Aspera Managed File Transfer vs Control-M comparison

IBM and BMC are both solutions in the Managed File Transfer (MFT) category. IBM is ranked #13 with an average rating of 9.0, while BMC is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.7. IBM holds a 3.5% mindshare in MFT, compared to BMC’s 4.5% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of BMC users who would recommend it.

Aspera Managed File Transfer

Read 4 Aspera Managed File Transfer reviews

823 Views
587 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

Control-M

Read 121 Control-M reviews

1,744 Views
720 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Aspera Managed File Transfer

Control-M

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

Aspera Managed File Transfer and Control-M are competing in enterprise file transfer and workload automation. Aspera leads in speed with its data transfer technology, whereas Control-M excels in feature-rich automation and integration.

Features: Aspera Managed File Transfer includes high-speed data transfer, patented performance technology for long distances, and reliability over challenging networks. Control-M offers extensive automation, robust scheduling, and seamless workload management across platforms.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Aspera Managed File Transfer is known for its straightforward deployment and effective customer service. Control-M, while having a more complex deployment process due to its broader capabilities, provides comprehensive support for setup and maintenance.

Pricing and ROI: Aspera Managed File Transfer has reasonable initial costs and quick ROI due to its efficient design. Control-M might have higher initial setup costs but delivers substantial ROI with superior automation and reduced operational overhead.

To learn more, read our detailed Aspera Managed File Transfer vs. Control-M Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Aspera Managed File Transfer vs. Control-M

April 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 849,600 peers since 2012

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

Aspera Managed File Transfer

Ranking in Managed File Transfer (MFT)

13th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Control-M

Ranking in Managed File Transfer (MFT)

4th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

121

Ranking in other categories

Process Automation (3rd), Workload Automation (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Managed File Transfer (MFT) category, the mindshare of Aspera Managed File Transfer is 3.5%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Control-M is 4.5%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Managed File Transfer (MFT)

Featured Reviews

Michele Illiano

Head of Division at Innovery

Beneficial quick protocol, powerful, but limited use cases

Aspera Managed File Transfer should be packaged into another solution. Explaining to customers you need to have multiple solutions from multiple vendors for their use cases can get complicated for them to understand. The best way to propose a suite is to have an integrated suite where the customer could choose to license part of it. This solution could be one solution not two choices between 10 or 12 different solutions. The main feature of Aspera Managed File Transfer is the communication protocol, which is fast. There are a lot of different clients that are offering features related to these fast protocols. It's possible to create one unique suite that can handle this base protocol. It will be quite easy to propose to the customers.

Read full review

Pedro Fuentes

System Engineer at Community Loans of America, Inc.

Cost-effective, excellent support, and centralized access and control

They have a department that handles requests for enhancements. I talked to Control-M guys back in October or November when they had a gathering here in Atlanta. We talked about not being able to go back in history in Helix Control-M for more than two weeks. We submitted a request for enhancement. They told us that they are working on it, and they are thinking of expanding that to 30 days. We would like to see it expand to 90 days, but they are working on it. In Control-M, we were able to go back 180 days, but that was on-prem. The storage of that data was on our own servers. We know that storage is money, and we do not expect them to store that much of the data, but at least 30 to 60 days seem proper.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We were able to effectively nullify the China firewall since the China firewall was disrupting our data transfer."

"Good user interface and ability to set up multiple file transfer jobs."

"The main feature of Aspera Managed File Transfer is that it's an incredibly fast protocol, you can use all the bandwidth available. If I need to send large amounts of data this is the fastest protocol on the market. I have been using it for some minor projects and it is very powerful."

"We were able to effectively nullify the China firewall since the China firewall was disrupting our data transfer."

"Aspera Managed File Transfer is an optimal solution for customers who want to transfer large files to remote sites with lower bandwidth and in less time."

"My organization has been able to script scheduled jobs in Control-M to potentially replace legacy products that are at end of life or end of service. The previous backup applications that were being used for specific files, folders, or applications were no longer being supported, therefore being able to use Control-M to replace that has been very valuable."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"The Control-M interface is good for creating, monitoring, and ensuring the delivery of files as part of our data pipeline. There's a wealth of information in both the full client, as well as the web interface that they have. Both are very easy to use and provide all the necessary material to understand how to do various tasks. The help feature is very useful and informative and everything is very easy to understand."

