MuleSoft Anypoint Platform Reviews

I've been developing Mule applications and have been using Anypoint Studio for development purposes. I have a Mule Anypoint Studio for the certification to test knowledge of the Anypoint Platform in the cloud. I've never been in a live situation for deployment within the cloud.

We use Mule for daily activities like for domains like retail, eCommerce and the wholesale department. So most of the daily basic integration, ETL jobs when we have eCommerce, they do it in the USA. There are different time zones. In the Belgian system, you begin getting the insights using or doing analysis on the data. It enables us to have real-time integrations. Data flows from different domains as well as ETL jobs and for real-time integration.

There were too many stores to make and to work on one platform, so this was the main purpose of use. There were different texts coming in and other things in the stores. They had to scan them and when they passed this information to other domains, like eCommerce, for example. All these jobs were running at a specific time. 

Rapid API development using RAML, with contract first approach. It is easy to visualize real time mocking service and making it available in portal for end users, during requirements phase.

In terms of improvement, customer support is a bit slow. I emailed the sales team for a pricing comparison, still no response. The developer community is far more generous on the other hand. Pricing model is very expensive, Mule should consider Pay as You go model. It will help on-boarding new clients in Asia region. 

Mule should have better B2B integration. Mule supports the idea of API Led Architecture and system of records approach. When it comes to broad perspectives such as B2B, competitive tools have better EIPs. 

I have been using Mule Anypoint for a year and a half. 

I was recently researching the cost of scalability purposes in the cloud. For vertical scaling, it's good but the horizontal scaling along with the enterprise is not very good. Horizontal scaling is good in the on-prem system. But I think this is a limitation in all the cloud services providers. That's why the hybrid version is the buzzword nowadays, but for horizontal scalability, the on-prem servers are more flexible and in your control.

Instead of reaching out to customer support, I generally reach out to the Mule community. My peers will answer my questions.

I used an open source tool. Red Hat Fuse. Switching from different tools and technologies depends on the project in hand.

From a developer perspective initial setup is quite easy. From an executive  perspective, it is difficult.

The pricing is a bit high for clients. As a developer, and my superiors and architects agree, that this is the easiest tool to use. I've worked with two configuration technologies, one was open-source and there is a huge difference with this. This is the easiest and best tool available. Mule should consider lowering the price.

The should make improvements for B2B enterprises

I would rate it an eight out of ten as it's a very good product. 

Since we work in a consulting firm, we develop apps on MuleSoft Anypoint MQ. We mainly use this solution for integrations.

The solution is very scalable with solid performance and the capability of extending it using any custom Java in case you don't have anything out of the box. MDP is strong. It is good compared to other products regarding its capabilities in managing or orchestrating the issue load.

The solution is very costly. The solution should provide a package with fewer capabilities at a lower price for specific companies that don’t have a big IT budget. Not every customer requires all the capabilities of the software. It will be a good fit in the market, and they will easily sell it more.

I have been using Anypoint MQ for four years.

The solution is stable.

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

The solution is scalable. The solution is for the enterprise solution.

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

I will compare the solution with SAP CPI. It is also for enterprise-level customers like companies with a very big IT spend and infrastructure. It is better in terms of capabilities and ease of use. CPI is more complicated, and it requires a lot of time to learn it.

The initial setup is not very complex. It depends upon the VPN, architecture, and customer. VPN is difficult because you need a network team and an understanding of what’s happening, but it is not involved in Anypoint; instead, it is the whole architecture of the IP landscape, which makes it complex.

We help our customers with initial implementation and then hand it over to the support team for maintenance.

The tool is heavily bundle-priced. I rate the solution’s pricing five on a scale of ten, where one is expensive, and ten is cheap. 

I recommend the product for an enterprise level.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for different customers.

In a real-time scenario, if you want to connect any system to any system or any application to any application or any message to any message - source to target - you can use this product. Maybe there are different applications and different legacy systems. If you want to connect one system to another system, for example, SAP to Salesforce, you can. If SAP only communicates in certain formats, Salesforce might not understand these formats. However, if I want to pass data from one to the other, I use MuleSoft as the medium to do it.

Many companies work via an API economy. By leveraging APIs, and thereby leveraging MuleSoft, the total cost of ownership can be reduced dramatically. It's a form of digital transformation. There's a significant reduction in operational costs and maintenance when there is seamless integration between systems. The usability could also potentially be higher. 

The best part of the product is there is a DataWeave Language for transformation. We can do a transformation seamlessly using DataWeave. 

Customers can make use of Runtime Fabric, an RTF environment.

The stability is pretty good.

The initial setup is straightforward. 

Larger organizations are more likely to see an ROI.

