Best Message Queue Systems

How Many Message Queue (MQ) Software Products Does G2 Track?

Total Products under this Category: 54

Category Stats (Sep 2026)

  • Average Rating: 4.28/5 The average rating of products in this category, based on all submitted ratings
  • Top Trending Product: Pro Edition for Eclipse Mosquitto (+1.4%) - Among all products in this category, Pro Edition for Eclipse Mosquitto recorded the largest rating increase compared to last month

Last updated: September 15, 2026

How Does G2 Rank Message Queue (MQ) Software Products?

Why You Can Trust G2's Software Rankings:

  • 30 Analysts and Data Experts
  • 2,500+ Authentic Reviews
  • 54+ Products
  • Unbiased Rankings

G2's software rankings are built on verified user reviews, rigorous moderation, and a consistent research methodology maintained by a team of analysts and data experts. Each product is measured using the same transparent criteria, with no paid placement or vendor influence. While reviews reflect real user experiences, which can be subjective, they offer valuable insight into how software performs in the hands of professionals. Together, these inputs power the G2 Score, a standardized way to compare tools within every category.

G2 Grid® for Message Queue (MQ) Software

G2 Grid® for Message Queue (MQ) Software plotting products by satisfaction and market presence

Highlighted products: MuleSoft Anypoint Platform, IBM MQ, HiveMQ, Azure Logic Apps, Google Cloud Pub/Sub, meshIQ, TIBCO Messaging, and IBM Cloud Pak for Integration.

Underlying data: [Grid® JSON](https://www.g2.com/categories/message-queue-mq/grids.json?focus%5B%5D=mulesoft-anypoint-platform&focus%5B%5D=ibm-mq&focus%5B%5D=hivemq&focus%5B%5D=azure-logic-apps&focus%5B%5D=google-cloud-pub-sub&focus%5B%5D=meshiq&focus%5B%5D=tibco-messaging&focus%5B%5D=ibm-cloud-pak-for-integration)

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform is the industry-leading integration and governance solution designed to connect any application, API, and AI agent across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. For nearly two decades, we have served as the integration backbone for the world’s most complex enterprises. Today, we are extending to the AI era. We allow organizations to move beyond AI sprawl into a unified architecture where legacy systems, modern APIs, and autonomous agents interact securely on a single, trusted foundation. Key capabilities and components include: Hybrid integration and connectivity, utilizing a library of hundreds of pre-built connectors and support for new AI protocols like MCP and A2A to provide AI agents with the tools they need to access and act within legacy ERPs, CRMs, and on-premise databases. MuleSoft Agent Fabric: Unified API and agent governance, applying the same rigorous security policies, cost controls, and traffic enforcement to AI models and agents that organizations already trust for their global API ecosystems through a single, federated control plane. Fabric also includes agent visibility and registry, offering a single source of truth to discover and observe any cross-ecosystem agent, ensuring complete transparency and the elimination of shadow AI. MuleSoft Vibes: Natural language design and management, providing a revamped experience where teams can use native natural language prompts to scaffold integrations, manage lifecycles, and stay ahead of technical sprawl using the AI tools they already prefer. Trusted runtime and compliance, delivering a fully managed, hybrid, or on-prem foundation that has been proven at scale for years, ensuring that every interaction is backed by enterprise-grade monitoring and human-in-the-loop security. Overall, MuleSoft Anypoint Platform is the enterprise platform for organizations seeking to bring visibility, trust, and orchestration to their APIs and AI agents.

Average Rating: 4.5/5.0

Total Reviews: 684

How Do G2 Users Rate MuleSoft Anypoint Platform?

  • Application Integration: 9.1/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
  • Plugins and integrations: 8.7/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10)
  • Data Integration: 8.8/10 (Category avg: 8.8/10)
  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 8.8/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)

Who Is the Company Behind MuleSoft Anypoint Platform?

  • Seller: Salesforce
  • Company Website:
  • Year Founded: 1999
  • HQ Location: San Francisco, CA
  • Twitter: @salesforce
    579,511 Twitter followers
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    89,711 employees on LinkedIn®

Who Uses This Product?

  • Who Uses This: Software Engineer, Senior Software Engineer
  • Top Industries: Information Technology and Services, Computer Software
  • Company Size: 56% Large, 31% Medium

What Do G2 Reviewers Say About MuleSoft Anypoint Platform?

AI-generated summary from verified user reviews

Pros
  • Users appreciate the ease of use of MuleSoft Anypoint Platform, finding it ideal for their data loading needs.
  • Users value the integration capabilities of MuleSoft Anypoint Platform, enabling seamless connections across various systems and APIs.
  • Users value the ease of integration with MuleSoft Anypoint Platform, benefiting from its comprehensive API management features.
  • Users appreciate the clean UI and comprehensive features of MuleSoft Anypoint Platform for efficient API management.
  • Users value the easy integrations of MuleSoft Anypoint Platform, simplifying the connection of various systems seamlessly.
Cons
  • Users express concern over the high cost of MuleSoft Anypoint Platform, making it less accessible for smaller projects.
  • Users express concern over the high pricing issues of MuleSoft Anypoint Platform, making it less accessible for smaller organizations.
  • Users find the learning curve steep for MuleSoft Anypoint Platform, especially for those transitioning from other tools.
  • Users find learning difficulty with MuleSoft Anypoint Platform, requiring advanced skills and complicating transitions from familiar tools.
  • Users experience a steep learning curve with MuleSoft Anypoint, often requiring extensive training and adjustment time.

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of MuleSoft Anypoint Platform?

What Are G2 Users Discussing About MuleSoft Anypoint Platform?

