MuleSoft Anypoint Platform Reviews

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform's most valuable features are its observability and stability.

MuleSoft Anypoint platform is a great integration platform. It's a bouquet of benefits. The solution's benefits, including observability and support, are brilliant.

The negative side of MuleSoft's Anypoint Platform is its cost. The solution's pricing model is very strange, and it will be really expensive if you use APIs a lot.

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform is a highly stable solution. I have worked for almost two years, and only twice did I see the platform go down for five to ten minutes.

I rate MuleSoft Anypoint Platform ten out of ten for stability.

I rate the MuleSoft Anypoint Platform ten out of ten for scalability because its features are amazing. You can keep adding, but you must have enough licenses to support the scalability.

The solution's initial setup is pretty straightforward. MuleSoft Anypoint Platform has a brilliant customer success team that helps you with everything.

The solution's deployment is pretty straightforward and doesn't take much time. The solution has a beautiful UI, and you can directly deploy from your IDE to your instances. Generally, it takes 15 to 20 minutes for one application to be deployed. They have some plugins available directly with which you can deploy them for both CloudHub and RTF.

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform really needs to work on its pricing model because it's very complicated. CloudHub's pricing is pretty straightforward because they charge based on the number of codes you use. However, it's very tricky to calculate the cost of RTF. Moving from CloudHub to RTF creates a lot of challenges, including overshooting the license purchase. It was a nightmare for us to take down everything and change our infrastructure.

So while using RTF, we need to plan how to integrate things well in advance. If we do not use the reusability features within MuleSoft, we will add APIs which will cost more. So we have to find a way to reuse the APIs and be smart in making the integrations.

I was the central point of contact for MuleSoft. I was not an integration developer, but I managed the entire structure of MuleSoft.

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform is not just an API gateway platform but also an integration platform. Instead of using two tools or two applications, you can use one. Generally, your gateway will be separate, which is an exposure layer, and underneath, you will need to have your service desk established, where you write your integrations to connect to the back end. MuleSoft Anypoint Platform has got both into one. It's a good integration platform as a service tool recommended if you have a big budget.

We have to be really careful and cautious about how we will design our APIs. We have to keep an eye on the reusability of APIs, which is very critical while using the MuleSoft Anypoint Platform.

We never faced issues on the usage part. The solution's connections to third parties and ability to pull the data using APIs are brilliant. They have a bunch of platform APIs, and the data you see on the dashboard can be pulled out very easily using APIs. You can then push it to some BI tools or wherever you want.

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform is a brilliant tool. If you have small use cases and don't have a huge amount of traffic being transferred between the APIs, the MuleSoft Anypoint Platform is the best-suited integration platform for you. You don't have to buy multiple applications and break your head to manage your observability and deployments because everything is integrated into one platform.

Overall, I rate MuleSoft Anypoint Platform a nine out of ten.

Our company is working with a client to create standardization or uniformity across departments and domains. 

Every domain operated on a pilot approach with its own set of standards and technology. There were multiple point form connections and API discoverability for assets. 

We analyzed the environment and found there were issues with transferring master data from SAP to downstream systems. There was an iDOC on the SAP level which contained a batch master for new material and served as a point-to-point connector for downstream systems such as SAP to Salesforce, Informatica, or other systems. 

We recommended that material master data should be implemented in an observable or pub/sub approach. Upgrades or changes to the material master should be generated from the CP side and sent to the solution for dissemination to downstream systems. This eliminates bad jobs and is a real-time approach to point-to-point connections. 

There were also many APIs built in different technologies throughout the organization, with no standard API management capabilities or governance to enforce policies, security, or best practices. We recommended Universal API Management for API registrations because it allows any type of technology or platform and serves as a single point for discoverability, enforced policies, governance, and traffic. 

The exchange and API management features are the best in the market. 

The solution handles EDI-based integrations very well. 

The platform's data integration tools need improvement on the processing side. We move large amounts of data from databases to other source systems and the solution does not handle this well. 