Technical support is quite helpful and responsive, especially at the premium level.

One should have hands-on experience on the DataWeave. If somebody knows MuleSoft and is planning to work closely with the solution, they should be comfortable with DataWeave.

Pricing is one aspect of the solution that is troublesome. There should be a lot of improvement in general, as this is a premium product, I can say. Most of the customers like to go ahead with MuleSoft implementation, but at the end of the day what is happening is when they go ahead and see the pricing, they get scared.

Performance-wise also they need to improve a lot. Basically, the number of ports is lacking.  When you have ETL kind of transformation, ideally it will be supported, however, we end up using a large number of ports. That will drastically increase the cost to the customer, however. They need to be able to allow for an increase in ports without expanding the price.

Everybody's now integrating with AI and ML kinds of features. They need to add more of these features into their offering as well.  

The scalability on offer could be better.

I've been using the solution for the last five years or so. It's been a while.

The scalability in general is good. We don't see any issues. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's very reliable. 

In terms of scalability capabilities, much improvement is required. That is my understanding. There should be more scalability options. As of now, a few options are there, however, from my understanding, they should come up with more and more scalability options.

Right now, what we have access to is okay. My point is mainly that they can still add more onto that.

There are different levels of support, including silver, gold, and platinum. For premium customers, support is always excellent. I can't speak to silver and gold level support contracts, however, I've never known there to be a problem with the level of support any client can receive. 

The initial setup is not overly complex. It's pretty straightforward. A company shouldn't have too much trouble with the process.

We can handle the implementation ourselves. If a company has someone who is well-versed in the solution, they can likely do their own deployment. However, there is some complexity. There needs to be a good understanding of the product and its administration. This is very important especially if you plan to deploy in a hybrid environment. 

At the end of the day, if a customer is spending such an amount of money, they want to see an ROI. However, small and medium companies, due to the pricing, are less likely to witness any ROI. Enterprise-level organizations will likely see results that are much more impressive. 

It's an expensive product. They need to work on their pricing so that potential customers aren't scared off.

While enterprise-level organizations may not mind the pricing, smaller organizations wouldn't find the price suitable. Therefore, they should work to maybe develop a cheaper license for small companies so that they too can get the benefits of the solution - but at a much smaller cost.

We work with our customers on integrating the solution. We aren't MuleSoft partners, nor are we direct end-users.

The solution works across multiple deployment models, including on-premises and hybrid cloud. They also have their own managed cloud, which is the preferred method.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

If a company is interested in implementing the solution, first of all, they need to be clear with the requirements. They need to understand what exactly they were doing in terms of integration and they need to see what the current challenges are that they were facing. 

It's a good idea to analyze the different products which are available in the market. When a comparison is done, they are more likely to choose something that best fits their needs. A customer should never compromise on the quality of the product or the capabilities. If they plan to invest, they should do so by investing in a solution that has the best possible features for their budget.

My main use of this solution is for integration of different applications.

Adding connectors for new upcoming applications would add extra value to this product.

I have been using this solution for the last six or seven years.

This product is highly scalable because it's all purely cloud-based.

I'm pretty satisfied with the technical support - there are delays sometimes, but whenever they give a solution, it's good.

Positive

The initial setup is quite easy because the solution has a good interface through which the configuration, mapping, and so on can be done. The initial DevOps setting up takes some time, but once that's done, it's easily manageable.

We use an in-house team for implementation.

MuleSoft improves this product with every release, and since we're in a country that receives quarterly releases, any issues or improvements have usually already been dealt with. Any company that wants to implement this solution needs to have at least minimum enterprise-level applications to be integrated - only then can they make maximum use of their software. I would give this solution a rating of nine out of ten.

We use the Mule Anypoint Platform for various integrations as a platform.

Mule Anypoint Platform is our preferred platform for integration.

Mule Anypoint Platform could improve by having more up-to-date adapters to do work in a digital space.

I have been using the Mule Anypoint Platform for approximately one year.

The solution is stable.

When there is a high velocity the solution could improve the scalability.

We have a good support system with the Mule Anypoint Platform technical team. We have a dedicated support contact that works very hard.

The integration could be made easier. Integration strategy is very important, it is not a one size fits all process.

I would recommend this solution to others. Having good architecture is important.

We are satisfied with the solution.

I rate Mule Anypoint Platform an eight out of ten.

The solution's market place for different kinds of integration platforms is the most valuable feature.

Technical support needs to be improved, especially when you need help with more technical aspects of the solution.

The solution is stable. We haven't had any serious technical problems.

The solution is scalable.

We didn't previously use a different solution.

The initial setup was straightforward. The deployment didn't take long; maybe a few days. You only need a small team of three to five people for deployment and maintenance.

