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ActiveBatch by Redwood vs Spot by Flexera comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.3
JAMS enhances efficiency, reducing IT labor and costs, optimizing resources, and allowing focus on critical tasks, despite licensing costs.
Sentiment score
7.4
ActiveBatch by Redwood boosts ROI by streamlining workflows, improving efficiency, and reducing costs with effective automation and management.
Sentiment score
7.9
Spot by Flexera cut compute costs by 75%, saved over 500,000 euros annually, and improved flexibility and operations.
The design of JAMS makes it very easy to copy jobs and make minimal changes while ensuring functionality.
Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
The cost has definitely gone up tremendously.
Principal Data Base And Infrastructure Engineer at a outsourcing company with 501-1,000 employees
It saved IT time by 50%.
Vice President, Information Technology at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Automation with ActiveBatch by Redwood significantly reduced the repetitive operational work, improving analyst productivity by around 25 to 30%, mainly because less time was spent manually triggering these jobs, checking dependencies, or fixing missed schedules.
Ai/Data Analyst at CSD
We require fewer team members to handle operations due to its robust automation.
Application Administrator Lead at Bluestem
I saw a roughly 25% time saving on routine operations with ActiveBatch by Redwood, and we needed fewer manual interventions, allowing my team to focus on other priorities because of this tool.
Cloud Engineer at TO THE NEW Digital
By using Spot by Flexera across a year, we were able to save more than 500,000 euros.
License manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Our technology predicts demand, selects the cheapest instance mix, sizes the workloads appropriately, and scales it automatically based on policy, resulting in significant savings by reducing manual work and enhancing our flexibility, which has helped accelerate our deployments.
Global Hyperscaler Alliances Director at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
I cannot share the exact number, but I can share the figure that my EC2 and EKS compute cost reduced by around 65 to 75% with Spot.
Dev Ops Engineer at a construction company with 11-50 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.1
JAMS is praised for its quick, knowledgeable customer service, offering proactive support with effective solutions like code examples.
Sentiment score
7.1
ActiveBatch customer service is responsive and reliable, with effective communication, though complex issues may need escalation and additional support.
Sentiment score
8.4
Spot by Flexera provides responsive and effective customer service, receiving high ratings for their excellent technical support.
Their response is prompt, exemplifying how support should be.
Manager of Reliability Engineering and Security Operations at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
They are very quick to respond depending on the issue's severity.
System Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
We contacted JAMS vendor, who guided us through the necessary steps, and after following their guidance, everything was resolved.
ETL Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
We often need to escalate issues to level two or three for solutions related to long-standing problems.
Application Administrator Lead at Bluestem
What stood out to me is that the platform has a lot of features, so having responsive support really helps when workflows become more complex.
Ai/Data Analyst at CSD
Customer support for ActiveBatch by Redwood has been responsive and knowledgeable whenever we need any help.
Cloud Engineer at TO THE NEW Digital
I would rate the customer support a nine out of ten.
Global Hyperscaler Alliances Director at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
We did not have to use it many times, but the few times that we did use it, it was very fast and very useful.
License manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.6
JAMS is scalable, efficiently managing thousands of jobs, adaptable to various environments, and supports seamless infrastructure expansion.
Sentiment score
7.8
ActiveBatch by Redwood excels in scalability, managing complex workflows and integrations efficiently without performance bottlenecks across various environments.
Sentiment score
7.6
Spot by Flexera is scalable, adaptable, and open-source, effectively managing AWS expansions and connecting diverse data sources.
Those are situations where it has helped us to just say that we don't really care in which tech stack that we are in, whether it's latest or not, but the forward as well as the backward compatibility has been of great help.
Principal Data Base And Infrastructure Engineer at a outsourcing company with 501-1,000 employees
We might be underutilizing it, but as more jobs require processing, additional servers would be necessary.
System Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
JAMS's scalability is noteworthy; we run 6,000 jobs per day without facing any problems.
Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
In data-heavy processes involving API integrations, reporting, and ETL workflows, it supports growing workloads while also maintaining stable and organized execution.
Ai/Data Analyst at CSD
ActiveBatch by Redwood's scalability is excellent; it experiences minimal failures and outages.
Application Administrator Lead at Bluestem
The scalability of ActiveBatch by Redwood is excellent.
Cloud Engineer at TO THE NEW Digital
It is also a very easy tool to connect to different data sources and different servers since it is open source.
License manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Spot's scalability is quite good, and it can be expanded to multiple environments.
Dev Ops Engineer at a construction company with 11-50 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
JAMS is highly reliable and stable, with minimal downtime and infrequent failures, even under heavy execution volumes.
Sentiment score
8.1
ActiveBatch by Redwood is reliable and stable, minimizing disruptions and reducing manual intervention across various environments.
Sentiment score
6.3
Spot by Flexera is stable but faces data update delays, requiring manual IT asset corrections and user-reported server discrepancies.
We experience periods of major incidents annually due to capacity constraints, which result in job failures.
Manager of Reliability Engineering and Security Operations at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
Being on the new version, there's been zero downtime.
System Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
When the servers are under high load, it can take more than one day sometimes.
Internship (Engineer) at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Once workflows are properly configured, they can run continuously and predictably, reducing operational delays and manual follow-up work.
Ai/Data Analyst at CSD
ActiveBatch by Redwood is highly reliable and runs jobs on schedule.
Cloud Engineer at TO THE NEW Digital
In Spot by Flexera, we could see both computers, the old and the new one, but the system was not recognizing that the old one was no longer being used.
License manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
 