IBM MQ

IBM MQ connects applications and microservices in private datacenters, across hybrid or multi-cloud environments, and at the edge of the enterprise. It allows businesses, from large enterprises to startups, to ensure every order, every payment, and every customer interaction counts. Messages between applications are delivered reliably once-and-only-once and applications are decoupled to enable rapid response to sudden traffic increases or system outages. Businesses can tap into the value of existing mission-critical data to gain real-time insights and ensure the safety of customer and business data with comprehensive security mechanisms.

Average Rating: 4.3/5.0

Total Reviews: 159

How Do G2 Users Rate IBM MQ?

  • Application Integration: 8.7/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
  • Plugins and integrations: 8.1/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10)
  • Data Integration: 8.6/10 (Category avg: 8.8/10)
  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 8.6/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)

Who Is the Company Behind IBM MQ?

  • Seller: IBM
  • Year Founded: 1911
  • HQ Location: Armonk, New York, United States
  • Twitter: @IBMSecurity
    74,660 Twitter followers
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    344,328 employees on LinkedIn®
  • Ownership: SWX:IBM

Who Uses This Product?

  • Who Uses This: Senior Software Engineer, Technical Lead
  • Top Industries: Banking, Information Technology and Services
  • Company Size: 63% Large, 26% Medium

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of IBM MQ?

What Are G2 Users Discussing About IBM MQ?

HiveMQ

HiveMQ is the Industrial Data Platform helping enterprises move from connected devices to intelligent operations. Built on the MQTT standard and a distributed edge-to-cloud architecture, HiveMQ connects and governs industrial data in real time, enabling organizations to act with intelligence. With proven reliability, scalability, and interoperability, HiveMQ provides the foundation industrial companies need to operationalize AI, powering the next generation of intelligent industry. Global leaders including Audi, BMW, Eli Lilly, Liberty Global, Mercedes-Benz, and Siemens trust HiveMQ to run their most mission-critical operations.

Average Rating: 4.5/5.0

Total Reviews: 92

How Do G2 Users Rate HiveMQ?

  • Application Integration: 9.5/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
  • Plugins and integrations: 8.9/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10)
  • Data Integration: 9.2/10 (Category avg: 8.8/10)
  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 9.3/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)

Who Is the Company Behind HiveMQ?

  • Seller: HiveMQ
  • Company Website:
  • Year Founded: 2012
  • HQ Location: Landshut, Bayern
  • Twitter: @HiveMQ
    2,863 Twitter followers
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    158 employees on LinkedIn®

Who Uses This Product?

  • Who Uses This: Software Engineer
  • Top Industries: Computer Software, Information Technology and Services
  • Company Size: 43% Medium, 36% Small

What Do G2 Reviewers Say About HiveMQ?

AI-generated summary from verified user reviews

Pros
  • Users praise HiveMQ for its exceptional reliability, ensuring seamless performance and minimal downtime for IoT applications.
  • Users appreciate the stability and performance of HiveMQ, enabling seamless handling of IoT data and client management.
  • Users praise the excellent monitoring tools of HiveMQ, enabling quick troubleshooting and visibility into system performance.
  • Users commend the efficiency improvement offered by HiveMQ, making real-time IoT messaging scalable and reliable.
  • Users benefit from excellent customer support, receiving prompt responses and assistance for setting up IoT devices efficiently.
Cons
  • Users find HiveMQ to be expensive, leading to concerns about pricing clarity and competitiveness for smaller enterprises.
  • Users find the difficult learning curve for advanced features of HiveMQ challenging, particularly for new users and smaller teams.
  • Users face usability issues with HiveMQ due to a steep learning curve and complex configurations for new users.
  • Users face technical issues with HiveMQ, including performance overhead and challenging configurations that hinder efficiency.
  • Users note that UX improvement is needed for device management and connection testing, affecting overall usability.

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of HiveMQ?

What Are G2 Users Discussing About HiveMQ?

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Ingest event streams from anywhere, at any scale, for simple, reliable, real-time stream analytics

Average Rating: 4.5/5.0

Total Reviews: 34

How Do G2 Users Rate Google Cloud Pub/Sub?

  • Application Integration: 9.1/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
  • Plugins and integrations: 8.8/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10)
  • Data Integration: 9.2/10 (Category avg: 8.8/10)
  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 8.9/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)

Who Is the Company Behind Google Cloud Pub/Sub?

  • Seller: Google
  • Year Founded: 1998
  • HQ Location: Mountain View, CA
  • Twitter: @google
    31,899,995 Twitter followers
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    301,144 employees on LinkedIn®
  • Ownership: NASDAQ:GOOG

Who Uses This Product?

  • Top Industries: Computer Software, Education Management
  • Company Size: 41% Small, 31% Large

What Do G2 Reviewers Say About Google Cloud Pub/Sub?

AI-generated summary from verified user reviews

Pros
  • Users appreciate the self-scaling capabilities of Google Cloud Pub/Sub, enjoying hassle-free management and seamless integration.
  • Users appreciate the exceptional customer support of Google Cloud Pub/Sub, enhancing their experience and integration efforts.
  • Users love the ease of use of Google Cloud Pub/Sub, finding the interface and resources very intuitive and helpful.
  • Users enjoy the easy access to Google Cloud Pub/Sub thanks to its intuitive interface and helpful documentation.
  • Users appreciate the easy integration of Google Cloud Pub/Sub, benefiting from its fully managed and self-scaling capabilities.
Cons
  • Users find Google Cloud Pub/Sub to be more expensive compared to alternatives like Apache Kafka, impacting budget considerations.
  • Users face challenges with duplicate message deliveries, requiring additional coding efforts for data de-duplication.
  • Users find the slow processing of Google Cloud Pub/Sub problematic, affecting efficiency with large message sizes.