It is difficult to become a partner with the solution because their standards are very high. 

I have been using the solution for four years. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable and depends on your deployment model. With Cloud Orbit, it is very easy to scale or configure auto scaling. On-premises or private clouds require a bit of extra care but are still easy to do. 

Technical support for partners and customers is good and the community forum for developers is strong.

I rate support an eight out of ten. 

Positive

The setup is very simple. 

The solution is the priciest in the market which is an issue for some clients. It is intended for use with enterprise or mid-level companies who have available resources. 

When comparing products, the solution wins every time for integration capabilities and API management but falls short for pricing. Demographics play an important role because clients in Asia cannot afford the solution but price is not an issue for clients in the US, Australia, Canada and Europe. The size of a company is also important as the solution is intended for the enterprise or mid-level range. 

The solution is more focused on EDI-based integrations and has a partner that offers an onboarding management tool because many legacy companies are migrating from Sterling Integrator. Perhaps the solution should be marketed more for EDI integrations. 

There are more valid tools for data integration such as Informatica, SSI, and Talend.

The solution is great for new developers who want to learn about integrations because it includes free or self-payer courses.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

The solution enables searching, publishing, consumption, and subscription of APIs via a portal.

The product is robust. It is Java-based. We use the little resources we have to get things done. The tool’s API management capabilities are excellent. It is a rock-solid product. The tool has a lot of dashboards. We can monitor performance and scalability.

The product is expensive.

I have been using the solution for more than five years.

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

We can have multiple instances and scale them dynamically. The solution also has load-balancing capabilities. I rate the scalability a nine out of ten.

The initial setup is easy. We can just define our APIs and start building them. The tool is mostly deployed on the cloud. It can be deployed on public, private, and hybrid clouds. The deployment does not take much time. After the testing, if everything is fine, the tool can be deployed.

Boomi is suitable for small and medium-sized companies. Mule Anypoint Platform is suitable for small and medium businesses, but it is expensive.

I am a partner of Salesforce. I tried to understand why Boomi is stronger in the market than Mule Anypoint Platform. However, I could not find any disadvantages of Mule Anypoint Platform. The product has been in the market for a long time.

It has also introduced AI features. It can take issues and divert them based on dynamic data. ROI is not the only factor we consider. We must also consider scalability, smooth and hassle-free use, time to production, and time taken for testing. We can monitor things in real-time. I recommend the solution to enterprises. It is a good solution to migrate from TIBCO.

The tool has an API manager with a dedicated console to control the policies and everything else. Everything is integrated. We can call relevant data on the go. Nothing is hard-coded. If we want to get data from a particular source, we can automatically get it based on the AI input.

Overall, I rate the tool an eight to nine out of ten.

We are a global company, and Mule Anypoint Platform is at the center of all our e-commerce applications.

The most valuable feature of Mule Anypoint Platform is rapid development.

The solution's licensing methodologies could be improved.

I have been using Mule Anypoint Platform for six years.

Mule Anypoint Platform is a stable solution.

Mule Anypoint Platform is a scalable solution. Around 2,000 users are using the solution in our organization.

We need to provide a lot of information to get technical support, so it's not quick.

Neutral

The solution's initial setup is easy.

Two people can deploy the solution in two days.

Mule Anypoint Platform is an expensive solution.

The solution's maintenance is easy and can be done by one person.

Overall, I rate Mule Anypoint Platform an eight out of ten.

Primarily, we use Mule Anypoint Platform for orchestration and workflows.  We also use it when more than two applications have to talk to each other or real-time transactions are required. Another use case is for a triggering mechanism that also requires data transformations.

We like it because of its ease of usability. It is a very user-friendly and developer-friendly tool. The maintenance cost is low, and the overall required team size is also optimized.

The compatibility with vendors can be improved. Microsoft Azure heavily uses single software.

Compatibility with other services or cloud providers like AWS or GCP is not very well defined. This is an area they need to be a little more cautious about.