"BIM is helpful because we do not miss any SLAs, as we get to know the issue well in advance. It is the topmost service that has helped us provide better solutions for the business."

"As soon as you have an issue, a ticket is created and the tech support is quite responsive."

"The most valuable features are the GUI console, stability, and workflow."

"Technical support is very helpful and available 24/7."

"First of all, the shift from manual to automation has been valuable. We have a tool that can automate."

More Control-M pros

Cons

"If you want to do a file transfer between two countries, and one is not China, then you have other more affordable options."

"Aspera Managed File Transfer should be packaged into another solution. Explaining to customers you need to have multiple solutions from multiple vendors for their use cases can get complicated for them to understand."

"The solution's pricing is high and should be reduced."

"If there is any failure in the data transfer and it can automatically detect and reinitiate it, that would be great."

"Deployment is complex and it was difficult to get support."

"You need to pay for extra features if you need them."

"There are numerous boxes to tick and things to check to ensure everything is in order before the upgrade happens. The process is very long"

"With the current version update, I'm not sure why we needed a separate database upgrade. Why not put it all in one package? Previously, you could do it either via a manual upgrade or an in-place upgrade but it wasn't separate."

"The infrastructure could be improved."

"I would like to see them adopt more cloud. Most companies don't have a single cloud, meaning we have data sources that come from different cloud providers. That may have been solved already, but supporting Azure would be an improvement because companies tend not to have only AWS and GCP."

"I would like not to have to reach out to a third-party application company to do automated notifications. Right now, we still have people manually calling people and emailing people. There's a company called xMatters - and there are others - that has an API through Control-M that can automate any aspect of failure management. I'd like to see it build right into the product. I'd like to see a better notification product."

"The performance could be better. Control-M Enterprise Manager tends to slow the system down even on a server with a six-core processor and 32 gigabytes RAM. The console is Java-based, so maybe OpenJDK 16 or 17 would be a performance improvement."

"I talked to Control-M guys back in October or November when they had a gathering here in Atlanta. We talked about not being able to go back in history in Helix Control-M for more than two weeks. We submitted a request for enhancement. They told us that they are working on it, and they are thinking of expanding that to 30 days. We would like to see it expand to 90 days, but they are working on it."

More Control-M cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Aspera Managed File Transfer is not an inexpensive solution. I am not aware of many competitors to determine how affordable the price is overall."

"It was close to $10,000 to $20,000."

"The pricing of Control-M is reasonable."

"We have account based licensing. There are two or three types of licensing. One of them is based on the number of jobs, so we a license close to 4,000 jobs per day. The cost is based on the different modules, which we buy from them. If we a buy a hardware module, which we are presently using and integrating, that is an additional cost, but I'm not sure of the amount. Each module comes with a different cost."

"Pricing varies depending on which components and modules you are using."

"The pricing is reasonable. It's not an exorbitant amount. The licensing is pretty reasonable for the number of jobs that we run."

"The cost of the hardware is high. Because you need to license each job, it is costly."

"This is an area where it is a little difficult to work with BMC. They want to do licenses by job, which is what we have. For example, the simplest is to license by job, but they can also license by nodes. While the licensing is simple to use, it might not be the correct licensing model for the customer. It is okay because we want to license by job, which is something measurable. At the end of the day, licensing by job is the most important."

"The product price is reasonable. I rate the pricing an eight."

"Initially, our licensing model was based on the number of jobs per day. That caused some issues because we were restricted to a number. So at our renewal time we said, 'We want to convert from number of jobs to number of endpoints.' That cost us extra money but it gave us additional capabilities, without worrying about the number of jobs."

More Control-M pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Managed File Transfer (MFT) solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

849,600 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

21%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

28%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Aspera Managed File Transfer?

Aspera Managed File Transfer is an optimal solution for customers who want to transfer large files to remote sites with lower bandwidth and in less time.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Aspera Managed File Transfer?

There are other products of Aspera which come as add-ons, however, we haven't purchased those, like report generation, since that was not our requirement. The features we needed were included in th...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Aspera Managed File Transfer?

We have an office in China, and we wanted to transfer data from China to the UK. We have an office in the UK as well.

See all answers

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 because nothing gets left unattended since it is all visible in one place, and th...