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of Google Cloud Pub/Sub?

What Are G2 Users Discussing About Google Cloud Pub/Sub?

Azure Logic Apps

Azure Logic Apps is a cloud-based integration platform as a service (iPaaS) that enables organizations to automate and orchestrate workflows, integrating applications, data, systems, and services across enterprises or organizations. It provides a visual designer for building workflows without writing code, facilitating the creation of complex processes that connect disparate systems seamlessly. Key Features and Functionality: - Extensive Connector Library: Offers over 1,400 pre-built connectors for various services, including Salesforce, Office 365, SQL Server, and SAP, allowing easy integration with both cloud-based and on-premises applications. - Visual Workflow Designer: Provides a drag-and-drop interface for designing workflows, enabling users to build and manage processes without extensive coding knowledge. - Hybrid Connectivity: Supports integration across cloud and on-premises environments, ensuring secure and efficient data flow between systems. - Scalability and Reliability: Built on Azure's robust infrastructure, Logic Apps ensures high availability and scalability to meet varying business demands. - AI Integration: Facilitates the incorporation of AI capabilities into workflows through connectors like Azure OpenAI and Azure AI Search, enabling intelligent automation and decision-making processes. Primary Value and Solutions Provided: Azure Logic Apps addresses the challenge of integrating diverse systems and automating complex workflows without the need for extensive coding. By offering a comprehensive set of connectors and a user-friendly design interface, it empowers organizations to streamline operations, enhance productivity, and respond swiftly to changing business needs. The platform's scalability and hybrid connectivity ensure that businesses can build resilient and adaptable integration solutions, facilitating seamless communication between various applications and services.

Average Rating: 4.3/5.0

Total Reviews: 89

How Do G2 Users Rate Azure Logic Apps?

  • Application Integration: 9.0/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
  • Plugins and integrations: 7.9/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10)
  • Data Integration: 8.4/10 (Category avg: 8.8/10)
  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 8.7/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)

Who Is the Company Behind Azure Logic Apps?

  • Seller: Microsoft
  • Year Founded: 1975
  • HQ Location: Redmond, Washington
  • Twitter: @microsoft
    13,091,739 Twitter followers
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    232,750 employees on LinkedIn®
  • Ownership: MSFT

Who Uses This Product?

  • Who Uses This: Software Engineer
  • Top Industries: Information Technology and Services, Computer Software
  • Company Size: 41% Large, 32% Small

What Do G2 Reviewers Say About Azure Logic Apps?

AI-generated summary from verified user reviews

Pros
  • Users find the ease of learning in Azure Logic Apps enhanced by excellent Microsoft resources and connectors.
  • Users find the implementation ease of Azure Logic Apps impressive, enjoying quick setup and valuable learning resources.
  • Users find the quick setup of Azure Logic Apps efficient, enabling rapid implementation and access to extensive resources.
Cons
  • Users find the complexity in deployment and functionality access of Azure Logic Apps to be a significant drawback.
  • Users find the slow processing of Azure Logic Apps frustrating, especially when compared to faster alternatives like Function Apps.

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of Azure Logic Apps?

What Are G2 Users Discussing About Azure Logic Apps?

meshIQ

meshIQ is the enterprise evolution platform purpose-built to transform how organizations manage and optimize their middleware—the digital nervous system of the enterprise. It provides unified visibility, control, and modernization of messaging, event streaming, and B2B transactional flows across all middleware vendors, all environments, and at enterprise scale. Acting as a real-time intelligence layer across your entire ecosystem, meshIQ connects, monitors, and analyzes every message, event, and business transaction with forensic-level insight, so you can run incredibly lean operations with confidence and control. By eliminating the expense, complexity, and manual nature of managing multiple middleware platforms, meshIQ helps enterprises dramatically cut OPEX, resolve incidents and disputes up to 70% faster, reduce manual reconciliation efforts, and accelerate service delivery. The platform also provides a safe, fast, and reliable path to modernize middleware and migrate to modern architectures such as Apache Kafka®, ActiveMQ®, and cloud-native environments—without disruption. And with built-in B2B Flow Intelligence, organizations can assure every business transaction to safeguard revenue, meet regulatory requirements, and protect customer trust and experiences.

Average Rating: 4.6/5.0

Total Reviews: 99

How Do G2 Users Rate meshIQ?

  • Application Integration: 8.2/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
  • Plugins and integrations: 8.3/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10)
  • Data Integration: 8.5/10 (Category avg: 8.8/10)
  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 8.8/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)

Who Is the Company Behind meshIQ?

  • Seller: meshIQ
  • Company Website:
  • Year Founded: 1994
  • HQ Location: Plainview, NY
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    60 employees on LinkedIn®

Who Uses This Product?

  • Who Uses This: Software Engineer
  • Top Industries: Banking, Information Technology and Services
  • Company Size: 43% Large, 37% Medium

What Do G2 Reviewers Say About meshIQ?

AI-generated summary from verified user reviews

Pros
  • Users value the ease of use of meshIQ, enjoying its intuitive design and seamless integration across platforms.
  • Users value the real-time monitoring of meshIQ, enabling quick issue detection and enhanced operational efficiency.
  • Users value the intuitive user interface of meshIQ, enabling quick insights and ease of use for everyone.
  • Users value the deep visibility meshIQ provides into middleware, enhancing monitoring and troubleshooting efficiency significantly.
  • Users appreciate the deep visibility into middleware environments, simplifying monitoring and troubleshooting processes significantly.
Cons
  • Users find the difficult learning curve of meshIQ overwhelming due to its powerful features and complex interface.
  • Users find the steep learning curve of meshIQ challenging due to its powerful but overwhelming features.
  • Users find meshIQ's complexity daunting, especially during initial setup and configuration for new users.
  • Users face difficult configuration with meshIQ, finding the setup time-consuming and the WebUI challenging to navigate.
  • Users find the learning difficulty of meshIQ challenging, particularly during initial setup and advanced feature utilization.