Nowadays, everyone is talking about Generative AI, how intelligence can be brought into different systems that are ready. If we talk about Mule Anypoint Platform, the system and data are there, but the integration layers are not very advanced. They should bring in Generative AI and other AI platforms because even it will need a lot of self-building intelligence and decision-making.

They have good competition from cloud providers nowadays. There is a lot of scope and innovation competing in that area. 

I have been using it for three years now.

Mule Anypoint Platform is quite stable. It is used across many large organizations, and we have not seen many issues with it. I would rate the stability eight out of ten.

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. Mule Anypoint Platform has great capability around different products, including products within the platform. It is a very decentralized kind of solution that can be scaled to very high levels.

We do connect with support from time to time if there are issues. The technical support is good. They do reply on time and take responsibility.

The initial setup is simple enough. 

The product is very expensive. I would rate the pricing six out of ten.

Mule Anypoint Platform can be considered the leader in the market. After being bought over by Salesforce, it now has some added advantages. For any large or mid-level company that is going for multiple applications like SaaS-based applications, ServiceNow and Salesforce, the Mule Anypoint Platform is very useful. Small-scale companies choose other open-source and cloud-native solutions which are much cheaper in cost. 

There are other leaders like Dell Boomi and open-source Kafka, but the best part about MuleSoft is the foundation architecture they use which is highly scalable and reliable. The compatibility for the Mule Anypoint Platform is greater than other competitors. I would rate the product seven out of ten. 

We're using Anypoint MQ for messaging, in different types: from SAP to third party systems, global third party systems, etc. There's a hundred of them.

It's extremely expensive to change things in Anypoint MQ, e.g. we have to go through either Accenture or IBM. IBM will do the changes, but the actual change we ask for costs huge amounts of money. I'm not sure why that is, or whether that's just a contract, but they always complain about multiple changes, regression testing, etc. It sounds like it's a very long winded task just to make a simple change. This is an area for improvement for Anypoint MQ.

Another problem we have with Anypoint MQ is that some of our end systems cannot cope with the throughput. If we put too many messages down to it, then there's a delay to send those messages onto the system that can't take them in as fast, and this means that the queue blows. We have either a 40 gigabyte or 40 megabyte queue space, but if we send 7,000 messages which need to be combined and sent out, the queue blows, because it just can't manage that throughput because the output is so slow. With the memory, we don't have a big enough queue to cope, so there's that problem.

If there was a way around that problem, we could send it. What we need to do is to be able to send 50,000 messages an hour or more, which we can do SAP to SAP, but we haven't found a solution on how to cope with sending it to Anypoint MQ because it blows up, so that's the big problem we have.

What we'd like to see in the next release of Anypoint MQ is for the issue of slow output of messages to be solved. Even if we wrote into disc, e.g. the disc space is cheap, so if you could write the messages to disc and then just feed them out and when the queue is caught up with itself, that would solve our problems. It means we could send MuleSoft all the messages in one go, and then it could drip feed them out.

The additional feature we'd like to see in Anypoint MQ is to be able to write the message queue to disc, to allow for ample queueing of messages, because currently, the output to a particular system is slow.

We've been dealing with Anypoint MQ for 20 years now.

Anypoint MQ has been stable, and it has not caused us any problems.

Anypoint MQ is a scalable solution.

We have not contacted the technical support team of Anypoint MQ, because we have our own internal third parties to deal with any issue that could arise from the solution.

What we've noticed in Anypoint MQ is that it's expensive to change things.

We evaluated Apache Kafka.

I thought we had a problem with our queuing software, and it turned out that it's not the software itself, it's the third party. We're passing the messages on to the third party, and they can only receive it at a certain rate, so we had to drop the Anypoint MQ software down, but it's not actually the MQ software, rather it's the actual third party application that was causing the problem.

As I'm working on the SAP side, I'm not sure if I'm the best person to discuss about the features I like most about the solution.

