Eclipse Amlen vs IronMQ

Eclipse Amlen is a self-hosted MQTT server for IoT and web messaging. It supports MQTT versions 3 through 5 over TCP/IP and WebSockets, plus JMS, and can convert messages between MQTT and JMS. A protocol plug-in SDK lets users add other protocols, including options for legacy sensors that cannot use MQTT. The Amlen Bridge forwards MQTT messages to another MQTT server or IBM Event Streams for IBM Cloud, with filtering, topic mapping, multiple forwarders, and REST API configuration and monitoring. Security controls include TLS profiles, user ID and password authentication against a configured LDAP server, and policy-based authorization for connections, topics, subscriptions, and queues. Administrators can manage message hubs and endpoints through a WebUI or REST Administration APIs. Supported client platforms include C, Java, Android, iOS, and JavaScript. Server and WebUI downloads are listed for RHEL and AlmaLinux 8, 9, and 10. The free software has configurable delivery guarantees. One limitation is that Amlen supports a single LDAP server connection, so users and groups must be provided through that server.

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.