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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 (5th), Workload Automation (4th)
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 April 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 8.6%, up from 5.8% 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

"It is very useful in sending confidential files through FPP servers."
"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."
"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."
"The nice thing about ActiveBatch is once we have created a specific job that can be easily be replicated to another job, then minimal changes will have to be made. This makes things nice. Reduction of coding is substantial in a lot of cases. The replication of one job to another is just doing a few minor tweaks and rolling it into production. This decreases our development costs substantially."
"Since we are no longer waiting for an operator to see that a job is finished, we have changed our daily cycle from running in eight hours down to about five. We had a third shift-operator retire and that position was never refilled."
"Using this tool, if there are any huge failures, we immediately get an email notification, and the proper team will be informed, at which time they can act accordingly."
"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."
"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."
"The usability is valuable because I am self-taught and have not had any formal training in the product. The help feature is quite handy."
"The most valuable feature is the Advanced Workflows."
"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."
"If it's dealing with SFTP or any kind of secure transfer, we don't hear about it. It's good. Everything works."
"Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT supports the PeSIT protocol."
"We also use the Secure Folders module and the Web Client a lot. For example, we set up external vendors to come in and review files or folders in a Secure Folder. That way they can go in and review whatever information or data they need to do."
"GoAnywhere makes it easy to move files around. We have quite a bit of information we have to transfer to around 300 different companies that require us to send data on a regular basis. If we did this manually, it would require several employees."
 

Cons

"The reporting needs improvement. There is a real need for the ability to generate audit reports on the fly. It needs to be a lot easier than what I can do right now. This is a major item for me."
"Any product is going to have some room for improvement, no matter what. I see the company has already ventured into AWS and they're constantly trying to improve the managed file transfer which they have recently improvised. I think they bought a software called JSCAPE and they're trying to improve it, which is good. I am not sure if JSCAPE would be part of the base product but currently, you have to buy a separate license for it, which doesn't make sense. If it was Microsoft, ServiceNow, or integrating with other software vendors, I would understand but JSCAPE is now in-house and I'm not sure if they can justify having a separate license for JSCAPE. I would probably expect them to be packaging JSCAPE into the base product. They did switch over from a perpetual license model to a subscription model, which hurt the company a little bit. Nobody is offering the perpetual model anymore. As long as the transition is fair for both the companies, I think it should be fine and not burn us out."
"I have faced struggles to understand, set up the tool, and implement it in my early days as a new user."
"The user interface can be improved so that it is more appealing and accessible to new users."
"Some of the advanced features in the user interface are a bit confusing even after referring to the documents."
"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."
"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."
"The solution's built-in functions could be better; I want to see easier file transfers and management."
"For us, it is perfect. It is a good solution that we are using, and we are going to continue to do so. However, it should be advertised more as a solution. I did not see it out there beforehand."
"There's one persnickety issue about NAS permissions. That is a problem we have run into with GoAnywhere. I would like to see more focus on compatibility with/enforcement of user roles and access permissions across NAS, among other things. We have filed a couple of tickets on that in the past."
"The process of adding a vendor is very easy. You just point and click. You create your job, schedule, and project, and off you go. You just need to know what the processes do when you add in a new job that runs daily and so on. For us, it is not a problem, but maybe the documentation on that could be a little more straightforward. We, however, have no problems figuring that out. It is pretty straightforward for us."
"The security could be upgraded to address novel cyberattacks. I'm not sure whether the product's security is being updated periodically."
"When we restart the agent on each server, it tries to go out to the internet and it takes about a 13-minute timeout before it can move forward. Why is there a 13-minute timeout value when trying to go to the internet? ...If they could limit that timeout or give us a way to modify it so we could have a faster timeout, that would help us at least knock out a half-hour's worth of outage."
"The support desk has room for improvement. I keep opening tickets and they keep telling me that they're closed, but they're not resolved."
"API functionality wasn't part of our initial unit testing because it wasn't necessary then. However, shortly after implementing GoAnywhere, two different vendors approached us to do API transactions. We checked to see if GoAnywhere could do this and found that it was supposed to have that capability, but it broke down."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"For what we pay to GoAnywhere every year, we are getting a fantastic deal. From a dollar perspective, it provides very good value."
"Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT pricing is competitive."
"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."
"Compared to other tools it's less expensive."
"The product's pricing is reasonable."
"When it comes to secure systems that we have used, the price point can get a whole lot higher. You might end up saving in the short term with other solutions, but are you getting a secure product? Do you feel confident in that? Will you be able to get any support afterward? From my experience, based on the price point and the service that we got, it was a good value for our money."
"GoAnywhere's price is justified by its features and the time it saves me."
"It would be good for the company to explore a modular approach to selling the product so it could be cheaper and more attractive to users."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
9%
Insurance Company
8%
Retailer
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
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.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.