See all answers

What do you like most about Control-M?

First of all, the shift from manual to automation has been valuable. We have a tool that can automate.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Control-M?

It is a little bit expensive.

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM Sterling File Gateway vs Aspera Managed File Transfer

Compared 71% of the time

Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct vs Aspera Managed File Transfer

Compared 12% of the time

webMethods.io vs Aspera Managed File Transfer

Compared 10% of the time

Kiteworks vs Aspera Managed File Transfer

Compared 7% of the time

More Aspera Managed File Transfer Competitors

AutoSys Workload Automation vs Control-M

Compared 16% of the time

Automic Automation vs Control-M

Compared 9% of the time

IBM Workload Automation vs Control-M

Compared 7% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Control-M

Compared 6% of the time

Stonebranch vs Control-M

Compared 5% of the time

More Control-M Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Managed File Transfer (MFT)

April 2025

Download Aspera Managed File Transfer product report

Buyer's Guide

Control-M

April 2025

Download Control-M product report

Also Known As

No data available

Control M

Overview

IBM Aspera takes a different approach to tackling the challenges of big data movement over global WANs. Rather than optimize or accelerate data transfer, Aspera eliminates underlying bottlenecks by using its proprietary fasp technology that fully utilizes available network bandwidth to maximize speed and quickly scale up with no theoretical limit. Using fasp, transfers are secure end-to-end and are largely unaffected by file size, transfer distance, or network conditions, making transfer times up to 100Xs faster than TCP-based protocols.

IBM Aspera offers SaaS, on-prem, and hybrid solutions to meet the needs of modernizing infrastructures. All solutions offer robust security and compliance, intuitive file sharing, workflow automation, central administration, and real-time visibility. Quickly and easily initiate transfers across hybrid infrastructures, including support for cloud-to-cloud transfers. IBM Aspera offers unmatched transfer speeds, end-to-end security, reliability, and exceptional bandwidth control.

IBM

Control-M is used for enterprise workload automation, orchestrating finance, retail, healthcare, and supply chain processes. It handles batch job scheduling, managed file transfers, cloud integrations, and compliance auditing across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments.

Organizations leverage Control-M to efficiently monitor and manage business-critical processes like payroll, HR, SAP, Informatica, and database tasks. It enhances visibility, security, and error resolution. Automating and optimizing workflows in data centers, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, Control-M supports diverse technological environments. The platform's robust capabilities make it suitable for effective centralized management of applications and data pipelines, ensuring enhanced collaboration and scalability.

What are Control-M's most important features?

Integration capabilities: Seamlessly integrates with various systems
Automation API: Facilitates automation through APIs
Managed File Transfer: Simplifies secure file transfers
GUI console: Intuitive graphical user interface
Role-based administration: Provides access control
Single-pane view: Centralized monitoring dashboard
Scheduling options: Flexible job scheduling
Workflow orchestration: Coordinates complex workflows
Reporting: Generates insightful reports
Monitoring: Tracks and manages tasks
Forecasting: Predicts future workloads
Self-service portal: Empowers users with self-service tools
Plugins: Extends functionality through additional plugins

What are the benefits or ROI of using Control-M?

Enhanced visibility: Centralized view of all processes
Ease of use: User-friendly interface
Error reduction: Minimizes manual errors
Improved collaboration: Facilitates teamwork
Scalability: Supports growth and scale
Support: Comprehensive customer support

Control-M is implemented in industries like finance to handle payroll and HR tasks, in retail for inventory management and supply chain processes, and in healthcare for compliance auditing and patient data processing. Organizations benefit from streamlined workflows and automated processes across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments, ensuring efficient and secure operations.

BMC

Sample Customers

Gwinnett County Public Schools, Evonik, Voith, BITMARCK, Oracle

CARFAX, Tampa General Hospital, Navistar, Amadeus, Raymond James, Railinc

Buyer's Guide

Aspera Managed File Transfer vs. Control-M

April 2025

Free Report: Aspera Managed File Transfer vs. Control-M

Find out what your peers are saying about Aspera Managed File Transfer vs. Control-M and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

849,600 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Aspera Managed File Transfer vs. Control-M report.

See our list of best Managed File Transfer (MFT) vendors.

We monitor all Managed File Transfer (MFT) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.