Room For Improvement

JAMS users seek an intuitive UI, enhanced search, better documentation, integrations, monitoring, performance, and clearer deletion dependencies.
ActiveBatch needs a better interface, integrations, onboarding, documentation, automation reliability, cloud support, customer service, and performance improvements.
Spot by Flexera could improve through storage cost optimization, better integrations, enhanced UI guidance, timely updates, and Kubernetes insights.
Another area for improvement would be the addition of source control for jobs internally, as this feature would solve several problems for me.
Manager of Reliability Engineering and Security Operations at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
A major improvement would be the integration of AI to help us accomplish various tasks.
System Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
If around 5,000 or more jobs run at a time, JAMS slows down, and we have to wait around five to 10 minutes or restart JAMS scheduler services.
ETL Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
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.
Application Administrator Lead at Bluestem
Another improvement area could be smarter analytics or AI-driven recommendations, such as proactively identifying workflow bottlenecks, failed job patterns, or optimization suggestions instead of relying mostly on manual monitoring.
Ai/Data Analyst at CSD
I rate ActiveBatch by Redwood an eight out of ten because it is powerful, but a perfect score would require a more modern, user-friendly interface and slightly faster performance.
Cloud Engineer at TO THE NEW Digital
Continuously making advancements based on customer feedback.
Global Hyperscaler Alliances Director at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Spot could be improved by adding features that help identify data to optimize storage costs by detecting datasets within our environment based on criteria such as age and usage.
AVP DevOps and Product Support at a recruiting/HR firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
More guided onboarding would help teams adopt advanced features faster.
Dev Ops Engineer at a construction company with 11-50 employees
 

Setup Cost

JAMS offers competitive pricing, flexible licensing, and value despite recent price changes from Fortra's acquisition, outperforming alternatives.
ActiveBatch by Redwood provides valuable automation with a subscription model, inclusive support, and no agent fees, despite cost concerns.
Users praise Spot by Flexera's pricing for its competitiveness and convenience, rating it highly against market alternatives.
The price is fair considering the functionality and importance of the tool, although the increase did unsettle our management.
System Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
My thoughts on the pricing of JAMS are that I won't say it is cheap, but it is cost-efficient, and that should be acceptable.
Consultant at HCLSoftware
The pricing and licensing were fair.
Database Analyst / Architect at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
They are very reasonable and not overly expensive, considering what it offers is worth the price I pay.
Software Engineer at Finance Trust Bank
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for ActiveBatch by Redwood has been great
Application Administrator Lead at Bluestem
The main benefit comes from the amount of manual effort and operational time saved through automation.
Ai/Data Analyst at CSD
The pricing is reasonable and convenient, and the value it offers is completely in line with what I am spending.
Dev Ops Engineer at a construction company with 11-50 employees
I was aware of different pricing, setup costs, and licensing across the company.
License manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

