How to: Message brokers vs Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
[Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)](https://karanpratapsingh.com/courses/system-design/enterprise-service-bus) infrastructure is complex and can be challenging to integrate and expensive to maintain. It's difficult to troubleshoot them when problems occur in production environments, they're not easy to scale, and updating is tedious.

Whereas message brokers are a _"lightweight"_ alternative to ESBs that provide similar functionality, a mechanism for inter-service communication, at a lower cost. They're well-suited for use in the [microservices architectures](https://karanpratapsingh.com/courses/system-design/monoliths-microservices#microservices) that have become more prevalent as ESBs have fallen out of favor.