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of meshIQ?

TIBCO Messaging

Real-time data is fundamental to the digital business that must operate at unprecedented speeds and agility, demanding a messaging system with high performance, throughput, and availability to ensure data is delivered efficiently and securely when and where it is needed. Messaging enables real-time data distribution between disparate endpoints wherever they are hosted, while also being a central component of event-driven and streaming data architectures. TIBCO provides both open source and commercial messaging technology to enable all of the use cases needed to connect complex, large-scale information landscapes including cloud integration, event processing, streaming analytics, business app connectivity, IoT, mobile, and web. TIBCO offers high-performance messaging technology and gives customers flexibility and unique choice between Commercial and Open-source messaging solutions: -- TIBCO Enterprise Message Service™: The industry-leading Jakarta-based messaging for store and forward messaging services. -- TIBCO FTL: High performing, low-latency, enterprise and cloud-ready messaging -- TIBCO eFTL: TIBCO messaging for REST, web, and mobile-based devices -- TIBCO® Messaging Castle - Powered by Apache Kafka®: Secure, reliable, open source, and real-time streaming data pipelines -- TIBCO® Messaging Quasar - Powered by Apache Pulsar™ : Multi-tenant, high-performance open source solution for server-to-server communication -- TIBCO® Messaging - Eclipse Mosquito Distribution: Connect IoT devices using MQTT to any TIBCO Messaging components

Average Rating: 4.4/5.0

Total Reviews: 40

How Do G2 Users Rate TIBCO Messaging?

  • Application Integration: 9.5/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
  • Plugins and integrations: 8.9/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10)
  • Data Integration: 9.0/10 (Category avg: 8.8/10)
  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 9.3/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)

Who Is the Company Behind TIBCO Messaging?

Who Uses This Product?

  • Top Industries: Information Technology and Services, Computer Software
  • Company Size: 51% Large, 28% Small

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of TIBCO Messaging?

What Are G2 Users Discussing About TIBCO Messaging?

IBM Cloud Pak for Integration

IBM Cloud Pak for Integration is a set of capabilities to speed integration and scale automation, built for any hybrid cloud, within a single, unified experience. Unlock business data and assets as APIs, connect cloud and on-premise applications, reliably move data with enterprise messaging, deliver real-time event interactions, transfer data across any cloud and deploy and scale with cloud-native architecture and shared foundational services — all with end-to-end enterprise-grade security and encryption, making up the broadest set of integration capabilities available on the market today.

Average Rating: 4.2/5.0

Total Reviews: 40

How Do G2 Users Rate IBM Cloud Pak for Integration?

  • Application Integration: 8.6/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
  • Plugins and integrations: 7.8/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10)
  • Data Integration: 8.9/10 (Category avg: 8.8/10)
  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 7.5/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)

Who Is the Company Behind IBM Cloud Pak for Integration?

  • Seller: IBM
  • Year Founded: 1911
  • HQ Location: Armonk, New York, United States
  • Twitter: @IBMSecurity
    74,660 Twitter followers
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    344,328 employees on LinkedIn®
  • Ownership: SWX:IBM

Who Uses This Product?

  • Top Industries: Information Technology and Services, Computer Software
  • Company Size: 35% Large, 35% Medium

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of IBM Cloud Pak for Integration?

What Are G2 Users Discussing About IBM Cloud Pak for Integration?

Hookdeck

Hookdeck is a fast and reliable event gateway for receiving, processing, and delivering asynchronous messages. It centralizes and streamlines communication between services – external providers (e.g. Shopify), internal endpoints (e.g. APIs), and any combination thereof. Configure Hookdeck platform resources and features such as event routing, filters, and transformations. And let Hookdeck automatically retry failed events for painless error recovery. Our developer tooling enables teams to build, deploy, operate, and observe their event-driven applications with confidence.

Average Rating: 4.8/5.0

Total Reviews: 71

How Do G2 Users Rate Hookdeck?

  • Application Integration: 8.8/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
  • Plugins and integrations: 7.9/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10)
  • Data Integration: 8.8/10 (Category avg: 8.8/10)
  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 9.7/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)

Who Is the Company Behind Hookdeck?

  • Seller: Hookdeck
  • Year Founded: 2020
  • HQ Location: Montreal, Quebec
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    13 employees on LinkedIn®

Who Uses This Product?

  • Who Uses This: CTO
  • Top Industries: Computer Software, Marketing and Advertising
  • Company Size: 66% Small, 25% Medium

What Do G2 Reviewers Say About Hookdeck?

AI-generated summary from verified user reviews

Pros
  • Users appreciate the ease of use of Hookdeck, finding setup and navigation straightforward and efficient.
  • Users appreciate the ease of access and numerous features of Hookdeck, enhancing their experience and connectivity.
  • Users value the easy setup process of Hookdeck, finding it straightforward and efficient for managing connections.
  • Users appreciate the easy integrations with Hookdeck, simplifying connections between local and online platforms effortlessly.
  • Users appreciate the generous free tier of Hookdeck, allowing substantial usage without upfront costs.
Cons
  • Users find Hookdeck to be expensive, especially with high throughput pricing and additional management requirements.
  • Users find the complex setup process challenging, particularly when managing multiple instances and handling webhook loops.
  • Users find Hookdeck's difficult usage adds complexity, requiring additional management and onboarding for effective implementation.
  • Users wish for better integration options and find the current setup challenging, leading to issues like webhook loops.
  • Users find the interface complexity challenging initially, but adapt over time for better usability.

