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5 Excellent Open Source ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) Alternatives

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List of best Open Source ESB  Enterprise Service Bus options
An Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is a software architecture model which finds greats use in providing a platform to developers for designing the communication between the software applications. Its function is to monitor the routing of messages. The bus architecture provides and encourages a person towards a loosely coupled architecture to the designers. Complex message exchange patterns are supported by the Enterprise Service Bus. It allows a person to provide a business solution with web services running on several different platforms. Open source community has contributed many great products including ESBs. We have tried to pick the best of available options, so try them before spending a fortune on enterprise products.


The seven best opensource Enterprise Service Bus alternatives are enumerated below:

  1. JBoss ESB
  2. As per the JBoss Microkernel architecture, the JBoss ESB is a pre-configured profile. This server has the advantage that Messaging, Web services, and all base ESB functionalities are already installed in it. It is a standalone distribution with all the installation scripts along with it. This makes it easy to install it on any full JEE application server and is its important feature making it one of the best choices. It can be downloaded from http://www.jboss.org/jbossesb/downloads/

  3. Apache Service Mix
  4. It is an enterprise-ready and flexible ESB released to provide reliable messaging, routing and Restful web services with Apache CXF. Another main feature of Apache Service mix is that all the other components like rich Event and Audit API have a loosely coupled integration between them and the ESB. It provides a complete WS-BPEL engine with the Apache ODE. Thus the platform lets you build integration solutions yourself. Further information gathering and download can be done from http://servicemix.apache.org/home.html

  5. Spring Integration
  6. The Spring Integration supports Enterprise Integration Patterns to act as an extension to the spring model of programming. It allows easy integration with the external systems along with the messaging facility being provided to the applications to communicate with each other. The Spring Integration model is beneficial sometimes than the others as it provides a simple platform to the developers also giving Enterprise integration solutions. Thus also providing easily maintainable and testable code. Further information and download options can be retrieved from http://www.springsource.org/spring-integration

  7. WSO2 Enterprise Service Bus
  8. The WSO2 ESB is a centralized ESB with an old style look that offers great features better than many other ESBs. The WSO2 service provides you multi-tenancy and built-in metering and monitoring functionalities. Along with these features, it provides a graphical user interface facilitating faster work. It has a high-performance design and easily integrates with an existing system. The WSO2 ESB thus lets designers gain more control, increase productivity as well as reducing the costs. Further information regarding this ESB can be obtained from

  9. Petals ESB
  10. Petals ESB is another open source ESB which is suitable for large SOA architectures. The users need to do lesser maintenance and it can very quickly and easily implement the architecture. An important feature of Petals ESB is that it lets you increase the size of the project and it adapts to large projects very easily. Also, it is supported by the OW2 community. There are no vendor lockins. can be used to gain detailed information about the petals ESB.

  11. OpenESB
  12. ESB is an open source ESB that provides enterprise integration solutions to the developers in designing and maintaining communication between the applications trying to communicate with each other and exchange the data. It provides a standard platform for integration More information on the java.net open source ESB.

  13. Mule ESB
  14. Mule ESB is another java based ESB. It is a great platform for helping developers to easily and quickly connect their applications. This facilitates the easy exchange of data. Its most important feature is that it allows the applications to easily communicate with each other and thus better and faster exchange of data. It is one of the most frequently used integration platforms. It provides easier configuration, lower cost, flexibility and expansion features than the others. It can be downloaded from https://www.mulesoft.com/platform/soa/mule-esb-open-source-esb

    Article Updates

    • Article Updated on September 2021. Some HTTP links are updated to HTTPS. Updated broken links with latest URLs. Some minor text updates done. Content validated and updated for relevance in 2021.
    • Updated in April 2019 – Updated Introduction section,  new hero image added, fixed minor text and updated links.

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