Top 15 Best RabbitMQ Alternatives Message Brokers (Pros and Cons)
Best RabbitMQ Alternatives Message Brokers (Pros and Cons). Modern networks run software solutions that are varied in languages and operating systems. They need systems that bring them together in order to communicate with one another. That is the purpose of the RabbitMQ message broker.
In this article we will be looking at the RabbitMQ alternatives and their pros and cons.
A. What is a Message Broker?
It is important to know how the message broker operates. The source application (Producer ) sends a message to a server that routes, translates message and delivers to the appropriate Consumer. It is like a program that sits between the applications or services and serves as a go between software module that translates a message from the messaging protocol of the sender to that of the recipient.
In other words, a message brokers are a “translation” program or application that enables other independent applications, systems and services to communicate and exchange information with each other.
Communication of message brokers happens in 2 ways:
- Publish and Subscribe (Topics)
- Point-to-Point (Queues)
We can generally summarize a message broker to a Telephone Switching Office that routes appropriate messages to their correct destinations.
B.What is RabbitMQ Message Broker?
RabbitMQ is a message queue software (message broker/queue manager) whose purpose is to be the intermediary platform where various applications can send and receive messages.
It operates on AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol), but is also used with other popular messaging solutions like MQTT.
RabbitMQ Server is a very popular open-source message broker as it 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 concentrated configurations to meet high scale and high availability requirements.
C. What are Message Brokers used for?
Reasons to use message broker include:
- Improved performance – message queues (that is what the MQ is for) in the brokers enable asynchronous communication between, and within, apps for better performance.
- More reliable – when data is held in a queue it is still available when parts of a system go down; separate components result in data retention despite the fact.
- Fault tolerance – when parts of a system are unreachable, those that are online can continue interacting with the queue.
- Granular scalability – data producers, consumers, as well as the actual queue itself can be scaled on demand.
- Simpler independent development – using a message queue removes the inter-dependency between components and simplifies the development of the decoupled applications.
Also Read:
Top 15 best RabbitMQ Alternatives message brokers
Below is the list of alternative message brokers and do it’s comparison with pros and cons.
1. MuleSoft Anypoint Platform
MuleSoft provides the most widely used integration platform for connecting SaaS & enterprise applications in the cloud and on-premise. Mulesoft Messaging broker provides a solution to host all RESTful APIs. This message broker performs advanced asynchronous messaging with cloud hosted message queues and exchanges. It is an enterprise level, scalable, and secure tool.
MuleSoft is a tool for larger businesses and more features include role-based access control, client application management, MQ monitoring, and management, as well as statistics and reporting for insights into performance.
Pros of MuleSoft
- Extensive connectivity
- Features( Message Sources: HTTP, FTP, Files, Databases; Components: REST, Java; Routers and filters).
- Runtime Manager (Cloud solution to host RESTful APIs).
- Open Source.
Cons of MuleSoft
- Relatively steep learning curve.
- Resolving metadata takes time.
- Cost.
2. TIBCO Enterprise Message Service
This is an MQTT messaging service for enterprise users that need to develop real-time data pipelines for the Internet of Things (IoT).
TIBCO is a publish-and-subscribe messaging protocol that makes reliable machine-to-machine communications and helps bridge data in complex, cloud-based or hybrid infrastructures.
Pros of Tibco Enterprise Message broker
- Great fault tolerance and load balancing and API
- Synchronous and Asynchronous communication.
- Easy to implement and robust.
Cons of Tibco Enterprise Message broker
- Slow when following complex configurations.
- Single point of failure.
- Lag time between data sync and the data reaching the server.
- Difficult to maintain durables.
3. IBM MQ Message Broker
When it comes to IBM MQ, a message is held in a queue and waits until it can be delivered.
IBM MQ , when moving data, including file data moves it only once to ensure messages are never lost while also making sure only one single copy arrives at the destination.
This alternative message broker is often used to transfer all financial transactions.
Pros of IBM MQ Message Broker
- Reliable and secure.
- Geat choice when a financial organization needs to communicate with another without sharing infrastructure.
- Increased transaction capacity and able to process huge volumes.
- Different message types supported with Asynchronous messaging.
Cons of IBM MQ Message Broker
- The UI isn’t very user friendly.
- Cloud migration lags behind.
- Learning Curve
- No opensource
4. Solace Pubsub+
PubSub+ is a messaging middleware for distributed, event driven enterprises and connects almost everything, hardware and software, that can be installed on premises or in the cloud. PubSub+ is a management platform for real-time enterprise and also an event streaming, often compared to Apache Kafka.