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of Hookdeck?

What Are G2 Users Discussing About Hookdeck?

Apache Kafka

Apache Kafka is an open-source distributed event streaming platform developed by the Apache Software Foundation. It is designed to handle real-time data feeds with high throughput and low latency, making it ideal for building data pipelines, streaming analytics, and integrating data across various systems. Kafka enables organizations to publish, store, and process streams of records in a fault-tolerant and scalable manner, supporting mission-critical applications across diverse industries. Key Features and Functionality: - High Throughput and Low Latency: Kafka delivers messages at network-limited throughput with latencies as low as 2 milliseconds, ensuring efficient data processing. - Scalability: It can scale production clusters up to thousands of brokers, handling trillions of messages per day and petabytes of data, while elastically expanding and contracting storage and processing capabilities. - Durable Storage: Kafka stores streams of data safely in a distributed, durable, and fault-tolerant cluster, ensuring data integrity and availability. - High Availability: The platform supports efficient stretching of clusters over availability zones and connects separate clusters across geographic regions, enhancing resilience. - Stream Processing: Kafka provides built-in stream processing capabilities through the Kafka Streams API, allowing for operations like joins, aggregations, filters, and transformations with event-time processing and exactly-once semantics. - Connectivity: With Kafka Connect, it integrates seamlessly with hundreds of event sources and sinks, including databases, messaging systems, and cloud storage services. Primary Value and Solutions Provided: Apache Kafka addresses the challenges of managing real-time data streams by offering a unified platform that combines messaging, storage, and stream processing. It enables organizations to: - Build Real-Time Data Pipelines: Facilitate the continuous flow of data between systems, ensuring timely and reliable data delivery. - Implement Streaming Analytics: Analyze and process data streams in real-time, allowing for immediate insights and actions. - Ensure Data Integration: Seamlessly connect various data sources and sinks, promoting a cohesive data ecosystem. - Support Mission-Critical Applications: Provide a robust and fault-tolerant infrastructure capable of handling high-volume and high-velocity data, essential for critical business operations. By leveraging Kafka's capabilities, organizations can modernize their data architectures, enhance operational efficiency, and drive innovation through real-time data processing and analytics.

Average Rating: 4.5/5.0

Total Reviews: 126

How Do G2 Users Rate Apache Kafka?

  • Application Integration: 8.8/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
  • Plugins and integrations: 8.1/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10)
  • Data Integration: 8.4/10 (Category avg: 8.8/10)
  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 8.3/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)

Who Is the Company Behind Apache Kafka?

Who Uses This Product?

  • Who Uses This: Software Engineer, Senior Software Engineer
  • Top Industries: Computer Software, Information Technology and Services
  • Company Size: 47% Large, 33% Medium

What Do G2 Reviewers Say About Apache Kafka?

AI-generated summary from verified user reviews

Pros
  • Users value the high scalability of Apache Kafka, which excels in managing growing data volumes efficiently.
  • Users praise real-time data processing in Apache Kafka for its speed, reliability, and scalability across systems.
  • Users appreciate the easy integrations of Apache Kafka, making it seamless for Java applications and enhancing overall efficiency.
  • Users praise the high scalability and performance of Apache Kafka, making it perfect for enterprise data growth.
  • Users value the high scalability and performance of Apache Kafka, making it perfect for growing enterprise data needs.
Cons
  • Users struggle with operational complexity and high resource consumption, finding Kafka's message queuing features limited.
  • Users feel that data management issues in Apache Kafka require extensive expertise, which can overwhelm smaller teams.
  • Users find debugging issues in Apache Kafka challenging, requiring significant effort and effective tools for resolution.
  • Users find the difficult learning curve of Apache Kafka overwhelming for smaller teams, requiring dedicated expertise for management.
  • Users find limited customization challenging, especially with complex setups and manual management of brokers and zookeepers.

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of Apache Kafka?

What Are G2 Users Discussing About Apache Kafka?

RabbitMQ

RabbitMQ is the most popular open source message broker, with more than 35,000 production deployments world-wide. RabbitMQ is lightweight and easy to deploy on premises and in the cloud and runs on all major operating systems. It supports most developer platforms, multiple messaging protocols and can be deployed in distributed and federated configurations to meet high-scale, high-availability requirements.

Average Rating: 4.1/5.0

Total Reviews: 45

How Do G2 Users Rate RabbitMQ?

  • Application Integration: 8.4/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
  • Plugins and integrations: 7.8/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10)
  • Data Integration: 7.9/10 (Category avg: 8.8/10)
  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 8.1/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)

Who Is the Company Behind RabbitMQ?

  • Seller: Broadcom
  • Year Founded: 1991
  • HQ Location: San Jose, CA
  • Twitter: @broadcom
    63,909 Twitter followers
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    44,602 employees on LinkedIn®
  • Ownership: NASDAQ: CA

Who Uses This Product?

  • Top Industries: Computer Software, Information Technology and Services
  • Company Size: 43% Medium, 37% Small

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of RabbitMQ?

What Are G2 Users Discussing About RabbitMQ?

