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ActiveBatch by Redwood vs GoAnywhere MFT comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 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

ActiveBatch by Redwood
Ranking in Managed File Transfer (MFT)
6th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (7th), Workload Automation (6th)
GoAnywhere MFT
Ranking in Managed File Transfer (MFT)
2nd
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Managed File Transfer (MFT) category, the mindshare of ActiveBatch by Redwood is 1.9%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GoAnywhere MFT is 8.9%, up from 5.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed File Transfer (MFT)
 

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.
Earl Diem - PeerSpot reviewer
Key to our workflow and our workload automation strategy, helping us trade and consume files
File monitors are one of the most valuable features. We have about 400 file monitors running in GoAnywhere. They monitor the NAS locations where files arrive, and they kick off workflows. When a file arrives, GoAnywhere will identify that the file is there, move it to a consumption zone, then reach out to our enterprise scheduler through a REST API call. The solution helps centralize the exchange of data between systems, employees, customers, and trading partners. It's very central and that's pretty important. We generally move about 3,000 files a day, between our partners and internal workflows. My team really likes the intuitiveness of GoAnywhere's user interface. For example, my automation team has a file coming in from a bank, a file that needs to be unzipped, reformatted, re-zipped up, and then put into another folder where another team is going to consume it. Because of all the progressive elaboration—the project started a year ago—the format of the file is not the same. We addressed it with GoAnywhere instead of having the producer of the file change the format. That's how flexible it is for us. And looking at the comprehensiveness of GoAnywhere's workflow features, we use it pretty extensively for working with files. Stonebranch is our enterprise automation platform, but we don't really do any file work with Stonebranch. We chose to use GoAnywhere, our MFT tool, to move and manipulate files. The solution also connects to popular ICAP servers and that's pretty important to our security guys when it comes to preventing malware and other malicious content from entering our organization. The connection to popular ICAP servers, so that content is inspected for sensitive information like credit cards, is pretty important. We're a financial institution and a lot of the data we work with has PAN data and card numbers in it, coming in from partners.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"From a scheduling point of view, it is pretty good."
"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."
"ActiveBatch helped us automate and schedule routine tasks such as data backups, file transfers, database updates, and report generation, which frees IT staff to focus on other studies."
"The product offers a centralized platform for managing activities across many environments, applications, etc."
"It has helped with scheduling complex jobs with simple scripts."
"One of the most valuable features is the job templates. If we need to create an FTP job, we just drag over the FTP template and fill out the requirements using the variables that ActiveBatch uses. And that makes it reusable. We can create a job once but use it for many different clients."
"ActiveBatch provides summary reports and logs for further analysis and improvements in monitoring servers, which is very handy."
"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."
"When users say, 'I'm building spreadsheets that I would like to be uploaded on a regular basis into the IBM i,' we are able to accommodate that request within a matter of hours rather than the days it would take to create programs to do that. That is very useful. It has eliminated several dozens of scripts for us."
"The most valuable features are the automatic processing of files and scheduled execution of the files."
"I like the versatility GoAnywhere provides, allowing transfers through HTTPS and different protocols. It can also transfer through a server and a client."
"It is very easy to use. It is easy to create projects in a graphical environment. The configuration and the setup of the environment is very easy"
"If I have a job that I need to run on the system and I want the data transferred, I can use GoAnywhere and schedule it on a daily basis, a weekly basis, or whatever, and it does the job for me to transfer the files over to the other systems, or back and forth."
"Scheduling is valuable. You can schedule a transfer for any time you want. It can be hourly, daily, monthly, or yearly. You can transfer the file on AWS, Azure, or SharePoint."
"Another nice feature is that you can invoke a native program from GoAnywhere. That helps you because you don't have to get fancy with agents. If a native program runs on the server that GoAnywhere is running on, like sed or perl, you can use it,"
"The most valuable feature of MFT is the security it provides for our data. MFT allows us to add additional authorization and passwords to any file attachments we send via email, and also to limit the number of times the recipient can download the file."
 

Cons

"Setting up the software was hard."
"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."
"The documentation is very limited, and it can be improved."
"We have faced a couple of issues where we were supposed to log a defect with ActiveBatch. That said, the Active batch Vendor Support is very responsive and reliable."
"One thing I've noticed is that navigation can be difficult unless you are familiar with the structure that we have in place. If someone else had to look at our ActiveBatch console and find a job, they might not know where to find it."
"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."
"Some of the advanced features in the user interface are a bit confusing even after referring to the documents."
"The interface is not that user-friendly and is a little tough to navigate."
"A drawback is that it is not as feature-rich compared to its competitor Sterling, which we used before. It has fewer features, though it is more intuitive."
"There is a function referred to as write CSV, to write a general text file. In this scenario of creating a simple text file, I ran into a situation where, if the product saw a quote or a double-quote in the data, it started wrapping all the text fields in double-quotes. The request I put in asks them to provide a feature that leaves my data alone and does not interpret anything."
"At present, HelpSystems GoAnywhere MFT integrates with an antivirus solution, but it's a bit kludgy."
"I would like to be able to do MFA and reset the password via email."
"One of the things that I wish is to not necessarily have to set up a username and password for people with whom we don't frequently share files. For instance, if I want to share files with a patient who is not somebody with whom we share files all the time, I would like them to somehow verify who they are and be able to push the file to them. I shouldn’t have to set them up as a user with a password. It should be almost like Dropbox."
"For training, there should be some sites or resources on YouTube or Udemy. They do not have that currently."
"Upgrading was a challenge and I ran into some problems along the way."
"The technical support has room for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price was fairly in line with other automation tools. I don't think it's exorbitantly expensive, relatively speaking."
"Currently, we are paying approximately $7,000 yearly, which includes support."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"If you compare ActiveBatch licensing to Control-M, you're looking at $50,000 as opposed to millions."
"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."
"It is very attractive. In terms of the capacity of the product and functionality, it is a good price."
"The cost is fine. It is probably the best software that I've had for the money that we spend for it. I am not aware of any costs in addition to the standard licensing fees. I don't pay for it. IT pays for it."
"Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT is an inexpensive solution."
"Its pricing is fair. It is not the most expensive, and it is not the cheapest. For what we get in our environment, the pricing model works pretty well."
"Compared to other tools it's less expensive."
"HelpSystems GoAnywhere MFT is very reasonably priced for the value it brings."
"GoAnywhere's price is justified by its features and the time it saves me."
"For what we pay to GoAnywhere every year, we are getting a fantastic deal. From a dollar perspective, it provides very good value."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
9%
Insurance Company
8%
Retailer
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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...
What do you like most about Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT?
GoDrive eliminates the need to use the exchange server for file sharing.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT?
The pricing is decent for mid-sized and small-sized companies. It is good for startups or mid-scale companies.
What needs improvement with Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT?
A drawback is that it is not as feature-rich compared to its competitor Sterling, which we used before. It has fewer features, though it is more intuitive. This was the compromise we had to make du...
 

Also Known As

ActiveBatch
HelpSystems GoAnywhere MFT, GoAnywhere MFT, GoAnywhere Managed File Transfer,
 

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
McKesson City of Modesto, California Kwik Trip Northwestern University Charter Communications
Find out what your peers are saying about ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. GoAnywhere MFT and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,671 professionals have used our research since 2012.