ActiveBatch by Redwood vs Stonebranch comparison

ActiveBatch by Redwood and Stonebranch are both solutions in the Workload Automation category. ActiveBatch by Redwood is ranked #6 with an average rating of 9.3, while Stonebranch is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.0. ActiveBatch by Redwood holds a 2.3% mindshare in WA, compared to Stonebranch’s 4.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ActiveBatch by Redwood users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Stonebranch users who would recommend it.

ActiveBatch by Redwood

Read 35 ActiveBatch by Redwood reviews

1,740 Views
702 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Stonebranch

Read 26 Stonebranch reviews

2,860 Views
1,395 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

ActiveBatch by Redwood

Stonebranch

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

Stonebranch and ActiveBatch by Redwood compete in the automation solutions category, both known for their integration capabilities and workflow management. Stonebranch has an edge with its cost-effectiveness and secure file transfers, while ActiveBatch leads in user-friendly automation and integration features.

Features: Stonebranch stands out with its Universal Agent, offering stable performance and minimal maintenance. Its platform-agnostic design ensures seamless integration across diverse systems, including mainframes and cloud environments. Stonebranch excels in secure file transfers and effective workflow automation. ActiveBatch is notable for its comprehensive job steps, integration capabilities, and robust scheduling features, offering centralized management and seamless event-triggered workflow execution.

Room for Improvement: Stonebranch could improve its FTP task reliability, enhance REST API functionality, and offer clearer workflow dependency visibility. Users wish for smoother tool integration and better transparency in addressing customer requirements. ActiveBatch users seek improvements in its graphical user interface, scalability, and beginner usability, along with better cloud and DevOps tool integration. Enhanced documentation and training for both solutions could support new users in navigating their features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Stonebranch offers flexible deployment options and is praised for its straightforward on-premises setup, although mainframe setups can be complex. Its technical support is valued for its responsiveness and expertise. ActiveBatch provides easy setup with hybrid and cloud options and has a reputation for supportive customer service, though some users report delays. Both receive high ratings for customer service, with Stonebranch noted for technical expertise and ActiveBatch for its user-friendly support.

Pricing and ROI: Stonebranch is recognized for competitive pricing and cost-effectiveness compared to other tools, with users experiencing cost savings against legacy systems and reasonable maintenance fees. ActiveBatch, while seen as a solid investment, has had pricing changes due to evolving product features, with flexible licensing options. Users appreciate the positive ROI both solutions provide through enhanced automation and reduced manual tasks, with Stonebranch seen as more budget-friendly and ActiveBatch offering extensive features justifying its cost.

To learn more, read our detailed ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. Stonebranch Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. Stonebranch

April 2025

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Helped 851,604 peers since 2012

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

ActiveBatch by Redwood

Ranking in Workload Automation

6th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Process Automation (7th), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (6th)

Stonebranch

Ranking in Workload Automation

15th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of ActiveBatch by Redwood is 2.3%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Stonebranch is 4.9%, up from 4.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Workload Automation

Featured Reviews

Shubham Bharti

Senior Analyst at Capgemini

Flexible, easy to use, and offers good automation

Occasionally, I find myself contemplating if there is room for improvement in the user interface (UI), and envisioning that with certain enhancements. The UI could potentially offer a more refined and user-friendly experience, fostering smoother interactions and facilitating easier navigation for users engaging with the application. New users might encounter a minor setback due to the absence of readily accessible training videos, which could have otherwise proven to be an invaluable resource in aiding their initial familiarization with the platform, potentially hindering their seamless onboarding process and delaying their ability to harness the software's full range of capabilities to its utmost potential.