PubNub

Deliver immersive, scalable, and secure real-time interactivity with the PubNub platform that connects humans, devices, and AIs. You can focus on launching innovative features instead of managing complex infrastructure. Our platform lets you build, deliver, and manage real-time experiences across web apps, mobile apps, and IoT devices. Whether you are creating in-app chat, live audience engagement, operational dashboards, IoT coordination, AI-driven interactions, or any other real-time functionality, PubNub brings it to life with a suite of purpose-built APIs, SDKs, Solution Kits, integrations, and analytics. What makes us different? ~Scalability~ PubNub is the industry’s most scalable platform that allows for rapid concurrent usage without financial penalties. Because we allow for an unlimited number of concurrent users, you’ll never have to worry about exponential cost increases due to growth. * Handles over 800 million active devices and over 3 trillion API calls delivered monthly. * Record for the largest online concurrent event with more than 10.5 million users * One connected fitness client stated, “From testing to 1,500 rides a day today, to an estimated 15,000 rides a day in the coming months, we’re confident PubNub can handle that growth.” * "When we hit our concurrency limit [with our previous provider], it was a no-brainer to go with PubNub to power our entire platform and our whole team gave the go-ahead. We knew we would be supported by PubNub no matter how many users and messages we were handling.” Virtual Events Company ~Reliability~ With low latency and high uptime, PubNub users can trust in and rely on a true real-time digital experience that leads to authentic and engaging interactions for their audiences. * 99.999% uptime Service Level Agreement and global points of presence with automatic routing for failover and redundancy. * Every message delivered to any device in milliseconds * Multi-region replication, redundancy within and across data centers, geographic server distribution, geo-routing, and latency monitoring. ~Security and Compliance~ While powering real-time engagement is our passion, security is our priority. We deliver enterprise-grade security, end-to-end encryption for every message running over the network, fine-grained access controls, localized data storage, and more. * PubNub is ISO 2700, SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, and HIPAA compliant and we conduct annual SOC and ISO audits along with annual penetration testing conducted by third parties. * A leading healthcare software solution provider stated “data security and HIPAA compliance are extremely important … When we evaluated PubNub as a real-time messaging service, we were very impressed by how easy they were to use. We were sold on PubNub as a partner once we learned about their strengths in data security, SOC 2, and HIPAA compliance.” ~Flexibility~ PubNub is a platform solution that enables teams to build the real-time experiences users demand and leaves the door open for adding additional features and functionality in the future. * We have developed over 50+SDKs and over 65 pre-built integrations with external and third-party APIs, PubNub gives developers the features they need regardless of programming language or tech stack. * A food delivery service customer reduced ticket resolution times from five minutes to 30 seconds and stated that “having that flexibility in building and being able to have our chat operate in real-time was key to us—that’s why we chose PubNub.” ~Support~ As a trusted extension of your ops team, PubNub is a partner from design through testing, launch, and beyond. With our white glove support and features like 24/7 support across the globe, a robust self-service library, and operational dashboards, ensuring your app is supported at any level, throughout its lifecycle. * One PubNub client went from having a dedicated programmer spend 75% of their time monitoring their in-house chat to effortlessly scaling their chat to support 40x growth within a year. * Partnering with PubNub allowed one virtual events customer to bring their users together in ways not previously possible, “With PubNub and their live event support team, we are able to truly scale our chat to a large number of concurrent users at a time, and that’s what enables us to bring that interactivity between a creator and their fanbase.” * A rideshare customer was able to focus on building their app because "powering real-time updates and signaling is not our domain. Using PubNub lets us focus on our expertise.”

Average Rating: 4.4/5.0

Total Reviews: 22

How Do G2 Users Rate PubNub?

  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 9.0/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)

Who Is the Company Behind PubNub?

  • Seller: PubNub
  • Company Website:
  • Year Founded: 2010
  • HQ Location: San Francisco, California
  • Twitter: @PubNub
    17,872 Twitter followers
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    122 employees on LinkedIn®

Who Uses This Product?

  • Top Industries: Computer Software, Information Technology and Services
  • Company Size: 50% Small, 33% Large

What Do G2 Reviewers Say About PubNub?

AI-generated summary from verified user reviews

Pros
  • Users value the secure chat functionality of PubNub, enabling seamless and interactive communication with file sharing.
  • Users highlight the responsive customer support of PubNub, making installation and troubleshooting seamless and efficient.
  • Users value the easy API integration of PubNub, enabling seamless real-time applications across various platforms.
  • Users value the reliable API quality of PubNub, making real-time application development straightforward and efficient.
  • Users commend PubNub for its robust data security, enhancing secure communication and real-time interactions across platforms.
Cons
  • Users find the short notice for changes from PubNub frustrating and request better communication practices.
  • Users find the 30-day notice for data deletion too short, impacting trust and requiring better communication.
  • Users express concerns about insufficient advance notice on data management changes, impacting their planning and data retention strategies.
  • Users face difficult navigation in documentation, leading to coding delays and queries that hinder efficiency.
  • Users caution that the cost of PubNub can escalate quickly, impacting those on a tight budget.

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of PubNub?

Amazon MQ

Amazon MQ is a managed message broker service for Apache ActiveMQ that makes it easy to set up and operate message brokers in the cloud.

Average Rating: 3.6/5.0

Total Reviews: 15

How Do G2 Users Rate Amazon MQ?

  • Application Integration: 7.8/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
  • Plugins and integrations: 7.4/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10)
  • Data Integration: 8.0/10 (Category avg: 8.8/10)
  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 8.3/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)

Who Is the Company Behind Amazon MQ?

  • Seller: Amazon Web Services (AWS)
  • Year Founded: 2006
  • HQ Location: Seattle, WA
  • Twitter: @awscloud
    2,232,483 Twitter followers
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    147,094 employees on LinkedIn®
  • Ownership: NASDAQ: AMZN

Who Uses This Product?

  • Company Size: 50% Small, 39% Medium

What Do G2 Reviewers Say About Amazon MQ?