We had consultants assist us with the implementation.

We have seen a return on investment, but I cannot speak to the details.

There are no other fees beyond the standard licensing costs.

We did evaluate other options. The community around Mule and the platform were big selling points for us. There's a lot of great technical articles that help. We also had several other similar cases, which were already running on Mule. 

We use the public cloud deployment model. We used to use the on-premises model, but we moved over to the cloud.

I would advise others considering using the solution to do some kind of small project to start. Then, when you scale to a more production-like architecture, that's when you need the support and help. If you don't have it there in-house, you need to find that support. All of those tricky details which you maybe didn't do in that first phase, you need to do, and proper support will help. Make sure you have it.

I would rate the solution eight out of ten. I'd rate it higher, but we got into some technical setups where we needed more expertise. We had to wait for that expertise. We got it, finally, through consultants, but we expected to get it more from the company. All they could do for us was point us in the direction of where we could get help.

Our primary use case for this solution is for our supply chain network and integrations. I'm an integration architect and we are users of Mule Anypoint. 

The API management portion of the solution is great and the most valuable for us. 

With regard to the integrations, I'd like to see something similar to the features you find in Dell Boomi related to the intelligent management data and intelligent mappings. Those would be helpful improvements that would help developers. For beginner users with little technical knowledge, some low code would help. 

The solution is Java oriented but doesn't require Java knowledge which is good. But when you are debugging something or when you have other issues, it's important to know a little bit about that. I'd like to see some simplification. Anything that can be automated in the Data V area would also be helpful. 

I've been using this solution for three years. 

The stability is good although we sometimes face issues with debugging and Java errors that we get in the Mule runtime. Batch components and debugging require Java knowledge. I know that the interfaces you find on some other products are more stable than this and our issues come from the Java troubleshooting and monitoring. 

The scalability of this product is good. We have a team of 15 developers who use it. I'm an API architect and work more with DevOps but the solution is also used by others such as platform architects. We work at analyzing our requirements and then assist our team and developers. It's the development team that maintains the solution. We're looking to expand our use of this solution. 

We haven't had any issues with technical support, they're quite good. 

We had some issues with the initial setup. It's a balancing act and it requires some basic technical knowledge. It took some time to debug. We initially carried out a manual deployment and then used the Azure DevOps tools to do the automation. We used Ansible for the deployment. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

Our customers have a transformation center, and all their existing enterprise applications have to integrate to it. For example, SAP, Salesforce, and some SFTP integrations. We are doing all of these integrations with the Anypoint Platform.

It has improved our organization a lot because of the increase in productivity, and it has simplified the development of products. MuleSoft Anypoint Platform is a highly effective tool where you can build integrations so effectively. If you establish the integration platform, it increases productivity. It helps us to do effective re-authentication, and it speeds the integration.

I like the cloud-based integration. Product wise, it has all the connectors and all the required applications.

What I hear from my customers is that it's very expensive compared to the cost of other integration suites. The cost keeps increasing. MuleSoft should come up with customization factors by using a different way of getting the cost-related stuff to attract customers. That is, they should come up with some cost optimizations.

In the next release, I would like to see deployment automations.

I would also like MuleSoft to come up with a central platform because with on-premises and hybrid environments, where some are cloud-based applications and others are on premises applications, a DPC setup has to be done. It would be good if they can implement one centralized user interface that provides all of the facilities.

I've been using it for four years.

Compared to the previous version, this version is stable.

It is quite scalable. MuleSoft Anypoint Platform has elastic scaling capabilities, where you can increase the number of instances. Suppose you have a higher number of requests coming in from the source. This solution has the capability to scale up the application and scale up the instances of the processes to actually capture the number of requests as well.

We have IT leads, developers, and architects using this solution in our company, totaling 10 people. We use it for around 200 customers around the world as well.

I've used TIBCO and webMethods, but they are not as effective at cloud-based integration as MuleSoft Anypoint Platform is.

The initial setup is very simple, and I would give it a four out of five.

It took about five to ten minutes to deploy the solution.

We did it in-house.

The licensing is core-based. My customers tell me that it's very expensive compared to the cost of other integration suites.

You have to look at how it affects your integrations and how you are going to add value to the business once you've implemented it. Suppose you are doing integrations from two to three applications, and they're charging more for that purchase. Then, it won't be so effective for you down the line, like in two or three years. If that's the case, I won't prefer to go for MuleSoft Anypoint Platform. However, if by doing this integration it would actually increase productivity, increase the flexibility for future integration needs, and improve the return on investment, then MuleSoft Anypoint Platform is a good choice.

I recommend this solution, and on a scale from one to ten, I would rate it at eight.