Control-M vs VisualCron comparison

BMC and SMA Technologies are both solutions in the Workload Automation category. BMC is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.4, while SMA Technologies is ranked #16 with an average rating of 9.0. BMC holds a 18.9% mindshare in WA, compared to SMA Technologies’s 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of BMC users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of SMA Technologies users who would recommend it.

Control-M

Read 138 Control-M reviews

19,859 Views
14,894 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

VisualCron

Read 11 VisualCron reviews

1,551 Views
682 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Control-M

VisualCron

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

Control-M and VisualCron are popular task automation and workflow management tools within the IT scheduling category. Control-M offers significant integration options with support for complex environments, while VisualCron provides ease of use suited for non-programmers. Control-M appears to have the upper hand in terms of integration and cross-platform capabilities, while VisualCron stands out for user-friendliness and simplicity.

Features: Control-M supports complex scheduling, automation, and cross-platform functionality with integration options like SAP, DB, and VMware through its Control Modules. Its centralized monitoring is beneficial for diverse systems, including distributed and mainframe environments. VisualCron simplifies task management with an intuitive interface, making it accessible for non-programmers. It offers strong connectivity features ideal for simpler automation scenarios.

Room for Improvement: Control-M's output analysis could be enhanced to provide operations beyond string matching. Its reporting capabilities are often limited, necessitating external tools for detailed reporting. VisualCron could improve its interface for better usability. Enhancing its command console and documentation would refine the user experience. Expanding community support and integration options are also desirable for VisualCron users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Control-M is versatile, available on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments. User feedback on technical support is mixed—responsive yet challenged in complex issues. VisualCron's deployment is straightforward with easy setup and licensing. Users generally find its technical support satisfactory, with room for improvement in documentation and community engagement.

Pricing and ROI: Control-M's pricing reflects its features, seen as costly but justified for large organizations due to enhanced capabilities and process efficiency gains. Smaller businesses might find its cost prohibitive. VisualCron offers competitive and less complicated pricing, ensuring good ROI through affordable workflow management with minimal investment, ideal for less complex environments.

To learn more, read our detailed Control-M vs. VisualCron Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Control-M vs. VisualCron

September 2025

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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

Control-M

Ranking in Managed File Transfer (MFT)

4th

Ranking in Workload Automation

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

138

Ranking in other categories

Process Automation (2nd)

VisualCron

Ranking in Managed File Transfer (MFT)

15th

Ranking in Workload Automation

16th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (18th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of Control-M is 18.9%, down from 26.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VisualCron is 1.2%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Workload Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Control-M	18.9%
VisualCron	1.2%
Other	79.9%

Workload Automation

Featured Reviews

Mark_Francome

Senior System Specialist at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Easily connects to different platforms and ties everything together in a centralized screen

Areas of Control-M that have room for improvement include the reporting feature. The reporting on Control-M hasn't changed much over the years, although it is in a different internal format. It used to be Crystal Reports, and now they've upgraded that. It would be better if that was really flexible where you could define your own reports. You can customize it a little bit, but when people come in with complex questions, you should be able to use that tool and access anything in the database. Control-M has two internal databases that are core to the product. You can go in and do your own SQL queries against the database, but this reporting tool should really be able to do everything that you can do with SQL, and give you good information. Instead, you end up having to export to spreadsheets and then change and update them. It can be very labor-intensive to get this information out. Other than the reporting, they've addressed most things over the years. Control-M is a tool that's been around for more than 30 years, so they have actually fixed most issues that you would encounter. They have a request for enhancement process that most users have sent requests to, but it doesn't move very quickly. The other challenge is they're supporting so many different platforms; BMC just wants it to be a trouble-free release. When users request new features, such as improved reporting, BMC's priority remains maintaining a clean-running system.

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Sourav-Dutta

Technical Lead - Database Administrator at SMART ENERGY SYSTEMS LLC

It's user-friendly, and I didn't need long to understand the process

We use VisualCron for all our automation needs, like connecting to FileZilla, calling APIs, generating PGP keys, creating encryption files with the PGP key login to Azure, etc. It can automatically log in to SQL Server and execute SQL script jobs in bulk. We had 2,000-3,000 users at my previous…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Maintaining and monitoring of workloads have been and continue to be the most valuable feature in our environment."

