ActiveBatch by Redwood vs Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow comparison

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow

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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

JAMS

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of JAMS is 2.6%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ActiveBatch by Redwood is 2.9%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow is 1.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Workload Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
JAMS	2.6%
ActiveBatch by Redwood	2.9%
Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow	1.7%
Other	92.8%

Workload Automation

Featured Reviews

reviewer2770605

Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

Has streamlined complex job scheduling across scripting languages while reducing manual effort

JAMS could be improved with a web client that is accessible and as fast as a normal website, eliminating the need to RDP to the servers to access the JAMS client. A functionality running on the JAMS server to continuously check the JAMS agents would ensure they are working properly. If an agent is not responding, a feature to restart the service from the job server machine would be beneficial. The upgrade process, particularly when switching from V6 to V7, could be clearer in terms of documentation, ideally with screenshots showing exactly what needs to be done on each screen.

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Abdul_Samad

Application Administrator Lead at Bluestem

Manages thousands of jobs daily and reduces downtime through secondary node support

The current feedback I receive from my end users regarding ActiveBatch by Redwood highlights issues with the tabs or panes during job modification. When the next user monitors it, they need to close the pane or job and reopen it to see the changes reflected. If the end user makes an update, it will not be visible unless they start from the beginning again. Implementing a refresh button would be helpful for real-time updates when the end user needs to see changes immediately. We currently face issues with the web console of ActiveBatch by Redwood. When users operate through an RDP session, every user has their own ActiveBatch by Redwood application. However, on the web console, users encounter daily activity issues where the job instances do not appear or update correctly, and they cannot view the latest logs. This issue is only present on the web console, as the application itself works without any problems. ActiveBatch by Redwood can be improved by adding more features, as we are not currently handling cloud-based applications like S3 buckets and Azure. Connecting to these cloud platforms would be a helpful enhancement.

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IsmailPeer

Business and Technology Strategy Lead at Cognix Inc

Operational workflows improve as we address needs but technical support costs affect resources

Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow is easy to use and offers great scalability. The more we include and extend our capabilities, we can easily scale up according to our needs. When we compare it to other tools in the market, such as Control-M and other technologies, Airflow offers a lot of flexibility. Using this tool minimizes costs and maximizes efficiency.

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

"It's a full-featured job scheduling tool. The part that I liked the best was the support team. This tool was new, and we were all learning it and setting up the different jobs that were complex in nature. Their support team was very responsive in helping us out through the setup and resolving the issues. They have been incredibly awesome."

"The overall product is fantastic. I love it. It has been a fantastic, solid product. If I have one tiny bit of a problem with it, the support team gets in touch with me right away. I don't know if I've had another service that has been as fantastic as the JAMS support team."

"Our company is based on data. Everything we do is data-driven, so it has been very valuable having one place where we can process all of the data and do batch schedules with chunks of data."

"It makes everything that we want to do so much easier. We have had a number of instances in the past where we have had developers who have been working on a project, and even though we have had JAMS for all these years, they will create some SQL Server Agent job, or something like that, to run a task. When it is in code review and development is complete, the question always comes around, "Can JAMS do this?" The answer has always been, "Yes." Pretty much anything we have ever developed could be run by JAMS."

"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 product is easy to use."

"JAMS has helped save IT staff time by automating tasks previously performed with scripts, and its scheduling feature has been particularly useful."

"The most valuable feature for us is that it's DR-ready. With respect to disaster recovery, it has the built-in capability for failover to our DR site. If all of the required ports are open, it can be done seamlessly."

More JAMS pros

"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."

"The most valuable feature is its stability. We've only had very minor issues and generally they have happened because someone has applied a patch on a Windows operating system and it has caused some grief. We've actually been able to resolve those issues quite quickly with ActiveBatch. In all the time that I've had use of ActiveBatch, it hasn't failed completely once. Uptime is almost 100 percent."

"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."

"ActiveBatch helped us automate and schedule routine tasks such as data backups, file transfers, database updates, and report generation, which frees IT staff to focus on other studies."

"One of the most valuable features of this solution is the versatility of the prebuilt jobs."

"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."

"ActiveBatch by Redwood has positively impacted our organization because we are able to process files very effectively."

"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."

More ActiveBatch by Redwood pros

"One of the product's main strengths is that it is well-suited for a DevOps pattern, allowing us to automate our CI/CD pipeline."

"Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow is easy to use and offers great scalability; the more we include and extend our capabilities, we can easily scale up according to our needs."

Cons

"I would like a simple web interface that I could give to my team to go in and kill jobs or see why jobs died so that we don't have to drill down deeper into the application and know everything about it. It would be good to have a really clean web engine that would say here are the jobs running. We can then click to see the time running and whether any of them fails and other similar things. I know they have one, but it's not very simplistic."

"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."

