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ActiveBatch by Redwood vs AutoSys Workload Automation comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

JAMS
Sponsored
Ranking in Workload Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
ActiveBatch by Redwood
Ranking in Workload Automation
14th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (27th), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (14th)
AutoSys Workload Automation
Ranking in Workload Automation
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of JAMS is 2.8%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ActiveBatch by Redwood is 2.9%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AutoSys Workload Automation is 8.0%, down from 14.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
JAMS2.8%
AutoSys Workload Automation8.0%
ActiveBatch by Redwood2.9%
Other86.3%
Workload Automation
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2770605 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Has streamlined complex job scheduling across scripting languages while reducing manual effort
JAMS could be improved with a web client that is accessible and as fast as a normal website, eliminating the need to RDP to the servers to access the JAMS client. A functionality running on the JAMS server to continuously check the JAMS agents would ensure they are working properly. If an agent is not responding, a feature to restart the service from the job server machine would be beneficial. The upgrade process, particularly when switching from V6 to V7, could be clearer in terms of documentation, ideally with screenshots showing exactly what needs to be done on each screen.
AS
Application Administrator Lead at Bluestem
Manages thousands of jobs daily and reduces downtime through secondary node support
The current feedback I receive from my end users regarding ActiveBatch by Redwood highlights issues with the tabs or panes during job modification. When the next user monitors it, they need to close the pane or job and reopen it to see the changes reflected. If the end user makes an update, it will not be visible unless they start from the beginning again. Implementing a refresh button would be helpful for real-time updates when the end user needs to see changes immediately. We currently face issues with the web console of ActiveBatch by Redwood. When users operate through an RDP session, every user has their own ActiveBatch by Redwood application. However, on the web console, users encounter daily activity issues where the job instances do not appear or update correctly, and they cannot view the latest logs. This issue is only present on the web console, as the application itself works without any problems. ActiveBatch by Redwood can be improved by adding more features, as we are not currently handling cloud-based applications like S3 buckets and Azure. Connecting to these cloud platforms would be a helpful enhancement.
PK
Assistant VP at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Experience significant automation with robust integration and user-friendly interfaces
There are areas of AutoSys Workload Automation that have room for improvement. They are implementing good enhancements in the R24 release. The web UI needs some improvement. Cloud integrations are limited to 25 or 30 configurable plugins and integrations to the cloud. They can improve in that area. They have separate tools, not AutoSys Workload Automation, such as Atomic and other SaaS-based solutions that can run inside the cloud. AutoSys Workload Automation can be configured in the cloud, but it requires a substantial number of VMs depending on the load. For on-premises deployment, it is a very good solution. They need to increase their footprint in the cloud and improve the web UI. They are making excellent progress in the R24 release.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"JAMS is easier to use and cheaper than our previous solution. The installation is more straightforward, and JAMS has a graphical user interface, so it's more accessible."
"The feature or capability to import a job is most valuable. We can import an existing job from different platforms, and all the configurations get migrated as well without modifying the code, job schedule, etc."
"The interface is good, and it's very easy to define and create jobs. If a job is not running or there is an error, the solution will send an email. That's all very good and very useful."
"The most valuable feature is the easily accessible data in the database because we run a lot of SQL scripting against the database."
"We also use the solution’s Interactive Agents. If we need to push something to our dealer portal, we can just drop a file in a folder and it goes. Running interactive tasks helps me users focus on business processes since I don’t have to take care of running the jobs manually."
"The dashboard is intuitive."
"The alerting in it is really targeted... you can set specific alerting so that if jobs in a given folder fail, certain people are alerted. You can also set security at the folder level, so that only people in those areas can go set them. That means that the alerting and security can be set at a very granular level."
"The user-friendly and adaptable scheduler allows us to manage various scheduling scenarios."
"ActiveBatch provides summary reports and logs for further analysis and improvements in monitoring servers, which is very handy."
"ActiveBatch's Self-Service Portal allows our business units to run and monitor their own workloads. They can simply run and review the logs, but they can't modify them. It increases their productivity because they are able to take care of things on their own. It saves us time from having to rerun the scripts, because the business units can just go ahead and log in and and rerun it themselves."
"From a scheduling point of view, it is pretty good."
"ActiveBatch by Redwood has positively impacted my organization by efficiently managing a significant volume of data and workflow between our database and applications on the web browser."
"The software offers real-time monitoring and reporting features that let IT teams keep tabs on the progress of their batch operations and workflows."
"Managing the workload and monitoring the tasks were very difficult with manual interventions. Now, by using ActiveBatch, the process is automated and it runs tasks on a scheduled basis."
"The most valuable feature is its stability. We've only had very minor issues and generally they have happened because someone has applied a patch on a Windows operating system and it has caused some grief. We've actually been able to resolve those issues quite quickly with ActiveBatch. In all the time that I've had use of ActiveBatch, it hasn't failed completely once. Uptime is almost 100 percent."
"ActiveBatch by Redwood has positively impacted my organization by efficiently managing a significant volume of data and workflow between our database and applications on the web browser."
"The web UI is beneficial and the granular security policies allow us to cover all of our audit requirements."
"It gives a real-time view of all the batch processing that we have. Monitoring-wise, it is really good."
"To me, what's most valuable in AutoSys Workload Automation is its robustness and quickness. The tool can trigger jobs within a few milliseconds, and it can handle large volumes of jobs."
"From an orchestrator perspective, it simplifies your workflow and job flow."
"It is stable, it works, and it does what it is supposed to."
"​It allows you to automate tasks, and reduce headcount, prevent errors, self-heal."
"Without this product we would have to manually submit jobs and it would take longer. There would also be a much greater possibility of jobs running wrong and/or not at the right time."
"The features that I have found most valuable with AutoSys are that it is scalable, easy to use, fast, and always available. That's very important because if it's not steady then it's a real problem. So, at this point, we are satisfied with it."
 