"Control-M has improved our organization's functions by supporting high availability and integrating with CI/CD workflows."

"The best feature of Control-M is its orchestration capabilities for any orchestration that's required. Control-M has positively impacted my organization by helping with orchestrating complex tasks."

"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."

"It has absolutely saved us time. It has made us more efficient. As far as the processing between systems, we don't have as many people. They have been able to focus on other efforts, because we have been able to automate more stuff with Control-M."

"We can tie together all the workloads across the estate and make the whole process reactive to events."

"The ability to dynamically predict batch run time is so valuable."

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

More Control-M pros

"The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%."

"What I found most beneficial from VisualCron is that you can directly connect it with different databases, user accounts, and credentials. You can run queries from one machine to another using the credentials, unlike PowerShell, that's run by the machine itself. With VisualCron, you can directly ask other machines and run requests through user credentials. Suppose you have an AWS or Azure environment. In that case, you can maintain the connection between on-premises and cloud-based machines, which is the type of setup in the organization I'm working for. You can directly call some of the services via VisualCron on your local on-premises machine, and I found that an excellent feature of the tool."

"VisualCron is a very powerful program to automate different steps in your business processes. We use it to automate replacing files and inform departments about the replacement."

"'ve only had a few cases where I've had to request support in the past 12 years of use, but the support response time and resolution were was extremely quick."

"The most valuable feature of VisualCron is its ability to schedule interactive jobs so that you can have interdependencies within the job and interdependencies of a job on another job, and so on."

"The ability to clone jobs to shorten the time it takes to implement a process has been invaluable, but its flexibility also gives us the ability to create a job that can handle a multifaceted process with a complex workflow."

"I love VisualCron because we previously spent a lot of time writing Power switches to connect to SQL Server. VisualCron makes it easier to execute services or connect to FileZilla by only adding the credentials to the master credentials stored in the solution."

"It helped us reduce manual steps."

More VisualCron pros

Cons

"A lot of businesses are using ServiceNow, which is another tool. I would like there to be some integration with ServiceNow or other third-party tools as well as have easily available integrations. Right now, we need to write scripts. Apart from that, if there were some integrations with an ITSM tool, then that would be good. Because at the end of the day, most of our clients are using different ITSM tools. I know that BMC Remedy is easy to integrate with Control-M. However, if there was availability for Jira as well as other ITSM and DevOps tools, that would be a good improvement."

"When it comes to supporting cloud services, Control-M is a bit slow. We are not advancing with the technology because we don't have the modules that can interact or use the new application services provided by the cloud technologies."

"Integration with some applications and platforms is complex and requires development. We have done some integration with the application integrator, but it was more like a manual solution. This is an area that can be improved."

"Their technicians should be more involved when we're applying new technology to Control-M, such as cloud. We're working with cloud right now, with AWS, and getting the attention of a technician, sometimes, can take some time. It would be nice if they had somebody assigned to it. Dedicated support."

"It can definitely expand promotions, so that a single job can be moved. Currently you can only promote a job by promoting the entire table."

"I think it's slightly expensive but at the same time it's a good product."

"I would like to have a web version of Control-M to replace the client. Currently, our support and jobs-creation teams are using the client and that needs to be installed on a PC. It's very heavy, consuming a lot of resources compared to the web portal. I know that they're trying to improve the client with the latest version, but for me, there hasn't been enough improvement yet."

"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"

More Control-M cons

"VisualCron's command console is a little bit difficult to understand and needs to improve."

"I would like for VisualCron to expand audit log to show who changed job variables that are initialized per job run."

"The error timeout and info could be better. When making web request calls, it will time out sometimes and we won't get any useful info out of the error response."

"VisualCron is software, and you will experience performance degradation when you scale up. VisualCron takes too much memory or CPU power. We have to increase the hardware resources of a specific server or system."