"The search capability needs to be improved because when we try to search for a job, it's hard to do."

"The JAMS automation code isn't so clean."

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

"I want JAMS to implement a global search function."

"The ACL or access permission area needs to be improved. When it comes to defining and providing security permissions, it's a bit confusing if you are new to JAMS. JAMS needs to improve the features for security access or permissions."

"If there were a softcover book on how to really take advantage of all of JAMS' tools, I would buy it. I do better with training books than online searching, so a book would be helpful."

More JAMS cons

"The monitoring dashboard could have been more user-friendly so that in the monitoring dashboard itself we can see the total number of jobs created in the system and how many were currently active/scheduled/chained."

"There is this back and forth, where ActiveBatch says, "Your Oracle people should be dealing with this," and Oracle people say, "No, we don't know anything about ActiveBatch." Then, it all falls back on me as to what happens. Nobody is taking responsibility. This is the biggest failing for ActiveBatch."

"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."

"Whenever there is an overload, we are seeing crashes happening."

"They have some crucial design flaws within the console that still need to be worked out because it is not working exactly how we hoped to see it, e.g., just some minor things where when you hit the save button, then all of a sudden all your job's library items collapse. Then, in order to continue on with your testing, you have to open those back up. I have taken that to them, and they are like, "Yep. We know about it. We know we have some enhancements that need to be taken care of. We have more developers now." They are working towards taking the minor things that annoy us, resolving them, and getting them fixed."

"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."

"There are very few documents that provide us with detailed information on the troubleshooting of errors that occur during integration with the existing environment."

"Some of the advanced features in the user interface are a bit confusing even after referring to the documents."

More ActiveBatch by Redwood cons

"To be very honest, technical support from AWS is extremely expensive."

"The documentation provided is good."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."

"Our licensing is pretty cheap because we have a state solution. So, we pay only $1,000 a year."

"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."

"In the end, you'll find that it's really worth the price. There is some sticker shock, but it's worth every dime."

"The pricing of JAMS has not been an issue for us, as it has allowed us to save time."

"JAMS is relatively inexpensive, with additional costs only incurred for tags, other services, and optional support renewals."

"Definitely check how many single processes you want to run and count them as jobs. That is how you would work out your pricing on JAMS. For example, if you're running a number of commands and you can put them all into one script and run that script, you can count that as one job."

More JAMS pricing and cost advice

"If you compare ActiveBatch licensing to Control-M, you're looking at $50,000 as opposed to millions."

"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."

"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 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."

"The price was fairly in line with other automation tools. I don't think it's exorbitantly expensive, relatively speaking."

"Currently, we are paying approximately $7,000 yearly, which includes support."

"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."

"It is not an inexpensive solution but it is less expensive than other options."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Insurance Company

Performing Arts

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

25%

Outsourcing Company

Comms Service Provider

Transportation Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	18

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	13
Large Enterprise	47

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about JAMS?

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

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JAMS?

They recently switched to subscription-based pricing, which increased. The price is fair considering the functionalit...

What needs improvement with JAMS?

As far as we are using JAMS version 6, it looks good and there is nothing major to add about it. Everything is functi...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ActiveBatch Workload Automation?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for ActiveBatch by Redwood has been great; we recently renewed ...

What needs improvement with ActiveBatch Workload Automation?

I believe ActiveBatch by Redwood could be improved because the UI could be modernized.

What is your primary use case for ActiveBatch Workload Automation?

My main use case for ActiveBatch by Redwood is file processing. I use ActiveBatch by Redwood for file processing for ...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow?

I rate the product pricing a five. It is not an inexpensive solution but it is less expensive than other options like...

What needs improvement with Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow?

Customization in general depends on the use cases that we are trying to address, but I don't have a specific thing ri...

What advice do you have for others considering Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow?

Custom Generalizations do not directly correlate with specific sections conventional to reviews. Less clarity on dire...

Redwood RunMyJobs vs JAMS

Comparisons

Control-M vs JAMS

Compared 18% of the time

Compared 10% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs JAMS

Compared 9% of the time

Stonebranch vs JAMS

Compared 9% of the time

OpCon vs JAMS

Compared 4% of the time

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Control-M vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 17% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 11% of the time

Stonebranch vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 9% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 8% of the time

Appian vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 3% of the time

More ActiveBatch by Redwood Competitors

Astro by Astronomer vs Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow

Compared 20% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow

Compared 13% of the time

Automic Automation vs Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow

Compared 12% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow

Compared 11% of the time

AWS Step Functions vs Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow

Compared 4% of the time

More Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow Competitors

Product Reports

JAMS

Download JAMS product report

ActiveBatch by Redwood

Download ActiveBatch by Redwood product report

Download Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow product report

Workload Automation

December 2025

Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow report

Also Known As

No data available

ActiveBatch

No data available

Interactive Demo

JAMS Software

Demo not available

ActiveBatch by Redwood

Demo not available

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Overview

JAMS is an automation and job scheduling solution designed for workflow optimization, catering to businesses large and small with flexible licensing and integration options.