Cons

"Sometimes the UI is not the most responsive I've ever used. But because it does its job, I don't complain."
"The JAMS automation code isn't so clean."
"It does validations when you try to delete an object and if there are any dependencies in place, the deletion process will not proceed... there is no information provided as to what it was that caused the validation to fail... it's quite a tedious process to find which object is getting in the way."
"It is important to receive notifications if a charged job fails and SQL is halted. JAMS does not provide halted notifications by default, which is a critical feature that needs to be added."
"I would like to see the ability to interface with Microsoft group-managed service accounts, but they're still in the research phase. They need to ensure everything's legit and safe. The report designer and dashboards could also be improved. We're running 7.3, so I don't know if they have updated the reporting in 7.5, but I think the reports and dashboards could be better."
"If around 5,000 or more jobs run at a time, JAMS slows down, and we have to wait around five to 10 minutes or restart JAMS scheduler services."
"I would like a simple web interface that I could give to my team to go in and kill jobs or see why jobs died so that we don't have to drill down deeper into the application and know everything about it. It would be good to have a really clean web engine that would say here are the jobs running. We can then click to see the time running and whether any of them fails and other similar things. I know they have one, but it's not very simplistic."
"The UI could be better. There were some things that were not quite intuitive, such as the search tool. When we tried to search for jobs, we had to clear the entire search and then go in and enter the new search query. That's something that wasn't intuitive for a new user."
"Some of the advanced features in the user interface are a bit confusing even after referring to the documents."
"As more organizations are moving towards a cloud-based infrastructure, ActiveBatch could incorporate more capabilities that support popular cloud platforms, such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud."
"I believe ActiveBatch by Redwood could be improved because the UI could be modernized."
"Setting up the software was hard."
"Except for the GUI, everything looks good."
"The user interface can be improved so that it is more appealing and accessible to new users."
"The monitoring dashboard could have been more user-friendly so that in the monitoring dashboard itself we can see the total number of jobs created in the system and how many were currently active/scheduled/chained."
"The UI could potentially offer a more refined and user-friendly experience, fostering smoother interactions and facilitating easier navigation for users engaging with the application."
"I would like to see two-factor authentication, since you see a lot of companies in the news for security breaches. That is a really big thing for us."
"In terms of what should be in the next release, I want integration and AI and so on. I'd like easy reporting where you can compare information, for example, "that job normally takes three minutes and last time it took six minutes or 10 minutes." Then you can get the information to the engineer of which job is taking more time than normal - understanding strange behavior compared to the baseline."
"The solution does not have a friendly subscription model because it forces users to take a five-year subscription simultaneously, charging millions of dollars."
"We had a few issues, however, the issues were more on the infrastructure rather than with the application itself."
"SQL server clustering is not supported."
"Documentation and cross-application externals could be improved."
"There is a difference between a web interface and the thick client interface. We particularly like a thick client interface, and it has gone away."
"There is a slow response time by tech support. Unless, you say it's severity level one. That will give you a two hour timing window for them to call you. It doesn't really happen exactly in two hours, but they try."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"JAMS is close to the lower end of the pricing models for enterprise scheduling solutions. They are much cheaper than Control-M, as well as some other products that I've used. I also don't know of another solution where you can actually get true, unlimited licensing, where you can have as many instances and as many agents as you want."
"It's certainly a lot cheaper than Tivoli and Control-M. In comparison to them, you get a lot more bang for your buck. You get pretty much the whole functionality and more, in some cases, when compared to Control-M, but at a fraction of the price."
"There are no additional costs other than the license for Fortra's JAMS which is affordable."
"I haven't been involved in the financial side for several years, but we buy one host and unlimited agents, and we get a reasonable price for that. We're happy with the amount we pay and the scalability it provides."
"In the end, you'll find that it's really worth the price. There is some sticker shock, but it's worth every dime."
