We performed a comparison between IBM Integration Bus and Mule ESB based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Both solutions receive high marks from reviewers. IBM Integration Bus has a slight advantage over Mule ESB due to its flexibility and user-friendly interface.
"One of the most valuable features is App Connect Enterprise makes it possible to deploy it in the OpenShift cluster, which is very good. Overall the solution is very flexible."
"REST API design and development support are useful. Building and exposing APIs using GUI API designer with editor makes implementation a breeze."
"I consider the solution to be one of the most stable in the market."
"It has the ability to be deployed without rewriting the code."
"This solution is very reliable and it is easy to learn."
"The solution addresses all of our middleware needs in respect of transformation, parsing, security and stability; everything really."
"The interface is quite stable."
"It's easy to develop things, and it's easy to handle."
"I am impressed with the product's connectors and scalability."
"Mule ESB is a very easy-to-use and user-friendly solution."
"Easy connectivity and easy integration."
"The most valuable feature of Mule ESB is data transformation, i.e. our interacting with different systems and orchestrating for our business needs."
"Most of our use cases are for Salesforce. So, the connectors for Salesforce have been really helpful. They've made development two times faster."
"The most powerful feature is DataWeave, which is a powerful language where data can be transformed from one form into another."
"The architecture based on events has several connectors which allow integration from external and internal applications of the company."
"The connectivity the solution provides is excellent. There are often too many systems that we have to integrate and this helps with that."
"Session management can sometimes hand forcing server reboots."
"It would be beneficial for it to function more as an iPaaS, with the runtime available in the cloud, potentially on platforms like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud."
"They should add connectors to banking applications and other specific industries."
"There are a couple of things I want improved, but I think they have already touched upon all those things in the most recent version. I'm not using the most recent version—I use a version older than the most recent—but I'm sure that if I looked into and explored it, I would see more support on the CI/CD and more support for unit testing automation. I've read that they released all these things in the new version of App Connect. Once I explore the new version of this tool, I'll probably have a better idea of suggested improvements."
"It needs improvement in terms of technical support as well as in terms of integration of data mining. I am not convinced about many things in this solution, such as the conversion of the DFDL or copybook file, which is the conversion from a text file to XML. It is very complex. They should also provide more information about this solution in the IBM Knowledge Center. I can get a lot of information from the IBM Knowledge Center about DataStage, but I don't get that much information about IBM Integration Bus. There is hardly any information even on the internet and various channels such as YouTube. They can provide good step-by-step documentation based on a company's requirements. It would be really helpful. My company is mainly looking for data mining and communicating with multiple servers. IBM Integration Bus is good for communicating with multiple servers, but it needs improvement for XML conversion and data mining. We have a lot of old systems that use XML."
"In terms of improvement, the UI should be more user-friendly."
"Storage capacity of the product should be addressed."
"IBM Integration Bus can improve JSON Schema validations. We don't have any kind of nodes that can support that kind of validation. If we want to containerize it by means of the docker's containers in the clouds, we are not able to manage it very well."
"In an upcoming release, I would like to see more additional concept for exception handling, batch processing, and increased integration with other application."
"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."
"We would like to have a built-in logging framework in which we can do auditing."
"The price of Mule ESB could improve."
"There are some features on the commercial version of the solution that would be great if they were on the community version. Additionally, if they added more authorization features it would be helpful."
"Mule ESB isn't as secure as IBM. Financial companies go with IBM for that reason."
"One area that could be improved is the way that policies are propagated when APIs are moved from one environment to another. It's an issue, but when you develop and test the rest APIs in a lower environment and need to move them, there's a propagation process. This process moves certain aspects of the APIs, like the basic features. But when we move them, the policies don't always move with them. The policies should be able to move so we don't have to redo them manually. There are some APIs we use, but it's a bit tedious."
"It's not easy to troubleshoot and we still can't make it work."
IBM Integration Bus is ranked 1st in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) with 65 reviews while Mule ESB is ranked 2nd in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) with 46 reviews. IBM Integration Bus is rated 8.0, while Mule ESB is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of IBM Integration Bus writes "Scalable solution with efficient integration features". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Mule ESB writes "Plenty of documentation, flexible, and reliable". IBM Integration Bus is most compared with webMethods Integration Server, Oracle Service Bus, IBM WebSphere Message Broker, IBM DataPower Gateway and Red Hat Fuse, whereas Mule ESB is most compared with Oracle Service Bus, Oracle SOA Suite, webMethods Integration Server, Red Hat Fuse and IBM DataPower Gateway. See our IBM Integration Bus vs. Mule ESB report.
See our list of best Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) vendors.
We monitor all Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.