AI-generated summary from verified user reviews

Pros
  • Users value the exceptional scalability of AWS Cloud Storage, allowing for seamless expansion as data needs grow.
  • Users value the seamless scalability of Amazon MQ, which supports easy expansion as data requirements evolve.
  • Users value the seamless integration capabilities of Amazon MQ, enhancing collaboration with other AWS services effectively.
  • Users value the exceptional scalability of Amazon MQ, allowing seamless expansion as their data needs grow.
  • Users value the robust security measures of Amazon MQ, ensuring sensitive data is well-protected and secure.
Cons
  • Users find the complexity issues of Amazon MQ challenging, particularly regarding pricing and setup requirements.
  • Users find the complex setup of Amazon MQ challenging, often requiring significant technical expertise to configure effectively.
  • Users often face connectivity issues with Amazon MQ, affecting data transfer speeds and overall performance.
  • Users report that cost management for Amazon MQ can be complex, leading to potential financial challenges if not handled carefully.
  • Users often find Amazon MQ to be expensive, especially if storage costs are not meticulously managed.

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of Amazon MQ?

Lobster Data Platform

Lobster is a data integration platform for complex, multi-party supply chains. It connects suppliers, partners and systems across EDI, APIs, legacy databases and cloud apps in one place, with 90+ pre-built connectors, 2000+ customers and 20 years of supply chain expertise behind it. Lobster gives teams control over how data flows across their supply chain, so they can build, customise and maintain integrations themselves. Teams can also see, enrich and act on data as it moves across systems and partners, using workflows, exception handling and human input where needed. Purpose-built for logistics, manufacturing and retail, Lobster helps organisations reduce integration complexity, respond faster when requirements change, and keep their supply chain data flowing as operations evolve.

Average Rating: 4.6/5.0

Total Reviews: 106

How Do G2 Users Rate Lobster Data Platform?

  • Application Integration: 9.8/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
  • Plugins and integrations: 8.3/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10)
  • Data Integration: 9.4/10 (Category avg: 8.8/10)
  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 8.9/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)

Who Is the Company Behind Lobster Data Platform?

  • Seller: Lobster Data GmbH
  • Company Website:
  • Year Founded: 2002
  • HQ Location: Tutzing, Germany
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    333 employees on LinkedIn®

Who Uses This Product?

  • Top Industries: Logistics and Supply Chain, Transportation/Trucking/Railroad
  • Company Size: 61% Medium, 26% Large

What Do G2 Reviewers Say About Lobster Data Platform?

AI-generated summary from verified user reviews

Pros
  • Users appreciate the ease of use of Lobster Data Platform, highlighting its quick setup and reliable performance.
  • Users praise the excellent customer support of Lobster Data Platform for its quick assistance and effective onboarding.
  • Users appreciate the seamless integration capabilities of Lobster Data Platform, effectively connecting various internal and external systems.
  • Users value the seamless integrations of Lobster Data Platform, enabling efficient connectivity across internal and external systems.
  • Users love the intuitive user interface of Lobster Data Platform, enabling quick project realization and satisfaction.
Cons
  • Users find the complexity of Lobster Data Platform overwhelming due to its numerous functions and options.
  • Users express concerns over the inconsistent documentation and interface changes that hinder usability and clarity in Lobster Data Platform.
  • Users find the complex usability challenging, especially with many functions and intricate process chains.
  • Users find the subscription pricing to be high, pointing out its complexity and lack of included features.
  • Users find the missing features in Lobster Data Platform limiting, particularly with API management and documentation.

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of Lobster Data Platform?

Azure Queue Storage

Azure Queue storage provides cloud messaging between application components. Queue storage gives you asynchronous message queueing for communication between application components, whether they are running in the cloud, on the desktop, on-premises, or on mobile devices.

Average Rating: 3.9/5.0

Total Reviews: 12

How Do G2 Users Rate Azure Queue Storage?

  • Application Integration: 8.6/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)
  • Plugins and integrations: 7.8/10 (Category avg: 8.3/10)
  • Data Integration: 8.7/10 (Category avg: 8.8/10)
  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 8.3/10 (Category avg: 8.7/10)

Who Is the Company Behind Azure Queue Storage?

  • Seller: Microsoft
  • Year Founded: 1975
  • HQ Location: Redmond, Washington
  • Twitter: @microsoft
    13,091,739 Twitter followers
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    232,750 employees on LinkedIn®
  • Ownership: MSFT

Who Uses This Product?

  • Company Size: 38% Small, 31% Large

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of Azure Queue Storage?

What Are G2 Users Discussing About Azure Queue Storage?

Tian Lin
TL
Researched and written by Tian Lin
Updated October 3, 2024

Message Queue (MQ) Topics

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Learn More About Message Queue (MQ) Software

What is Message Queue Software?

Message queue software is an asynchronous communication middleware that connects applications. Traditional monolithic software is built to communicate with itself or a few other applications. When the software sends or receives data from another software, this data is called a message. It is difficult to send and receive data to another app due to different operating systems, network protocols, and programming languages. Message queue software solves these problems by handling messages for applications from different environments. It creates a new high availability, high reliability, high throughput, and low latency environment to send and receive messages from one application to another. 

As the name suggests, MQ software lines up different messages by “queue” and processes each message through standardized methods. This helps companies to develop high-performance cloud services and apps such as microservices that can communicate with other applications and operating systems without worrying about compatibility issues. 

In the early years, big companies invested heavily in proprietary software and middleware that could connect their products with each other. Using the same IT stacks and standards, these companies can create connected applications. With the vast network of applications connected by middleware, users can solve various complex problems that require multiple inputs and outputs from different environments. 

However, only big companies with big budgets can afford to develop this approach. For most companies and non-business users who use different network standards, programming languages, and data structures, connected applications seem to be unobtainable. This is why there are many business issues that seem to be easy to solve but are technically challenging to implement. For example, hospitals and insurance companies can’t share patient data automatically because their applications aren’t compatible in communicating with each other. Those who managed to set up the connectivity may still use proprietary protocols such as raw UDP, TCP, and HTTP, which are hard to scale and integrate with other applications. 

