EDI. We were using it for integration between RFID portals and our ERP system. We were also using it for the integration of customer data between the CRM and the ERP systems. I am no longer using it because I changed the company.

We were using the cloud version.

When we bought the solution, it was an in-the-cloud or PaaS solution. Because of that, I didn't have to take care of the infrastructure, which was a big plus.

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. 

Its licensing or pricing model should be improved. If I compare it to other solutions, it is very expensive for small and medium businesses.

Their support should also be improved. Some of the tickets took a long time to be resolved, and I had to escalate to my account manager.

I used this solution for maybe five years.

It is very stable.

It is very scalable. It is also easily scalable.

I had about two developers internally, and they were taking care of its deployment and maintenance. In terms of the end users, it probably impacted hundreds or thousands of employees.

It was okay. There is room for improvement. I had some tickets that were taking a long time to be resolved, and I had to escalate to my account manager to push them through. I would rate them a three out of five.

In the latest implementation, we decided to start small with a very simple project that we had, which was customer integration between our CRM and ERP solutions. We started with a very small API. It was a small integration with only about three APIs, and that was it. We had success with it, and we ran it. 

We did it in partnership with a third-party consultant, and then we took it from there. Our experience was very good.

Pretty good. I would rate it a four out of five.

Its licensing was yearly. There were minor fees additionally, but those were related to VPN's high availability. When you purchase MuleSoft, you purchase it because it is highly available. So, you have to make sure that your VPN can support that. That's pretty much it. The other tools that we picked were things to deploy the solution to build the CI/CD pipeline using MuleSoft. We picked the one that wasn't free. So, we had to pay for it, but it was a minor cost.

They have a package to get you started. I would advise using at least a partner at the very beginning so that they can show you the best practices within MuleSoft and different layers of APIs. Sometimes, there are challenges around security and things like that. So, my advice is to get external help to get your developers started on it. Once they're taught the best practices, your intermediate to senior developers will pick it fairly quickly.

I would rate it a nine out of 10.

I'm a consultant in a bank in Kuwait. I suggest good products for companies that are seeking my advice.

One of the important features of Mule ESB as an enterprise architect is that it should be scalable. It should be customizable for different kinds of clients. 

For client A, we need only two products. For client B, I need to group one and three. The product must be customizable for each. 

The product should be able to identify who is calling and what the components are. We need to return them to the calling point. Mule ESB covers most of these requirements.

Last month, the Guardian had a post saying that Mule is one of the best products for enterprise applications.

The most valuable feature of Mule ESB is data transformation, i.e. our interacting with different systems and orchestrating for our business needs. 

For example, a customer has liabilities in loans and credit cards, maybe some other mortgages, like four liabilities which are split into four systems. 

I need to expose an API that can tune the data from four systems and expose it into one single API. For that, I have to call our services and complex security policies.

Mule ESB loads complex web service security policies. Sometimes, we have some FLAC files or maybe some messaging services. We need to consume those components and expose them as an API, which is nothing but some adjacent format, i.e. a REST API.

Technically, there are mainly two API standards. One we call SOAP and the other one is the REST API. SOAP is nothing but fully external. It's very old, but huge complex enterprise companies are still using SOAP-based web services. In the mobile smartphone era, most of the hand-held devices are using REST APIs. 

Mule ESB is more into the latest REST APIs, not much into the SOAP web services. Developing is all about web services and not easy with Mule. That is one of the disadvantages of Mule. In next-gen products, Mule is in a good position.

Normally, if you're declaring a parameter or a variable, you can have visibility until it's not operating the variable. As an architect, programmer, or developer, you know when it's available. Graphically, that's not been available until this tool appeared.

It is this kind of enhancement that I'm looking for from MuleSoft. Two weeks ago or a month back, they had a big release. With this package, they are saying that APIs are your products. 

You can sell your API to different organizations and the developers can register on their portal. It's available this fall. These are the best features I am looking for now. 

