Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs ESP Workload Automation Intelligence comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

ActiveBatch by Redwood
Ranking in Workload Automation
6th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (6th), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (5th)
ESP Workload Automation Int...
Ranking in Workload Automation
21st
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of ActiveBatch by Redwood is 2.2%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ESP Workload Automation Intelligence is 2.6%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Shubham Bharti - PeerSpot reviewer
Flexible, easy to use, and offers good automation
Occasionally, I find myself contemplating if there is room for improvement in the user interface (UI), and envisioning that with certain enhancements. 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. New users might encounter a minor setback due to the absence of readily accessible training videos, which could have otherwise proven to be an invaluable resource in aiding their initial familiarization with the platform, potentially hindering their seamless onboarding process and delaying their ability to harness the software's full range of capabilities to its utmost potential.
reviewer1609584 - PeerSpot reviewer
Stable, connects with everything, and has great technical support
The new version is going to have more web services where you could string together various web services so that you can create a workflow across multiple web services, which I don't think is there today. It's not easy to do today. You have to use other tools to accomplish things. However, if the functionality exists, we haven't tested that out yet.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"ActiveBatch has reduced work by providing automated workflows across several different applications."
"The automation feature is a very valuable feature as the associates do not have to worry about performing repetitive tasks (i.e. endpoint security scans on a daily basis) that would take several hours to complete on a daily basis."
"By implementing a sophisticated scheduling mechanism, the system allows for the precise triggering of jobs at user-selected frequencies, enabling a seamless and automated execution of tasks according to specified time intervals."
"We use the main job-scheduling feature. It's the only thing we use in the tool. That's the reason we are using the tool: to reduce costs by replacing manual tasks with automated tasks and to perform regular, repetitive tasks in a more reliable way."
"We leverage the solution's native integrations regularly. We have to get files from a remote server outside the organization, and even send things outside the organization. We use a lot of its file manipulation and SFTP functionality for contacting remote servers."
"It is very useful in sending confidential files through FPP servers."
"ActiveBatch can automate predictable, repeatable processes very well. There is no real trick to what ActiveBatch does. ActiveBatch does exactly what you would expect a scheduling piece of software to do. It does it in a timely manner and does it with very little outside interference and fanfare. It runs when it is supposed to, and I don't have to jump through a bunch of hoops to double check it."
"The product offers a centralized platform for managing activities across many environments, applications, etc."
"The solution can scale."
 

Cons

"Some improvements can be made to the user interface."
"The thing I've noticed the most is the Help function. It's very difficult, at times, to find examples of how to do something. The Help function will explain what the tool does, but we're not a Windows shop at the data warehouse. Our data warehouse jobs actually run on Linux servers. Finding things for Linux-based solutions is not as easy as it is for Windows-based solutions. I would like to see more examples, and more non-Windows examples as well, in the Help."
"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."
"They have some crucial design flaws within the console that still need to be worked out because it is not working exactly how we hoped to see it, e.g., just some minor things where when you hit the save button, then all of a sudden all your job's library items collapse. Then, in order to continue on with your testing, you have to open those back up. I have taken that to them, and they are like, "Yep. We know about it. We know we have some enhancements that need to be taken care of. We have more developers now." They are working towards taking the minor things that annoy us, resolving them, and getting them fixed."
"An area for improvement in ActiveBatch Workload Automation is its interface or GUI. It could be a little better. There isn't any additional feature I'd like to see in the tool, except for the GUI, everything looks good."
"A nice thing to have would be the ability to comfortably pass variables from one job to another. That was one of the things that I found difficult."
"It does have a little bit of a learning curve because it is fairly complex. You have to learn how it does things. I don't know if it's any worse than any other tool would be, just because of the nature of what it does... the learning curve is the hardest part."
"The documentation is very limited, and it can be improved."
"The new version is going to have more web services where you could string together various web services so that you can create a workflow across multiple web services, which I don't think is there today."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It allows for lower operational overhead."
"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."
"Currently, we are paying approximately $7,000 yearly, which includes support."
"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."
"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 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."
"The price was fairly in line with other automation tools. I don't think it's exorbitantly expensive, relatively speaking."
"If you compare ActiveBatch licensing to Control-M, you're looking at $50,000 as opposed to millions."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Workload Automation solutions are best for your needs.
842,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
10%
Insurance Company
9%
Retailer
7%
Financial Services Firm
39%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Insurance Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ActiveBatch Workload Automation?
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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ActiveBatch Workload Automation?
I'd advise users to start by knowing what the actual requirement is and thoroughly assess the automation needs. New users should take advantage of the demos and trial versions so they get an idea o...
What needs improvement with ActiveBatch Workload Automation?
After upgrades we are facing a few issues and errors triggered, so focusing on this would be appreciated. Some of the advanced features in the user interface are a bit confusing even after referrin...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

ActiveBatch
CA Workload Automation ESP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Informatica, D&H, ACES, PrimeSource, Sub-Zero Group, SThree, Lamar Advertising, Subway, Xcel Energy, Ignite Technologies, Whataburger, Jyske Bank, Omaha Children's Hospital
Sandvik, DHL, Landmark Group, SAIF
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC, Redwood Software, Broadcom and others in Workload Automation. Updated: March 2025.
842,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.