Apache ActiveMQ vs IronMQ

Apache ActiveMQ is an open-source messaging and Integration Patterns server for applications that exchange messages. It is self-hosted and supports OpenWire, STOMP, AMQP 1.0, MQTT 3.1, and REST. Listed client languages include Java, C, C++, C#, Ruby, Perl, Python, and PHP. Messaging features include message groups, virtual and composite destinations, wildcards, and enterprise integration patterns. ActiveMQ fully supports JMS 1.1 and J2EE 1.4+ messaging, including transient, persistent, transactional, and XA modes; support for Jakarta Messaging 3.1 and JMS 2.0 is partial. Transport options include in-VM, TCP, SSL, NIO, UDP, multicast, JGroups, and JXTA, with JDBC persistence and a high-performance journal. Browser access is available through a REST API and Ajax web streaming. Security options include pluggable providers, JAAS authentication, XML-configured authorization, and user, group, and destination permissions. ActiveMQ Classic costs nothing under the Apache License 2.0.

IronMQ is a persistent message queue for communication between services and components in distributed applications. It supports push and pull queues, long polling, error queues, alerts, and triggers, as well as dead-letter queues and ordering within each queue. Delivery is described as best-effort and one-time, a behavior application teams should account for in message handling. Its HTTPS and REST-based APIs support HTTP/REST, Amazon SQS, and OpenStack Marconi protocols. During an outage, queues can automatically point to alternative availability zones without code changes. Deployment options include shared, dedicated, and on-premise environments. Documentation lists client libraries for Go, Ruby,.NET, Java, PHP, Python, Node, and Rust, plus community-supported Apache Camel and Clojure libraries. Iron.io says OAuth and SSL protect data in transit, and recommends client-side encryption for especially sensitive payloads at rest. The free Basic plan includes 100K API requests per month, limited queues, and a 64k message size limit. Entry costs $399 a month; a full-feature 14-day trial is offered for non-dedicated clusters.