Fortra's JAMS vs VisualCron comparison

Fortra and NetCart AB are both solutions in the Workload Automation category. Fortra is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.8, while NetCart AB is ranked #16 with an average rating of 8.5. Fortra holds a 1.8% mindshare in WA, compared to NetCart AB’s 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Fortra users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NetCart AB users who would recommend it.

Fortra's JAMS

Read 34 Fortra's JAMS reviews

1,859 Views
500 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

VisualCron

Read 11 VisualCron reviews

702 Views
396 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Fortra's JAMS

VisualCron

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Fortra's JAMS and VisualCron based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Workload Automation solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Fortra's JAMS vs. VisualCron Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Fortra's JAMS vs. VisualCron

January 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

Fortra's JAMS

Ranking in Workload Automation

5th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VisualCron

Ranking in Workload Automation

16th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Managed File Transfer (MFT) (15th), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (20th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of Fortra's JAMS is 1.8%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VisualCron is 1.2%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Workload Automation

Featured Reviews

Rob Grafrath

VP, Enterprise Systems at Capio

We can scale up our organization's scheduling and automation without having to add staff to the department

The biggest area with room for improvement is the area that my organization benefits the most from using JAMS, and that is in custom execution methods. I happen to have a very good C# developer. Ever since we got JAMS, he has spent a lot of time talking to JAMS developers, researching the JAMS libraries, and creating custom execution methods. He's gotten very good at it. He is now able to create them and maintain them very easily, but that was hard-won knowledge. If I ever lose this developer, I would be hard-pressed to find anyone who could create JAMS custom execution methods as well as he can since there really isn't all that much help, such as documentation or information, available on how to create custom execution methods. I really think that they could benefit greatly by being much more transparent about C# development, maybe by making a JAMS cookbook or a developer portal where they could throw ideas at each other. One of my complaints with the marketing around JAMS is that it says things like, "It integrates with Teams". They talk about integrating with a lot of things, but marketing doesn't tell you that they are talking about JAMS running PowerShell jobs. Since PowerShell can automate things like SharePoint and Teams, that is how marketing gets away with saying it has so many integrations. JAMS doesn't have as many built-in integrations as they advertise. I think they should build more of them, and improve on the ones they have built.

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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

"I appreciate JAMS for its readily available templates that allow me to create and deliver stand-up presentations within minutes quickly."

"The code-driven automation for more complex scheduling requirements frees up time because it's really easy to use... It's almost like a stand-alone software that we can't live without."

"The most valuable feature is the easily accessible data in the database because we run a lot of SQL scripting against the database."

"The most valuable aspect of JAMS is its robustness."

"I like how you can add new execution methods on the fly. It isn't overly complex to add Python script support to an execution method in the JAMS system. The scheduling is excellent. You can schedule a maintenance window and take that resource unit out of everything. It halts all of the jobs."

"The fact that we no longer need to use Excel spreadsheets is huge. Before JAMS, every group was keeping track of their own batch jobs. Nobody really knew what the other jobs were. So, if jobs failed, other groups wouldn't necessarily know. With JAMS, everything is done through a single scheduler. You can choose who to notify."

"Being able to create a series of chained jobs, which are basically linked jobs is valuable."

"The alerting in it is really targeted... you can set specific alerting so that if jobs in a given folder fail, certain people are alerted. You can also set security at the folder level, so that only people in those areas can go set them. That means that the alerting and security can be set at a very granular level."

More Fortra's JAMS pros

"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."

"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."

"What I like about VisualCron is that like its name, it's a very visual tool. In my previous company, there were a lot of scripts for all kinds of services, and through VisualCron, you get to group all flows and get a nice visual overview. VisualCron also has an alerting feature, so you receive alerts from it. VisualCron makes everything clearer and easier to maintain. Every other solution that I was looking for almost always needed a programmer, but with VisualCron, you can do what you need to do without programming skills, so this is another valuable 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."

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

"It has improved our organization with more automation within the business departments and less administration and development in the IT department. Usually, as the IT department, we are the bottleneck for many requirements within the business. With this tool, the business departments are able to perform many task themselves."

"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."

"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."

More VisualCron pros

Cons

"With no programming experience, I find JAMS code-driven automation challenging due to the required PowerShell scripting."