"An area for improvement in VisualCron is its cluttered interface. It isn't always easy to find all functionalities, so what VisualCron needs is a user interface expert who can improve the interface. There's a learning curve in terms of finding what you need from the interface of VisualCron. The technical support for VisualCron also needs improvement in terms of response time. Currently, there's no live support or hotline you can call to get quick answers, so this is what I'd like to see in the next version of VisualCron. A less cluttered and more streamlined interface, where you don't need to hunt for some of the features, is also what I'd like to see in the next VisualCron update."

"There are some conditions in the mail trigger, but you can only use them as an "AND" condition, not as an "OR" condition. This is an improvement that could be useful. For example, some people put "invoice" in the subject and others put "invoice" in the body. If I want to make a trigger for everybody whose sending invoices, I have to make two jobs for this now."

"VisualCron seems to operate like an efficient machine when it comes to improvements and enhancements and new features. I always appreciate the quick response I get when bringing up an issue or coming up with suggestions. I've mentioned before that it would be great to see a move away from SQLCE and XML configuration files."

"The only problem I face when I use the tool is that it doesn't contain much documentation or it doesn't have many video tutorials on its features."

More VisualCron cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

"In our environment, pricing depends on the total number of maximum jobs that can run, which is fine. Therefore, if the number of jobs increases, then the licensing fees will increase."

"This is an expensive product compared to other solutions, although I think that it is a good one. We are in a good position with licensing, as we can run 10,000 jobs."

"For the tooling that you get, the licensing is acceptable. It has competitive pricing, especially with all the value that you get out of it. There are additional costs with some of the additional modules, but they are all electives. Out of the box, you get the standard Control-M experience and the standard license. They're not forcing some of the modules on you. If you decide that you do need them, you can always purchase those separately."

"This is now from my previous years as support for banks and big companies. If it's not enterprise scale, I find that it's too expensive for smaller companies. You really have to be quite big and need to have a dedicated support staff to run it, then you'll be fine. What we've seen at smaller companies, it's too expensive because they want to automate everything. Now, stuff that can literally run once a day for the rest of their lives is costing them $3 a job a day. It becomes too expensive, eventually. They are not seeing the return on investment because it's not business critical. Nobody is going to die or they're going to lose money if that job didn't run exactly at 11 minutes past 4:00. It's definitely for bigger enterprise companies, especially banks or healthcare providers. We have had an instance where Control-M was unavailable due to external factors for 20 minutes and there was a loss of almost a million euros because the solution involved logistics."

"Control-M isn't cheap, but this is an enterprise model."

More Control-M pricing and cost advice

"ROI is 95 percent."

"The pricing is extremely fair, and because of that I recommend purchasing multiple instances to split out the processing load across multiple application servers."

"ROI is one month."

"We are fine with a rather cheap setup. Licensing with VisualCron is fair. You have a simple one-year licence in different sizes. There isn't a licensing jungle with hundreds of options and opt-ins."

"VisualCron is correctly priced because it wasn't very cheap, and it wasn't overly expensive, so the price for it was set correctly. When my previous company bought VisualCron, it was €800 per server per year. On a scale of one to five, I would rate the pricing for VisualCron a five because it was just right. The tool was affordable, and it has one of the most competitive pricing in the market."

"The price is a bit high."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

27%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

28%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Insurance Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	26
Midsize Enterprise	13
Large Enterprise	114

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	5

Questions from the Community

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...

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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?

Control-M is expensive and not cheap at all.

See all answers

What do you like most about VisualCron?

The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VisualCron?

The price is a bit high. However, it is okay.

See all answers

What needs improvement with VisualCron?

The documentation is a bit weak. The tool must provide a better set of documentation.

