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Aspera Managed File Transfer vs Control-M comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

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)
12th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
4
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
120
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (3rd), Workload Automation (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 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 4.4%, 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 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Pedro Fuentes - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

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."
"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."
"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."
"Good user interface and ability to set up multiple file transfer jobs."
"We were able to effectively nullify the China firewall since the China firewall was disrupting our data transfer."
"The flexibility of Helix Control-M allows us to manage tasks efficiently. The user interface is comprehensive and lets me view all my jobs on one page, monitor everything, and access the job history."
"We value Control-M mainly for the ability to control multiple nodes in a coordinated manner. Control-M has the ability to really coordinate across a lot of nodes."
"Ability to handle files remotely through the advanced file transfer feature."
"In the client, it provides a unified view for me. I can alter the view that I want to see jobs and conditions. This is nice to have. The fact that you can see everything in one space is very important, especially these days where everything is about data and monitoring as well as because we are working from home on a global basis. So, I can monitor jobs in real-time, along with any failures or anything that might be stuck. The real-time monitoring and the ability to see everything in one place is important for us because we operate 24/7."
"Most valuable feature would be the ability to detect and notify when a process has not completed successfully."
"I think the administration part is much more valuable than any other feature."
"The workflow is much easier compared to the ACS services we were using."
"Automation of the batch jobs is the most valuable feature."
 

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."
"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."
"The solution's pricing is high and should be reduced."
"Finding documentation on the website can be a bit confusing."
"The UI can be challenging for new users due to its learning curve. Additionally, there are some errors during automation. More detailed logs would be helpful."
"The infrastructure updates could use improvement. Some of the previous updates that we have run to get to version nineteen were troublesome. So, a more seamless upgrade path for the infrastructure components would be useful. I don't know if they have replaced that in version 20 or if version 20 has an easier path, but I would like to see the upgrade from one version to the next version be a little smoother."
"Control-M reporting is a bit of a pain point right now. Control-M doesn't have robust reporting. I would like to see better reporting options. I would like to be able to pull charts or statistics that look nicer. Right now, we can pull some data, but it is kind of choppy. It would be nicer to have enterprise-level reporting that you can present to managers."
"There is definitely room for improvement. Version 9.0.20 actually comes with a web-based interface, but there are still a lot of things unavailable with it. There will eventually be more inclusions added into the web interface, but there is still a long way to go."
"Control-M could benefit from incorporating AI features for better job scheduling."
"The company has been working with BMC on the MFT. There are still some things about MFT which don't work the way that we want with our needs. So, we would like to see that improved."
"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"
 

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."
"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."
"Licensing costs are around $3000 a year."
"Compare to other tools Pricing and licensing was more. It should be decrease."
"It works on task-based licensing."
"Pricing is generally affordable, though some features cost a bit more."
"The price is right because of the licensing schema, which is based on nodes and processes. You purchase what you use, no more and no less, and you can grow with time."
"The solution is not cheap, it comes with quite a hefty price tag. Control-M is the market leader, but we still want the price to be as friendly as possible."
"The license model is based on the number of jobs we run on the SaaS application or the number of executions, unlike the on-premise model options. If we have a handful of jobs, it's always good to consider Control-M, but if it's a large number of jobs, Control-M might not be a great option."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Insurance Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
 

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.
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...
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.
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...
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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Control-M?
Pricing is generally affordable, though some features cost a bit more.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Control M
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Gwinnett County Public Schools, Evonik, Voith, BITMARCK, Oracle
CARFAX, Tampa General Hospital, Navistar, Amadeus, Raymond James, Railinc
Find out what your peers are saying about Aspera Managed File Transfer vs. Control-M and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.