To solve this issue, early open-source organizations build open source message brokers specific to a language environment like Java and Python. Later big companies began building their own messaging system for others, such as AWS and IBM MQ, to create enterprise messaging platforms that run on their own IT systems. Software buyers can select the best message queue web services or on-premises software to connect various assets such as big data servers to the internet of things (IoT).

What Does MQ Stand For?

MQ stands for Message Queue. A “message” is data that transfers from one party to another. A “queue” is how that message is transferred and processed from one party to another.

What are the Common Features of Message Queue Software?

The following are some core features within Message Queue Software that can help users ensure high availability of message queuing services:

Message query: MQ allows applications to query messages by ID, topics, keys, and contents. This enables the user to organize messages based on custom rules.

Message tracing: MQ can trace routing information from the producer of the message to the consumer. This allows users to analyze metadata on the message producer and consumer for network performance issues. 

Dead-letter queue: MQ supports dead-letter queues (DLQ) to save messages that can’t be processed for debugging to determine why the queueing process failed. 

Message blocklist and allowlist: MQ supports account-based blocklist and allowlist policies to authorize or unauthorize messages from internal and external parties. 

Multiple message processes: Message queue processes can be created for different models. In a peer-to-peer model, a producer sends one message to one consumer. In a pub/sub model, producers can send group messages to consumers with the same cluster ID. In RPC (request/reply) model, MQ can load balance messages back and forth between producer and consumer. 

Dashboard: A user-friendly dashboard can visualize comprehensive and multidimensional metrics of message product and consumption based on clusters, topics, instances, and groups. This will spot trends for server resource allocation and security improvement. 

Monitoring and alerting: Messaging activities can be monitored in real time, and alerts can be sent to notify the IT and data team to resolve issues in a timely manner.

What are the Benefits of Message Queue Software?

Decoupling: Message queue tools decouple (separate) applications and message services. This simplifies CI/CD development so developers can design and update core components without worrying about the message components. 

Load shifting: Messages can automatically be queued according to their size, frequency, and quantity. When there is a large number of message requests, servers can fail to process this amount of volume. It will either crash or indiscriminately reject all incoming messages. Without load shifting, message disruption will halt online business operations and negatively affect revenue. 

Scalability: MQ servers can be integrated with other applications and be allocated an appropriate amount of resources based on needs. This saves users time from manually changing the message process during disruptions or software upgrades.

Who Uses Message Queue Software?

IT teams: IT teams can use MQ software to customize how the data can flow from the application to the user. They can process data from other applications and microservices in an asynchronous method instead of relying on synchronous protocol methods such as REST API.

Challenges with Message Queue Software

Software solutions can come with their own set of challenges. 

Poor MQ practice: MQ policies may slow down message processing speed due to incorrect models. The system might automatically blame the issue on the message senders and blocklist them. MQ users should identify common messages and plan ahead on how to process different types of messages beforehand. It is best to test through multiple message queue processes based on the expected load to avoid bandwidth issues. 

Ease of use: Message queue can bring additional challenges without the right talent. To set up the correct message queue process, an IT team has to go through different scenarios with different types of network connections and message processing rules, which would result in adding additional layers and slowing down the loading speed. Companies should ensure they invest in additional talent to maintain the MQ process and software. 

How to Buy Message Queue Software

Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Message Queue Software

As good as it sounds, message queue software may not be suitable for every use case. MQ software is typically designed to handle a permanent and ongoing messaging process that requires fast processing speed and zero-lost-message tolerance when losing a message can significantly impact the operation. Simple or temporal message processing may not need MQ software, which adds unnecessary costs and time. 

Users should have a specific use case in mind before considering buying an MQ software. Financial firms or hospitals that transfer sensitive, timely, critical messages might need a high availability MQ server to process the messages. Different use cases require different MQ models and features. Since not all requirements have the same importance, buyers should assign them priorities and focus on the most important ones. Buyers need to differentiate must-have features from nice-to-have features from their business case.

Compare Message Queue Software Products

Create a long list

Buyers should start with a large pool of MQ software vendors. Keeping the desired must-have features in mind, buyers must perform consistent inquiries during demos by which they can effectively compare the pros and cons of each software.

Create a short list

It helps cross reference the results of initial vendor evaluations with G2 reviews from other buyers, which will help narrow in on a short three to five product list. From there, buyers can compare pricing and features to determine the best fit.

Conduct demos

As a rule of thumb, companies should make sure to demo all of the products that end up on their short list. During demos, buyers should ask specific questions related to the functionalities they care about most. For example, one might ask to be walked through a typical performance issue from alerting to remediation within the tool. 

Selection of Message Queue Software

Choose a selection team

Regardless of a company’s size, it’s essential to involve the most relevant personas when beginning the software selection process. Larger companies may include individual team members from development teams, testing teams, data teams, and other IT professionals working with the software closely. Smaller companies with fewer employees might overlap roles. 

Negotiation

Many companies offer full monitoring platforms that go beyond MQ to include network monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, and more. While some companies will not budge on the configurations of their packages, buyers looking to trim costs should try to negotiate down to the specific functions that matter to them to get the best price. For example, a vendor’s pricing page for MQ functionality might only be included with a robust all-in-one monitoring package, whereas a sales conversation may prove otherwise. 

Final decision

After this stage, performing a trial run with a small selection of IT professionals or developers is important. This will help ensure that the MQ software of choice integrates well with an IT administrator’s systems setup or a developer’s day-to-day work. If the software is well-liked and well utilized, the buyer can take that as a sign that their selection is the right one. If not, a reevaluation of the options may be required.