My product is an API. I need to market it through the internet. I can have my portal with all of the tools built-in. This kind of feature I didn't see with the competitors currently in the market.

Mule ESB is very stable. I didn't face any issues. Recently I got a new version. I faced some other components issues, but not critical, i.e. easy to identify and rectify.

I moved from Mule 4.1 to 4.2 and it was really easy if you are migrating only one or two applications. It's very fast. I'm doing some experiments on my workspace for around 20-25 applications. 

I'm opening all of my applications in one shot, and it is scaling for me. I didn't update them as a bulk application. I worked by importing them one by one and it was fine.

I'm not into any official technical support. Their forum is pretty good and it's very active, but I cannot assure you that you will get a response within a day or two.

WebMethod is very expensive, but their support is awesome. I closely work with the operating technical support team. For retrieving the code from our bank, they are working with us very closely. Sometimes they are flying over here for conducting demos. 

Especially in the Middle East, MuleSoft is not doing like that. They are not doing much marketing in the industry. Maybe they are more focusing on South America or Asia. I'm not seeing much in the Middle East.

Mule ESB is one of the best. It is easy to use and setup. You just need to install their Anypoint Studio. It's very safe for all this. It's in a good rank just for the setup.

We evaluated Oracle, AG webMethods, and Red Hat OpenShift. The final one was MuleSoft. I'm very impressed with MuleSoft because of the pricing and license.

You have to implement several components. Sometimes, according to your needs, you have to buy several licenses for each component. Those are the things we compared.

My opinion is that Mule ESB depends on the business and the continuity of their enrollment. If you are a system that has not much left to repair, then your products and your APIs are assets within your organization. 

Here in the bank, we are facing different kinds of issues when we are integrating different systems:

• We are communicating with different card carriers like Mastercard and Visa. 
• Their standards are different according to the client requirements, i.e. exactly what kind of card they're looking for.
• They can get the products according to their requirements as well as their budget. 

I would rate Mule ESB with 7.5 or 8 out of 10. 

1. It's really easy to implement.
2. It's supporting our platforms: Windows, Linux, and Mac.
3. The performance.
4. It's free.

I'm looking for an API platform that supports the whole technology as well as the next-gen. 

Mule ESB is lacking for self-support, self-training, and documentation. The documentation of the product is less because they're selling the training.

You have to enroll for the training, then you'll get the full documentation. If you're an advanced user, you will not get much information from the public documentation.

We primarily provide services using the Mule ESB. We use it to integrate multiple systems.

The connectivity the solution provides is excellent. There are often too many systems that we have to integrate and this helps with that.

The platform itself is very good.

I'm not sure of any areas Mule ESB needs to improve.

The price of the solution is a little bit high. It would be helpful if different sized businesses had access to different plans.

The solution isn't as stable as we'd like it to be. There are some ongoing issues and therefore Mule has to provide frequent patches. Mule's core IP should be more stable overall.

I've been familiar with the solution for two years.

We had a bit of an issue with stability when it came to running some large files. We kept getting an error. In the end, we had to divide the files and process it via multiple files because of the way we implemented them. Large file processing also seems to take up more memory.

The technical support has been very good. It depends on the account we're working on, however. Good accounts get prompt responses in regards to queries.

We didn't previously use a different solution. We've only been working with MuleSoft.

The initial setup was straightforward. We haven't faced any issues with implementation. They've recently simplified the processes. I recall, earlier it was not that easy to set up.

Deployment doesn't take too much time. Sometimes it can be done in minutes. It shouldn't take more than an hour.

I'm unsure of the licensing costs. I believe the total price is less than IBM, but it's still rather expensive.

We're partners of MuleSoft. We provide the solution's service to our clients.

The solution would be useful for large organizations. If there are more than three or four systems, and if there is an expansion, it would work best. Small or medium enterprises with two or three systems, may find the solution a little bit unorganized.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. If the stability were more reliable, I'd rate it higher.