JAMS enhances workflow efficiency with flexible scheduling, robust automation, seamless integration, and comprehensive management, optimizing resources and operations.
ActiveBatch by Redwood enhances efficiency with robust scheduling, seamless integration, user-friendly interface, and scalable workflow automation features.
Spot by Flexera optimizes cloud costs, manages resources efficiently, and integrates with AWS, improving scalability and decision-making with AI.
JAMS has positively impacted my organization by completely removing the headache of scheduling jobs, not just for the organization but for all internal operations teams need.
Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
JAMS helps centralize the management of jobs on all of my platforms and applications, which has helped my organization significantly.
Consultant at HCLSoftware
By using JAMS, we have gained a lot more efficiencies in terms of all of those to streamline it, and there is no necessary need for having an overnight engineer just keeping an eye on all of this.
Principal Data Base And Infrastructure Engineer at a outsourcing company with 501-1,000 employees
The addition of AI has made troubleshooting and supporting users through ActiveBatch by Redwood quicker for me.
Application Administrator Lead at Bluestem
Automating the scheduled data workflows and integrations helped improve analyst productivity by around 25 to 30%.
Ai/Data Analyst at CSD
Cross-platform integration helps my daily work as we automate tasks across Windows, Linux, and other cloud tools seamlessly.
Cloud Engineer at TO THE NEW Digital
Spot's automated cost optimization works by continuously analyzing the workload and applying policies to minimize cloud spend without sacrificing performance.
Global Hyperscaler Alliances Director at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
The fact that it can mix dozens of instance families dynamically is something which the AWS native autoscalers simply cannot do.
Dev Ops Engineer at a construction company with 11-50 employees
Spot helps us detect such changes within AWS at least one hour prior, allowing us to have a mitigation plan in place and host other servers within the same setup to avoid impacting the application.
AVP DevOps and Product Support at a recruiting/HR firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

JAMS
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Workload Automation (3rd)
ActiveBatch by Redwood
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (12th), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (10th), Workload Automation (8th)
Spot by Flexera
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (20th), Server Virtualization Software (14th), Cloud Operations Analytics (1st), Cloud Analytics (3rd), Compute Service (10th), Containers as a Service (CaaS) (3rd), Cloud Cost Management (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Workload Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ActiveBatch by Redwood3.2%
Control-M10.7%
AutoSys Workload Automation6.6%
Other79.5%
Workload Automation
Cloud Analytics Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Spot by Flexera16.9%
IBM Turbonomic23.1%
Densify16.4%
Other43.6%
Cloud Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