"The error messages from JAMS often need clarification, hindering our ability to resolve issues swiftly."

"Fortra is getting much better with documentation and examples, but there is still room for improvement."

"The product does not allow the users to cut and paste the job names from the screen."

"JAMS has built-in reporting. I've never really used it. I tried using it a few years ago and I couldn't figure it out. It was wonky. It could be improved upon."

"The monitoring of the JAMS product and its performance is an area of concern for me."

"The UI could be better. There were some things that were not quite intuitive, such as the search tool. When we tried to search for jobs, we had to clear the entire search and then go in and enter the new search query. That's something that wasn't intuitive for a new user."

"One thing that I know that the JAMS people said that they were working on that would be huge for us is a search capability so that you could search for tasks. It may be available in version 7 or in a future release of 7. I think that's on their roadmap. But right now, for us to do a search, we have to search through database queries."

More Fortra's JAMS cons

"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."

"Our suggestion to make it better and more manageable in terms of GDPR: Implement it in a very partnership way."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

More VisualCron cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's expensive, to be honest, but it does the job."

"JAMS is close to the lower end of the pricing models for enterprise scheduling solutions. They are much cheaper than Control-M, as well as some other products that I've used. I also don't know of another solution where you can actually get true, unlimited licensing, where you can have as many instances and as many agents as you want."

"It was $10,000 for the first year. Then, there is a maintenance cost for licensing every year that we get billed $5,000 for every year."

"All licensing models are a little overpriced, but JAMS offers a good value, especially given their support response times and ability to handle unforeseen issues like the SFTP transfers. I hope to find more use cases to get a better bang for our buck."

"There are no additional costs other than the license for Fortra's JAMS which is affordable."

"The licensing model for JAMS is straightforward and based on the number of agents, not the number of jobs you run. It's cheap and fairly simple."

"The pricing is very fair. We have seen very minimal to no price increases over the years. We are not banging down the door of support all the time either. I would imagine if we were a company that submitted a dozen support tickets a week for the last nine years, then it might be a little different because we would be eating up everybody's time. However, for what we get out of it, the pricing is extremely fair. Back when we were originally looking and brought in JAMS, we were looking at a couple of the other competitive products that were in this space, but the pricing from JAMS was far and away better than what the other competitors could offer for the same functionality."

"It's certainly a lot cheaper than Tivoli and Control-M. In comparison to them, you get a lot more bang for your buck. You get pretty much the whole functionality and more, in some cases, when compared to Control-M, but at a fraction of the price."

More Fortra's JAMS pricing and cost advice

"The price is a bit high."

"ROI is one month."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

15%

Healthcare Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

28%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Insurance Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about JAMS?

I find the historical tracking feature of JAMS invaluable for reviewing past events.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JAMS?

Fortra's JAMS pricing structure has deteriorated significantly since its acquisition by Fortra. Previously, both Help Systems and MVP offered more favorable pricing and licensing terms. However, Fo...

See all answers

What needs improvement with JAMS?

The monitoring of the JAMS product and its performance is an area of concern for me. I also need better tools to adopt version seven. Another area for improvement would be the addition of source co...

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

Control-M vs Fortra's JAMS

Compared 25% of the time

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Compared 20% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs Fortra's JAMS

Compared 14% of the time

Stonebranch vs Fortra's JAMS

Compared 10% of the time

Rocket Zena vs Fortra's JAMS

Compared 8% of the time

More Fortra's JAMS Competitors

Microsoft Power Automate vs VisualCron

Compared 47% of the time

Control-M vs VisualCron

Compared 20% of the time

Stonebranch vs VisualCron

Compared 8% of the time

OpCon vs VisualCron

Compared 7% of the time

MOVEit vs VisualCron

Compared 5% of the time

More VisualCron Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortra's JAMS

March 2025

Download Fortra's JAMS product report

Buyer's Guide

VisualCron

February 2025

Download VisualCron product report

Overview

Fortra's JAMS is a powerful tool for workflow automation, batch job scheduling, file transfer, and centralizing tasks, enabling streamlined job management and monitoring from a single console across multiple servers and systems.