• We can use Java expressions anywhere in the flow
• Provides API support out-of-the-box
• API management can be done using RAML

It is very easy to learn and implement. We were able to meet project deadlines on time.

It needs more samples. Also, the dependency on Maven should be removed.

I have used Mule ESB for one year.

We had issues in Munit but rarely any stability issues.

We have not had stability issues.

We have not had scalability issues.

We had few guys from their support team.

They were excellent.

I would give technical support a rating of 8/10.

Firstly, the project architecture team decided to go with Mule.

Secondly, the project was from scratch and we want only microservices exposed over API hence, Mule was a promising deal.

However, in my next project we weren't able to go with as it much pricier than its competitors. Actually, from all the other vendors.

The setup was complex, as I came from a different background (IBM products). However, it became smoother down the line.

We went for a training first and then it was in-house after that.

This is expensive. In my next project, we had to go to other vendor.

Apparently, this is the most expensive ESB solution out there as there is no more Community Edition.

We looked at IBM IB and webMethods.

Go for it, but first read their sample exercises.

It is a one stop solution and it is an amazing product.
However,

1. It is an expensive product

2. Expensive support

I used the free trial account to test the product, it allows 10 days free trial.  

I'm a software engineer and a user of Mule ESB. 

The best feature for me was the easy connectivity and easy integration. In comparison, if you go through code license for APN, it will require more configuration or more code but if you're going to Anypoint Studio and using Mule ESB, you just drag and drop the connectors, configure the credentials and complete your process as per your requirements. The product helps me a lot to integrate quickly. 

I think there are some connectors that are not available that should be included. Supports like Salesforce Connector that are available in APN could be included. It's possible that this requires more configuration in our system. I've also found that running Mule Anypoint Studio ESB can slow things down. 

They have good documentation but it's better to have a video explanation for some of the demos, something basic that runs for 10 minutes or so. If you have that and combine it with the documentation, it would simplify the learning process. 

I have used the solution for one year. Really helpful tool for integration with multiple system.

This is a stable solution.

The solution is scalable.

I haven't used technical support, I tend to check the documentation when there are problems. It's actually quite good. There is a video which explains integration in only three minutes, and that helped me understand the documents.

I used some of the notes and YouTube tutorials that explain the setup. They've simplified the process with the latest version which is a good thing. 

We use Salesforce to store the most valuable information in our system. We have many clients that request this data, and we send it to them using the Mule ESB solution.

The most valuable feature is the Salesforce integration.

The drag and drop feature makes it very easy for transformation, and to use the Anypoint platform.

It is very easy to manage the flow using Anypoint.

I would like to see the transformation component improved such that they can support the integration of more datatypes. For example, in version 3.7 they do not support the Excel format, and some companies using that version cannot do transformation with Excel input. As a workaround, they have to manually write Java code to do it.

The Anypoint platform consumes a lot of memory, and it would be great for developers if it were more lightweight.

It would be great if they extended the free trial of the API designer to two months.

The version that I am using, 3.8, is quite stable. My understanding of version 4 is that it is not stable, yet, because it is new, and it will take some time.

This solution is very scalable, and we can use it however we like. It can connect to every kind of system.

There are approximately two hundred people using the system, directly and indirectly.

We have used technical support for some issues that we could not figure out by ourselves. They are fast and don't take a long time to respond.

We started with Mule ESB.

The Anypoint platform is based on Eclipse, so anyone who has worked in Java will find it easy.

I performed the installation myself.

The various features and components for this solution are no longer free.

I will soon be migrating to version 4 of Mule ESB, although we are also interested in the WSO2 solution because it seems to be very complete.

Using Mule ESB does not require somebody to be a Java developer, although there are some Java concepts that you need to know. For example, some people use JSON, and I find that they are scared of Mule ESB because it is based on Java. But really, it isn't a problem if they don't know it.

This solution has good performance and support, but not everybody can use it because many of the features are expensive. Especially for application management, it is expensive compared to solutions such as WSO2. It is limiting for small and medium-sized companies.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.