LV
Principal Data Base And Infrastructure Engineer at a outsourcing company with 501-1,000 employees
Automation has replaced nightly monitoring and delivers reliable, unified job scheduling
We have really enjoyed working with JAMS in terms of notifications, alerts, and streamlining. There used to be a process with Automate, which is another product from Fortra, but even before that, the other division of the company that we were merging with had a tool that was built in-house called a file handler or file distributor. It was an in-house developed tool, but it was not as streamlined or as efficient as JAMS is. We literally had to have a dedicated nighttime person monitoring. Although we are 24/7, the divisions of the company that we were using JAMS for have been small scale. While we have automated it, we have streamlined it in such a way that notifications go out and alerts go out, but if there is anything, then we get paged and alerted, and if anything needs to happen at midnight, we can wake up. On the other hand, with the tool I mentioned, the file handler and distributor, we used to have a dedicated nighttime person that had to be sitting and monitoring it to see when a file arrived, whether it met the conditions, and then execute the next particular job. By using JAMS, we have gained a lot more efficiencies in terms of all of those to streamline it, and there is no necessary need for having an overnight engineer just keeping an eye on all of this.
Sai  - PeerSpot reviewer
Ai/Data Analyst at CSD
Automation has streamlined complex data workflows and now saves time on recurring reporting
To improve ActiveBatch by Redwood, the UI could be more modern and intuitive, and another thing that comes to mind is that it can feel overwhelming when workflows become large and complex. Troubleshooting can take extra time when there are multiple dependencies, jobs, and integrations running together. Better visualization of workflow relationships and easier debugging would really help. I would also appreciate seeing more simplified onboarding and documentation for newer users, as there is a learning curve at the beginning. Another improvement area could be smarter analytics or AI-driven recommendations, such as proactively identifying workflow bottlenecks, failed job patterns, or optimization suggestions instead of relying mostly on manual monitoring. From an operational perspective, faster configuration for integrations and cloud-based workflows would make implementation smoother, especially in environments working heavily with APIs and data pipelines. I have covered the main points regarding needed improvements. Overall, the platform is very capable and reliable for automation and workflow scheduling, especially in data-heavy environments. Most of the improvements I want are around making it easier for day-to-day use, such as a more intuitive UI, simpler troubleshooting for complex workflows, better onboarding for newer users, and more intelligent monitoring or optimization insights. The core functionality is strong, and the biggest opportunity is improving the overall user experience and simplifying operational management.
Bruna Müller - PeerSpot reviewer
License manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Centralized asset data has transformed how we manage licenses and make cost-saving decisions
One problem that we faced using Spot by Flexera is that in certain servers, the data was not being updated correctly, and we had a certain delay. For example, someone was using a computer, and then this user received a new one. In Spot by Flexera, we could see both computers, the old and the new one, but the system was not recognizing that the old one was no longer being used. We had a couple of IT assets that were not being used, and we had this information in our internal servers, but Spot by Flexera was not able to update on time. We had to fix this information manually.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Performing Arts
6%
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise23
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise52
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JAMS?
I was not really involved in the pricing, setup cost, and licensing at that level. I am more involved in the technica...
What needs improvement with JAMS?
To improve JAMS, it should resolve the issues with the JD Edwards application and the need for the SSH client connect...
What is your primary use case for JAMS?
My main use case for JAMS is to install, set up, and configure for customers working with JD Edwards application. A s...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ActiveBatch Workload Automation?
I was not directly involved in the pricing, setup cost, and licensing decisions for ActiveBatch by Redwood, so my exp...
What needs improvement with ActiveBatch Workload Automation?
ActiveBatch by Redwood could be improved with a more modern and intuitive user interface, faster performance for very...
What is your primary use case for ActiveBatch Workload Automation?
My main use case for ActiveBatch by Redwood is enterprise workload automation, job scheduling, and orchestrating busi...
What needs improvement with Spot Ocean?
One problem that we faced using Spot by Flexera is that in certain servers, the data was not being updated correctly,...
What is your primary use case for Spot Ocean?
For the past two years, I have been developing a project to implement Spot by Flexera as a software asset management ...
What advice do you have for others considering Spot Ocean?
The interface of Spot by Flexera was very simple to use. Spot by Flexera Academy had lots of important information th...
 

Also Known As

No data available
ActiveBatch
Spot Ocean, Spot Elastigroup, Spot Eco
 

Interactive Demo

 

Overview

 

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
Freshworks, Zalando, Red Spark, News, Trax, ETAS, Demandbase, BeesWa, Duolingo, intel, IBM, N26, Wix, EyeEm, moovit, SAMSUNG, News UK, ticketmaster
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC, Broadcom, JAMS Software and others in Workload Automation. Updated: July 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.