Apache ActiveMQ

What do you like best?

Apache ActiveMQ has been a solid workhorse for JMS Message Broker services at our company. We especially like the delayed send feature, something which we don't have when we use Kafka.

What do you dislike?

Unfortunately, Apache ActiveMQ doesn't cluster nicely, so if the broker goes down, there is not a seamless failover to a secondary broker, without losing data. There are some published hacks to work around this, but it is not baked into the product's DNA like other message broker implementations.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

If you are looking for a JMS solution, Apache ActiveMQ has proven it's merit through longevity, outliving alternatives for a reason. It's fast, stable, and just plain works.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

We use Apache ActiveMQ to handle high volume scale of message, through a set of over 2 dozen topics and about a dozen queues. The messages are delivered reliably.