My advice to others looking into implementing the solution is to first look at what you're trying to achieve, because you've got Anypoint MQ as your queueing software, and then you've got the Apache Kafka software as well, and they do different things. I didn't realize this when I started looking, because I was looking at Kafka thinking that would be the answer to our problem, but it wasn't, because it looks great if you want instantaneous messaging and loads of bandwidth, but you need to do the interpretation of messages.

I'd say, look at what you want it for, because Anypoint MQ seems to be as good as the other options, to be fair. I'd also tell them about the problem I've had with it, and that's not just going to be a problem with Anypoint MQ alone, because I think other systems will have the same problem, e.g. the queuing problem. I'll tell others to really, really look at the application. Anypoint MQ seems to be a standard application, and it's acceptable.

My overall impression of Anypoint MQ in terms of rating it, is seven out of ten, but that's just based on my feeling. I don't have any quantifiable reasons on why I'm giving it that score.

I would recommend Anypoint MQ to customers using MuleSoft as an integration platform. Anypoint MQ is a pure messaging product. The solution is scalable, and its performance is quite good.

The solution's licensing model is expensive and could be improved.

I've recently started using Anypoint MQ.

The solution’s technical support is good, but they should work on their response time.

Neutral

Anypoint MQ is easy to configure. However, it is not that easy when compared to Apache Kafka.

If customers using open-source integration or any springboard integrations need JMS, they must carefully evaluate the product. I would recommend Anypoint MQ only for MuleSoft customers. I won't recommend the solution to customers using a different integration platform because there's a cost associated with the product.

Overall, I rate Anypoint MQ an eight out of ten.

Our company's clients are all from different domains. We use the platform for integration and API management.

I have a background in Java and in the past, there were some issues whenever we had to integrate with the applications. You had to get the business logic and sometimes it took months to integrate the record. With Anypoint Platform, it is very easy to do that. You just need to do a small drag-drop and a small transformation which saves a lot of time.

The most valuable feature is the variety of characters Anypoint Platform has. It is very scalable and customizable.

In terms of improvement, the deployment time could be a little shorter. Other platforms such as Boomi or SnapLogic are much faster to develop. Anypoint Platform has added the option to generate flow online, but it still needs some improvement. It should give better control over account management. Mule Anypoint Platform includes an API Manager and it has a strong ESB. However, the API management capabilities of Apigee offer more advanced and dynamic features for managing APIs. 

Additionally, Mule should work on reducing the complexity of their platform and providing more flexibility for users. Those who are not well-versed in Java will have a hard time with the development of Anypoint Platform. While it offers connectors, the connectors have limitations. It should offer features that can be customized by users, allowing for greater adaptability, and offer customization options within these connectors, to make it easier for users to tailor them to specific needs. Platforms such as Dell Omni and SnapLogic already provide solutions for these problems and allow users to easily plug them in and start working.

I have been using Mule Anypoint Platform for eight years.

I would rate the stability of the platform a seven out of ten. There were situations where specific solutions or connectors were not available, and the support team suggested using workarounds. They advised me to create my own ideas and come up with a solution. This lack of immediate solutions can be a limitation of the platform.

I would rate the scalability of the platform an eight out of ten. There are approximately 300 users of Anypoint Platform at our company and we plan on expanding.

The technical support is good. I would rate it a nine out of ten.

Positive

I have previously used Apache Camel and Dell Boomi but I am also currently using Ab Initio due to client requirements and the need for a faster time-to-market for clients' projects or products. Using a team of ten members, it took around 24 months to complete the migration of approximately 2,000 APIs with Anypoint Platform. Ab Initio only required nine months to accomplish a similar task.

I would give a seven out of ten for the easiness of the initial setup. The deployment takes about two minutes which is acceptable. We handle deployment ourselves. We use tools such as Jenkins or Bamboo and it can be time-consuming since it initially involves scripting.

In terms of pricing, Anypoint Platform is on the expensive side. I would rate the costliness an eight out of ten.

I would definitely recommend Anypoint platform to anyone who is considering using it. Its main flaw is the costliness. Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten.