EMQX vs IronMQ
EMQX
emqx.com
IronMQ
iron.ioSide by side
| Figure | EMQX | IronMQ |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $234/mo | $399/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 5 |
| Spec score · Message Broker Software | 9.1 (#2) | 8.2 (#12) |
| API | EMQX exposes an HTTP management API that follows the OpenAPI 3.0 specification. | IronMQ uses HTTPS and REST-based APIs. |
| Founded | 2017 | 2010 |
| Integrations | EMQX Enterprise provides more than 40 out-of-box integrations including Kafka, AWS RDS, MongoDB, Oracle, SAP and time-series databases. | The developer documentation lists Amazon SQS Protocol integration and client libraries for Go, Ruby, .NET, Java, PHP, Python, Node, and Rust. |
| Purpose | EMQX Enterprise is an MQTT messaging platform for connecting, moving, and processing IoT business data in real time. | IronMQ is a persistent message queue for communication between services and components in distributed applications. |
| Security | Security features include TLS/mTLS, X.509 certificate authentication, access controls, and audit logs. | The FAQ says Iron.io uses OAuth authentication and SSL to protect data in transit, and recommends client-side encryption for especially sensitive payloads at rest. |
| Support | The pricing page lists 8/5 support for Serverless and 24/7 premium support for Dedicated Flex. | The pricing page lists basic, standard, premium, and enterprise support by plan, and the product page cites 24/7 customer service for enterprise customers. |
Plans
EMQX
- ServerlessFree
- Dedicated Flex$234 a month
- BYOCPriced on request
- ServerlessFree
- EnterprisePrice not published
IronMQ
- BasicFree
- Entry$399 a month
- Standard$799 a month
- Premium$1,249 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
EMQX
EMQX is an MQTT messaging platform for connecting, moving, and processing IoT business data in real time. EMQX Enterprise combines publish/subscribe messaging with durable message queuing, while a SQL-based Rule Engine and visual Flow Designer support filtering, transforming, enriching, and routing data. The platform supports MQTT and protocols or gateways including QUIC, CoAP, STOMP, and LwM2M; its listed protocols also include MQTT-SN, OCPP, GB/T 32960, JT/T 808, and NATS. EMQX says a cluster can handle up to 100 million concurrent MQTT connections and lists more than 50 native integrations. Security features include TLS/mTLS, X.509 authentication, access controls, and audit logs. Deployment options include Docker, a Kubernetes Operator, and installation packages, with macOS and Linux packages listed. Plans include free Serverless and Dedicated Flex starting at $234 per month, with a 14-day trial listed for Dedicated Flex. Serverless has limits including 1,000 sessions, 1,000 TPS, and a 1 MB message size.
IronMQ
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.