"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."
"Definitely check how many single processes you want to run and count them as jobs. That is how you would work out your pricing on JAMS. For example, if you're running a number of commands and you can put them all into one script and run that script, you can count that as one job."
"For what it does, the product is priced very well."
"I like ActiveBatch Workload Automation's licensing model because they're not holding you down on an agentless model or agent model, where every server needs to have an agent. That's the main selling point of the solution and I hope they stay that way."
"If you compare ActiveBatch licensing to Control-M, you're looking at $50,000 as opposed to millions."
"It allows for lower operational overhead."
"The price was fairly in line with other automation tools. I don't think it's exorbitantly expensive, relatively speaking."
"ActiveBatch is currently redesigning themselves. In the past, they were a low cost solution for automation. They had a nice tool that was very inexpensive. With their five-year plan, they will be more enhancement-driven, so they're trying to improve their software, customer service, and the way that their customers get information from them. In doing that, they're raising the price of their base system. They changed from one pricing model to another, which has caused some friction between ActiveBatch and us. We're working through that right now with them. That's one of the reasons why we're why we were evaluating other software packages."
"The pricing was fair. There are additional costs for the plugins. We have the standard licensing fees for different pieces, then we have the plugins which were add-ons. However, we expected that."
"I don't think we've ever had a problem with the pricing or licensing. Even the maintenance fees are very much in line. They are not excessive. I think for the support that you get, you get a good value for your money. It's the best value on the market."
"Currently, we are paying approximately $7,000 yearly, which includes support."
"The return on investment would be very high because doing things manually without this product would be extremely expensive."
"We paid to use the solution monthly."
"Validate how many agents you need beforehand."
"There is an annual license to use AutoSys Workload Automation."
"It is overpriced."
"The pricing needs to be improved. Some of my client's complained that it was too expensive."
"I certainly think the pricing is worth the value."
"I don't have information on the exact licensing cost of AutoSys Workload Automation because that's managed by the tools and financing teams. For agents, it's close to $4,00, but for the server setup, it's usually a one-time license initially, and it's AMC which is paid every year and comes close to $8,000 to $10,000."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Healthcare Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Insurance Company
7%
Performing Arts
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
42%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
5%
Insurance Company
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise47
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise77
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about JAMS?
I find the historical tracking feature of JAMS invaluable for reviewing past events.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JAMS?
They recently switched to subscription-based pricing, which increased. The price is fair considering the functionalit...
What needs improvement with JAMS?
As far as we are using JAMS version 6, it looks good and there is nothing major to add about it. Everything is functi...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ActiveBatch Workload Automation?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for ActiveBatch by Redwood has been great; we recently renewed ...
What needs improvement with ActiveBatch Workload Automation?
I believe ActiveBatch by Redwood could be improved because the UI could be modernized.
What is your primary use case for ActiveBatch Workload Automation?
My main use case for ActiveBatch by Redwood is file processing. I use ActiveBatch by Redwood for file processing for ...
How does Control-M compare with AutoSys Workload Automation?
Control-M acts as a single, centralized interface for monitoring and managing all batch processes, which is helpful b...
What do you like most about AutoSys Workload Automation?
The most valuable aspects of AutoSys Workload Automation are its performance, scalability, and ease of getting starte...
 

Also Known As

No data available
ActiveBatch
CA Workload Automation, CA Workload Automation AE
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital
Informatica, D&H, ACES, PrimeSource, Sub-Zero Group, SThree, Lamar Advertising, Subway, Xcel Energy, Ignite Technologies, Whataburger, Jyske Bank, Omaha Children's Hospital
Gaumont, Mercantil do Brasil, CCEE, Hanwha Life
Find out what your peers are saying about ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. AutoSys Workload Automation and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
882,207 professionals have used our research since 2012.