Solace PubSub+ allowing event brokers to form an event mesh, which supports dispatching events from one application to another.
This alternative messaging broker can be configured to be plugged into existing apps and infrastructures and integrated into cloud native apps and services.
Pros of Solace Pubsub+ message broker
- Guaranteed messaging, messages always delivered.
- High availability and disaster recovery with extensive monitoring and alerting.
- Dynamic message routing.
- Event mesh capability
- Solace PubSub+ Integrations:Apache Kafka, RedHat, OpenShift.
Cons of Solace Pubsub+ message broker
Configuration needs know how.
5. Apache Kafka
Apache Kafka is an open-source distributed event streaming platform used in high-performance data channels, analytics streaming, data integration, and other critical application or processing environments. it is widely used for queuing mechanism for fetching and maintaining records in the queue.
Apache Kafka Server is fast with latencies as low as 2ms and also secure, that securely stores streams of data in decentralized, robust, and fault-tolerant clusters.
Pros of Apache Kafka message broker
- Outstanding Horizontal scaling .
- Queuing of records.
- Loads of options for managing and maintaining queues.
- Highly performance and availability.
Cons of Apache Kafka message broker
- Number of connectors relatively still in its infancy.
- Rebalancing time.
- Not enough monitoring tools.
6. HiveMQ Message Broker
HiveMQ‘s broker is a fast, efficient, and reliable message broker, that makes it easy to move data between connected applications and devices.
It provides businesses with a MQTT protocols, which enables to organize and exchange data between IoT devices and its best suited for big data environments.
It is a scalable and reliable broker that allows for bi-directional movement of data between applications, devices, and the cloud.
Pros of HiveMQ
- Very easy to set up and use.
- Easy deployment such as: Cloud, SaaS, Web-Based
Cons of HiveMQ
- High cost.
7. Google Cloud Pub/Sub
Google Cloud Pub/Sub is a secure, scalable MQ system that is used for streaming analytics and data integration pipelines to pull and push data. It also works as a messaging-oriented middleware for service integration or as a queue to integrate tasks.
It is used to ingest events for streaming into BigQuery, data lakes or operational databases.
Pros of Google Cloud Pub/Sub
- Opens up integration with Google products.
- Easy to use APIs.
- Easy to use UI on cloud console for debugging.
- Scalable with pull and push modes for orderly message delivery.
- Integrations. Cloud Pub/Sub integrates with other Google Cloud services( Kubernetes Engine).
Cons of Google Cloud Pub/Sub
- There are issues in duplicate delivery of messages due to at-least-once feature.
- Limited choice of patterns.
8. IronMQ
IronMQ is an enterprise-level, cloud-native solution that offers secure communication between services and components. In nutshell highly scalable message queuing solution with feature including push and pull queues, error queues, long polling, alerts and triggers.
It offers flexible deployment via RESTful APIs (Representation State Transfer).
More features from IronMQ include push-and-pull queues, long polling, error queues, as well as alert and trigger configuration capabilities.
Pros of IronMQ
- Insightful dashboard makes it easy to control queuing process.
- Simple to implement.
- Scalable for handling intermittent high data.
- Push and pull queues.
- Advanced messaging security via HTTPS, SSL, and OAuth.
Cons of IronMQ
- The user interface is a lhard to learn for first-time users.
- Insufficient documentation to support the product.
- Randomly lost queues during outages.
- Not good support desk.
9. Amazon MQ
Amazon MQ(Message Queue) is a message broker service for Apache ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ engines which easies setting up and operating message brokers in the cloud environment.
Amazon MQ can be used to manage the administration, and maintenance, of other message brokers – including RabbitMQ – and automatically facilitates infrastructures for higher availability rates.
It is a low-maintenance solution that requires no hands-on management of messages that is mainly used to send messages in bulk and automatically manages tasks like software and security upgrades, as well as failure detection and recovery.
Pros of Amazon MQ alternative message broker
- Easy integration and usability
- Cost effective: pay for storage depending on your needs.
- Compatible APIs (JMS, AMQP 1.0, MQTT, STOMP, OpenWire).
Cons of Amazon MQ alternative message broker
- The UI might is difficult to learn.
- Storage limitations: Amazon MQ provides 200 GB limited storage and accepts only Apache DB data storage.
10. Alibaba Cloud Message Queue
Next on the list of RabbitMQ alternatives message brokers is Alibaba Cloud Message MQ, that is fully hosted on the Alibaba Cloud platform.
It can be used to easily create a scalable distributed system with loose coupling and high availability in a cloud architecture.