Offering both Core and Advanced packages, JAMS supports a range of environments from small teams to large-scale operations. Its standout features include integration with platforms like PowerShell, SQL, and SAP, coupled with capabilities such as dependency management and natural language scheduling. JAMS simplifies job management, centralizes workflows, and boosts productivity with its robust automation features. Customizable workflows and insightful logging make it adaptable for diverse needs, supported by responsive customer service ensuring seamless operations.

What are JAMS's key features?

Automation & Scheduling: Flexible automation helps manage complex job schedules efficiently.
Integration: Connects seamlessly with platforms like SQL Server, SAP, and Python for diverse applications.
Centralized Job Management: A unified interface for handling thousands of jobs daily.
Dependency Management: Supports complex workflows with efficient dependency tracking.
Insightful Logging: Provides detailed logs and notifications for precise task execution.

What benefits should users look for in JAMS reviews?

Enhanced Productivity: Automates repetitive tasks, freeing up resources for strategic initiatives.
Scalability: Flexible licensing models grow with business size and needs.
Efficient Workflow Automation: Streamlines job orchestration across environments.
Responsive Support: Helps ensure smooth operations with quick troubleshooting.

In industries, JAMS is employed for automating workflows and managing batch jobs. Organizations utilize it for SSIS, SQL Server tasks, file transfers, and integrating with vendor systems, achieving efficient file automation and data management. Scheduler enables precise execution of thousands of tasks daily, enhancing operational efficiency.

JAMS Software

ActiveBatch by Redwood enhances efficiency with features like job scheduling, integration, and real-time monitoring. It supports diverse platforms, automates tasks, and offers a single-pane view with robust security.

ActiveBatch streamlines automation by offering drag-and-drop functionality, pre-built job steps, and native integrations. Its customizable workflows and alert system aid in managing complex workloads like data processing and server monitoring across hybrid environments. While it effectively reduces manual errors and enhances productivity, areas like navigation and support for cloud platforms need enhancement. New users may face challenges due to its complexity and steep learning curve, and further improvements in reporting, mobile access, and training could provide additional support to users.

What important features does ActiveBatch offer?

Comprehensive Job Scheduling: Manages and automates complex workloads efficiently.
Integration Capabilities: Seamlessly connects with different platforms and applications.
Real-time Monitoring: Offers a single-pane view for quick issue identification.
Customizable Workflows: Tailors processes to specific organizational tasks.
Robust Alert System: Ensures timely notifications for critical events.
Data Protection: Incorporates strong security measures for secure operations.

What benefits should be considered when evaluating ActiveBatch?

Enhanced Efficiency: Automates repetitive tasks, reducing manual intervention.
Improved Productivity: Streamlines processes across hybrid environments.
Error Reduction: Decreases likelihood of manual errors.
Platform Support: Provides integration with diverse systems.

In finance, ActiveBatch is implemented for orchestrating batch processes and data management. The healthcare industry utilizes it for automating patient data updates and server monitoring, while the retail sector benefits from file transfers and inventory management automation.

ActiveBatch by Redwood

Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow streamlines the deployment and management of data pipelines using Apache Airflow on AWS, providing a scalable and secure environment for workflow orchestration.

It allows users to easily create and monitor their workflows, leveraging seamless integrations with AWS services and ensuring compliance with security and operational best practices. The service handles the underlying infrastructure, freeing users from tasks like provisioning and scaling, while also offering enterprise-grade capabilities, such as the ability to manage sensitive data with robust security features.

What features make Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow valuable?

Automatic Scaling: Dynamically adjusts resources based on workflow demands.
Integrations with AWS services: Offers built-in support for services like S3 and Redshift.
Version Management: Tracks and manages DAG versions with ease.
Security: Provides network isolation, encryption at rest, and IAM roles.

What benefits or ROI should you look for in reviews?

Reduced Operational Overhead: Minimizes the need for manual infrastructure management.
Enhanced Scalability: Easily adapts to workload changes.
Improved Efficiency: Facilitates faster deployment of data workflows.
Cost-effective: Optimizes resource usage and minimizes costs.

Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow is widely implemented across industries such as e-commerce, finance, and healthcare, where complex data pipelines are essential for operational decision-making and analytics. Companies benefit from its ability to manage large volumes of data efficiently and integrate with diverse data sources, enhancing their analytical capabilities.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Sample Customers

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

Informatica, D&H, ACES, PrimeSource, Sub-Zero Group, SThree, Lamar Advertising, Subway, Xcel Energy, Ignite Technologies, Whataburger, Jyske Bank, Omaha Children's Hospital

Information Not Available

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow