We compared IBM MQ and ActiveMQ based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
IBM MQ is highly praised for its reliability, scalability, security, and integration capabilities, along with positive remarks on customer service and pricing. On the other hand, ActiveMQ is valued for its efficient messaging, integration, and versatility, with notable customer service. However, areas for improvement include documentation, interface, and stability/performance issues.
Features: IBM MQ is praised for its reliability, scalability, security, and ease of integration, while ActiveMQ offers reliable messaging, seamless integration, efficient message handling, versatile configuration, and robust support for messaging protocols.
Pricing and ROI: IBM MQ is praised for its reasonable and cost-effective pricing structure, manageable setup costs, and user-friendly licensing process. On the other hand, ActiveMQ is commended for its favorable pricing structure, minimal setup costs, and positive user experiences with the licensing process., IBM MQ has been praised for enhancing efficiency, improving communication and integration, streamlining workflows, and reducing downtime. Users appreciated its reliability, scalability, and ease of use. This resulted in cost savings and increased productivity. On the other hand, ActiveMQ was commended for its reliability, performance, and ease of use. It improved messaging capabilities, increased efficiency, and offered seamless integration. Both products seem to have provided positive ROI.
Room for Improvement: IBM MQ has been identified by users as needing enhancements in certain areas, while ActiveMQ could benefit from improved documentation, a more intuitive user interface, and increased stability and performance.
Deployment and customer support: IBM MQ and ActiveMQ have different user experiences when it comes to the duration required for establishing new tech solutions. While some IBM MQ users reported a range of three months to one week for deployment and setup, ActiveMQ users reported spending several months on deployment and an additional week on setup, but some were able to complete both in just one week., IBM MQ's customer service is highly regarded for its promptness, effectiveness, expertise, and reliability. Users appreciate the help they receive from the support team. ActiveMQ's customer service is praised for being responsive, helpful, and exceeding expectations. Users value the prompt resolution of concerns and the knowledge of the support team.
The summary above is based on 29 interviews we conducted recently with IBM MQ and ActiveMQ users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"It’s a JMS broker, so the fact that it can allow for asynchronous communication is valuable."
"I appreciate many features including queue, topic, durable topic, and selectors. I also value a different support for different protocols such as MQTT and AMQP. It has full support for EIP, REST, Message Groups, UDP, and TCP."
"For reliable messaging, the most valuable feature of ActiveMQ for us is ensuring prompt message delivery."
"The initial setup is straightforward and only takes a few minutes."
"I'm impressed, I think that Active MQ is great."
"Most people or many people recommended using ActiveMQ on small and medium-scale applications."
"The ability to store the failed events for some time is valuable."
"Message broadcasting: There could be a use case sending the same message to all consumers. So as a producer, I broadcast the message to a topic. Then, whichever consumers are subscribed to the topic can consume the same message."
"The most valuable features are the point to point messaging and the MQ API."
"The message queue and the integration with any development platform/language, i.e., NET and Java, are the most valuable features."
"Integrates between distributed systems: For example, it can help integrate processing between mainframe, client-server, web-based applications by integrating the messages, supporting Service Oriented Architecture."
"IBM MQ deals mainly with the queuing mechanism. It passes the data and it publishes it. These two abilities are the most valuable features."
"The thing that I like about MQ most is its reliability. It's one of those types of products that just works. You don't have to tinker around with it too much."
"The initial setup is easy."
"I like the architecture it provides seamlessly for assured delivery."
"The usability of the solution is very good."
"This solution could improve by providing better documentation."
"One potential area would be the complexity of the initial setup."
"The solution's stability needs improvement."
"The tool needs to improve its installation part which is lengthy. The product is already working on that aspect so that the complete installation gets completed within a month."
"The clustering for sure needs improvement. When we were using it, the only thing available was an active/passive relationship that had to be maintained via shared file storage. That model includes a single point of failure in that storage medium."
"It would be great if it is included as part of the solution, as Kafka is doing. Even though the use case of Kafka is different, If something like data extraction is possible, or if we can experiment with partition tolerance and other such things, that will be great."
"It does not scale out well. It ends up being very complex if you have a lot of mirror queues."
"From the TPS point of view, it's like 100,000 transactions that need to be admitted from different devices and also from the different minor small systems. Those are best fit for Kafka. We have used it on the customer side, and we thought of giving a try to ActiveMQ, but we have to do a lot of performance tests and approval is required before we can use it for this scale."
"The solution requires a lot of work to implement and maintain."
"I can't say pricing is good."
"Sometimes, not all messages are consumed in the queues. File transfers need improvement."
"The initial setup is difficult. Creating your own cluster is difficult. Working with cluster repositories is difficult. Issue management with IBM MQ is difficult."
"It would be nice if we could use the cluster facilities because we are doing active/passive configuration use."
"The solution should offer a freeware version, free vouchers, or certifications for learning purposes and building knowledge base."
"The installation of product upgrades and patches is very difficult. It requires the use of the IBM Installation Manager (IM)."
"SonicMQ CAA (continuous availability architecture) functionality on auto failover and data persistence should be made available without a shared drive, as it exists in multi-instance queue managers."
ActiveMQ is ranked 3rd in Message Queue (MQ) Software with 24 reviews while IBM MQ is ranked 2nd in Message Queue (MQ) Software with 158 reviews. ActiveMQ is rated 7.8, while IBM MQ is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of ActiveMQ writes "Allows for asynchronous communication, enabling services to operate independently but issues with stability". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM MQ writes "Offers the ability to batch metadata transfers between systems that support MQ as the communication method". ActiveMQ is most compared with Anypoint MQ, Red Hat AMQ, Amazon SQS, VMware Tanzu Data Services and Apache Kafka, whereas IBM MQ is most compared with Apache Kafka, VMware Tanzu Data Services, Red Hat AMQ, PubSub+ Event Broker and Anypoint MQ. See our ActiveMQ vs. IBM MQ report.
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From my Experience so far i will go for RabbitMQ its rock solid and robust with a simple learning curve. Its free and has great documentation available