Alibaba Cloud Message MQ is an enterprise-level distributed service that facilitates reliable message-based asynchronous communication between microservices, distributed systems, and server less applications.
Pros of Alibaba Cloud Message Queue
- High message delivery rate – low message loss.
- Reliable with high performance.
- Secure Access Control .
Cons of Alibaba Cloud Message Queue
- Simple interface, extra features needed.
11. Apache ActiveMQ
Another RabbitMQ alternative message queue broker is the Apache ActiveMQ, a multi-protocol supporting large number of cross-language platforms and protocols. It is very popular and powerful open source messaging and integration Patterns server supporting JavaScript, C, C++, Python, .Net, and more.
It integrates multi-platform applications using the universal AMQP protocol. Users can exchange messages between web applications using STOMP over WebSockets and also manage IoT devices.
Pros of Apache ActiveMQ
- Open source and has a great, insightful GUI.
- Dynamic queue creation.
- Web UI function for queue management.
- Connectivity: SSL, Support Stomp, XMPP and MQTT.
- Many advanced features such as message group , combined queue .
- Client API’s.
- Clustering.
- Great Java client support.
Cons of Apache ActiveMQ
- Stability and delayed or failed message encounters over time.
- Messages must be sent to either queues or topics.
- Client library support for non java languages is not great.
- Requires reboots for configuration changes.
12. KubeMQ
KubeMQ is a lightweight open-source MQ that was developed on the Kubernetes platform. It is highly scalable, available, and secure. KubeMQ easily integrates with other tools such as Prometheus, Datadog, Zipkin .
It is easy to use and connect microservices instantly using a rich set of connectors without writing any code.
Pros of KubeMQ
- Easy to use with Kubernetes, supports a large number of languages and connectors
- Super-fast, small and lightweight Docker container.
- Supports WebSocket Transport protocols such as REST and TLS support.
- Message broker configuration not required.
- Speeds up your development and production cycles.
Cons of KubeMQ
- Has a few limitations for integration with SQL systems.
- Hard to follow NodeJs
- Tracing support for C# library
13. ZeroMQ
Another RabbitMQ alternatives message broker is ZeroMQ, where zero stands for Zero Broker, Zero Latency, Zero Admin and Zero Cost.
ZeroMQ is a high-speed connector that allows users to connect their code in any language and on any platform.
It has asynchronous I/O engines packed in a tiny library and sockets that carry atomic messages across various transports like in-process, inter-process, TCP, and multicast. It can represent a many-to-many connection between endpoints.
Pros of ZeroMQ alternative message broker
- Easy to customize for unique needs.
- A messaging library with API and real language binding.
- Many messaging patterns with extensive language implementations.
- Fast and fully open source.
Cons of ZeroMQ alternative message broker
- Limited data types .
- Data Loss: silently discards messages .
14. NSQ
NSQ is easy to configure and deploy message broker and has an administration dashboard.
It is a real-time distributed messaging platform designed for large-scale operations. It offers fault tolerance and high-availability for distributed and decentralized architectures without single points of failure. It also has a reliable message delivery guarantee.
It comes in pre-compiled releases for flavors of Linux, Windows, and as a Docker image.
Pros of NSQ message broker
- Ideal for decentralized and distributed architectures.
- Convenient and easy deployment, no environment dependency.
- No loss of data: very high performance
Cons of NSQ message broker
- Limited data integration when compared to some competitors, for example lack of mobile message pushing.
- Messages have no order.
- No message replication between nodes.
- No authentication.
15. Red Hat AMQ Alternatives Message Brokers
Red Hat AMQ is a reliable and flexible, high-performance messaging platform. It enables real-time integration and connects the IoT.
It is a highly scalable platform that also provides an event streaming backbone that allows for communicating components to exchange data at a high rate.
Pros of Red Hat AMQ
- Real-time integration and high scalability.
- Asynchronous Communications Protocol
- Ideal for Development, Test and Production environments.
- Data Error Reduction.
- Storage / Retrieval / Deletion.
Cons of Red Hat AMQ
- Needs better visualization capabilities.
- Better monitoring needed.
- Support libraries need updating.
Best RabbitMQ Alternatives Message Brokers - Conclusion
Any business that wants to develop and stay competitive needs to be looking towards data management tools that work with the modern cloud easily. We hope this RabbitMQ Alternatives comparison article will lead you the best service for improving monitoring, fault tolerance and the distribution of your applications and systems. It is important to hire professionals, who can ensure no data leaks, latency or miscommunications occur at any point of the communication process.