See all answers

Comparisons

AutoSys Workload Automation vs Control-M

Compared 12% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Control-M

Compared 8% of the time

Automic Automation vs Control-M

Compared 7% of the time

IBM Workload Automation vs Control-M

Compared 5% of the time

Rocket Zena vs Control-M

Compared 4% of the time

More Control-M Competitors

Microsoft Power Automate vs VisualCron

Compared 34% of the time

OpCon vs VisualCron

Compared 8% of the time

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs VisualCron

Compared 8% of the time

Automate vs VisualCron

Compared 6% of the time

JAMS vs VisualCron

Compared 6% of the time

More VisualCron Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Control-M

October 2025

Download Control-M product report

Buyer's Guide

VisualCron

October 2025

Download VisualCron product report

Also Known As

Control M

No data available

Interactive Demo

BMC

Demo not available

SMA Technologies

Overview

Control-M by BMC is engineered to manage hybrid cloud workflows, offering orchestration capabilities starting at $29,000 annually. Aimed at helping growing teams, it efficiently supports cross-environment scheduling and automation needs.

Control-M offers robust cross-platform scheduling, automation, and integration with applications such as SAP and Informatica. Users appreciate its ease of use with a graphical interface, centralized management, and monitoring capabilities. Advanced features, including Managed File Transfer, automated error handling, and real-time alerts, enhance productivity. The ability to unify workflows and support diverse environments makes Control-M a trusted tool in many sectors. While improvements in reporting flexibility and API integration with tools like ServiceNow are needed, addressing performance issues during upgrades could enhance its value. Offering improved support for new technologies and cloud environments is beneficial, with cost-effectiveness being a consideration.

What are the key features of Control-M?

Cross-Platform Scheduling: Facilitates seamless task management across various OS environments.
Automation: Provides efficient workflow automation for complex processes.
Third-Party Integration: Ensures smooth integration with applications like SAP and Informatica.
Graphical Interface: Simplifies job management and monitoring with user-friendly design.
Managed File Transfer: Enhances data transfer processes with structured handling.
Real-Time Alerts: Offers notifications for immediate response to workflow issues.

What benefits should organizations expect from Control-M?

Increased Efficiency: Streamlines operations and reduces manual workload.
Enhanced Productivity: Automation and monitoring features boost operational output.
Improved Compliance: Supports SLA achievement and regulatory requirements.
Operational Agility: Provides flexible and adaptable task management across platforms.

Control-M is leveraged in industries like finance for enterprise scheduling and data management, supporting mainframe, Linux, Unix, Windows, and cloud platforms. It contributes to workflow orchestration and workload automation, improving operational efficiency and enhancing IT infrastructure across those environments.

BMC

VisualCron offers task automation through a visual interface, eliminating the need for programming skills. With capabilities like alerting and variable usage, users benefit from integration with databases, timely task execution, and cross-platform operations.

VisualCron empowers users by simplifying complex workflows. It allows seamless task automation through features like interactive scheduling and role-based operations. Users appreciate its integration capabilities, replacing multiple tools with a comprehensive automation solution. The support system ensures quick assistance, making it a reliable choice for workflow visualization and task execution. However, areas like error handling and interface design require enhancements for improved user experience.

What are the key features of VisualCron?

Visual Interface: Users automate tasks without needing programming skills.
Integration: Connects with databases and multiple systems to streamline operations.
Alerting: Notifies users about tasks and system statuses.
Task Scheduling: Allows interactive management of automated tasks.
Credentials Management: Enables cross-platform operations securely.

What benefits can users expect when evaluating VisualCron?

Increased Efficiency: Reduces the time spent on manual processes.
Cost Reduction: Eliminates the need for multiple tools by consolidating functionalities.
Enhanced Support: Offers robust post-sales support for quicker assistance.
Streamlined Workflows: Simplifies complex task automation.

Organizations leverage VisualCron in industries like finance and logistics to automate tasks such as encryption and secure file transfers. It's also integral in managing data operations, facilitating communications between systems, and executing SQL jobs, enhancing operational efficiency across sectors.

SMA Technologies

Sample Customers

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

7 Eleven, ABB Sécheron SA, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Amazon Europe Core, Apple, Assa Abloy, Aston Martin, Banco Santander, BMW (Australia)

Buyer's Guide

Control-M vs. VisualCron

September 2025

Free Report: Control-M vs. VisualCron

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