Widely used for scheduling SSIS jobs, SQL Server stored procedures, Python scripts, and FTP jobs, Fortra's JAMS offers comprehensive solutions for data manipulation, reporting, backup tasks, and job coordination. Organizations automate file movements, database maintenance, and nightly processes, providing a centralized platform for job management and monitoring across servers and environments.

What are the most important features of Fortra's JAMS?

Planning Capabilities: Efficiently plan and coordinate job schedules.
Job Dependency Management: Manage dependencies between jobs to ensure proper execution order.
Batch Scheduling: Automate and schedule batch jobs seamlessly.
Single Pane of Glass: Centralized console for tracking all automation tasks.
Interactive Agents: Deploy agents for interactive job management.
Natural Language Scheduling: Create schedules using natural language commands.
Custom Execution Methods: Implement custom methods for job execution.
PowerShell Integration: Integrate with PowerShell for enhanced scripting capabilities.
Exception Handling: Robust handling of job exceptions to minimize disruptions.
Monitoring and Historical Views: Comprehensive monitoring and historical job views for better oversight.
Extensibility: Extend the platform to meet specific needs.
File Watching: Monitor files and trigger jobs based on changes.
Complex Scheduling: Handle intricate scheduling requirements for diverse scenarios.

What are the main benefits of using Fortra's JAMS?

Centralized Control: Manage all jobs from a single console.
Efficiency: Increase efficiency by automating repetitive tasks.
Scalability: Easily scale job management across multiple servers.
Reduced Errors: Minimize human errors through automation.
Improved Monitoring: Benefit from robust monitoring and alerting options.
Customizability: Tailor workflows and schedules to specific needs.
Integration: Seamlessly integrate with a wide range of applications and systems.
Time Savings: Save time with efficient job scheduling and execution.

In industries like finance, healthcare, and manufacturing, Fortra's JAMS enables seamless automation of critical tasks, ensuring data integrity, compliance, and operational efficiency. Whether it's automating nightly batch processing for financial transactions, managing data flows in healthcare, or coordinating manufacturing processes, Fortra's JAMS provides a robust solution to enhance productivity and reliability.

Fortra

VisualCron automates tasks like file encryption, scheduling SQL jobs, system integration, data workflow management, and application triggering, making it ideal for handling nightly syncs, FTP server file replacements, job scheduling, and invoice processing.

VisualCron provides an efficient automation solution with features like error and status reporting, API connections, PGP key generation, encryption file creation, and bulk SQL script execution. It simplifies task automation through its mail and event triggers, job variables, conditional execution, and logging with error alerts. Users benefit from its integration capabilities, scheduling flexibility, visual interface, and support for databases and credential management without extensive coding.

What are the most important features?

Simplicity: Easy-to-use interface for seamless automation.
Mail and Event Triggers: Automate tasks based on specific events.
Job Variables: Customize tasks using various input variables.
Conditional Execution: Execute tasks based on predefined conditions.
Error Alerts: Logging and error reporting to ensure task reliability.
Integration Capabilities: Easily connect and integrate with systems and APIs.
Scheduling Flexibility: Create complex schedules with ease.
Visual Interface: User-friendly GUI for efficient management.
Database Support: Manage and automate database tasks efficiently.
Credential Management: Securely handle credentials for various tasks.
PowerShell Commands: Execute PowerShell commands directly.

What are the benefits or ROI users should look for in the reviews?

Efficiency: Streamline and automate repetitive tasks to save time.
Cost Savings: Reduce manual labor and associated costs.
Reliability: Ensure consistency and accuracy in task execution.
Integration: Enhance workflows by integrating with different systems.
Flexibility: Adjust quickly to changes and handle complex scheduling needs.
Support: Benefit from extensive post-sales support and configuration options.
Innovation: Foster innovation by eliminating the need for coding.

Industries like finance, healthcare, and logistics implement VisualCron to automate data workflows, secure file transfers, and schedule critical tasks. It is used to streamline invoice processing, manage large-scale data operations, and ensure compliance through encryption and error reporting. VisualCron enhances operational efficiency, scalability, and security in various sectors, making it essential for businesses requiring robust automation capabilities.

NetCart AB

Sample Customers

Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital

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

Buyer's Guide

Fortra's JAMS vs. VisualCron

January 2025

Free Report: Fortra's JAMS vs. VisualCron

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