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Earl Diem

Sr. Manager - Performance and Automation Engineering at PSCU Financial Services

Allowed us to develop workflows without having to train and develop very specialized skillsets

The Universal Agent is the most valuable feature. Being agent-based and being able to go across multiple technology stacks, which is what our workflows do, Stonebranch gives us the ability to bridge those disparate technologies. It enables us to remove the dependency-gap with the agent so we know the status of the workflow at each step. Workflow development in Stonebranch is straightforward. There is something of a learning curve, but it's not very steep. Being able to develop workflows without having to train and develop some very specialized skillsets to use the tool is very useful. Stonebranch absolutely helped enable digital transformation in our company and it still is. In our automation efforts, we're pushing everything to Informatica and, as we move those ETLs, we're automating the entire workflows. In phase-one and phase-two, there were 244 jobs migrated in from other ETL platforms to Informatica, and we've automated all of those. We have almost 200 jobs remaining. We're going to have something approaching 450 workflows in Stonebranch when we're done.

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

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

"There are hundreds of pre-built steps."

"It has helped with scheduling complex jobs with simple scripts."

"Since I started using this product, I have been able to easily track everything as it mainly monitors, alerts, and looks after all the services - even across platform scheduling - which has helped me immensely."

"The automation feature is a very valuable feature as the associates do not have to worry about performing repetitive tasks (i.e. endpoint security scans on a daily basis) that would take several hours to complete on a daily basis."

"It can connect to a number of third-party/legacy systems."

"The REST API adapters and native integrations for integrating and orchestrating the software stack are very flexible."

"Managing the workload and monitoring the tasks were very difficult with manual interventions. Now, by using ActiveBatch, the process is automated and it runs tasks on a scheduled basis."

More ActiveBatch by Redwood pros

"The support is good from Stonebranch Universal Automation Center."

"We lean a lot on the multi-tenancy that they offer within the product, the ability to get other people to self-manage their estate, versus having a central team do all the scheduling."

"Stonebranch performs well, and the graphical representation is excellent. Overall, it requires more technical effort from our teams, but the solution is intuitive, so anybody can use it."

"I can name the aliases on the agent, so if we need a passive environment for an agent, that's one of the nice features. If our primary goes down, I can bring up the passive one and I don't have to change anything in the scheduling world. It will start running from that new server."

"The interface is very user-friendly and easy to navigate."

"The tasks are incredibly capable, and as long as you name them with a nice, uniform naming convention, they are very useful. You can create some interesting workflows through various machines, or you can just have it kick off single tasks. All in all, I really like the Universal Task. You can do some mutually exclusive stuff, such as an "A not B" kind of thing. It has a lot of capabilities behind the scenes."

"When it comes to agent technology and compatibility with other vendors, from a platform perspective it was the one vendor that fit all the platforms that we have, from your old platforms - mainframe, NSK, IBM i - to the new ones, going into cloud and container"

"The most valuable feature is the reliability of the agents, because we need them accessible and we need to run stuff. The agent technology and compatibility are top-notch."

More Stonebranch pros

Cons

"The product should be improved by providing a customization option."

"It does have a little bit of a learning curve because it is fairly complex. You have to learn how it does things. I don't know if it's any worse than any other tool would be, just because of the nature of what it does... the learning curve is the hardest part."

"As more organizations are moving towards a cloud-based infrastructure, ActiveBatch could incorporate more capabilities that support popular cloud platforms, such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud."

"The interface is not that user-friendly and is a little tough to navigate."

"ActiveBatch UI could use a little more help, and video tutorials would be greatly appreciated for user guides."

"The documentation is very limited, and it can be improved."

"They could provide an easier installation guide or technical support to the organizations during the installation process."

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

More ActiveBatch by Redwood cons

"Stonebranch Universal Automation Center could improve the analytics."

"The Universal Controller is decent for the money it costs... It needs some work to have full features, compared to other products that are out there, specifically IBM's Workload Scheduler."

"I would rate Stonebranch somewhere in the middle for ease of setup. It wasn't too straightforward for us because our infrastructure is complex."

"I have a request regarding our agent on the mainframe. It may time out when communicating to the Universal Controller, when the mainframe is extremely busy. That can cause a task which is running at that time to not see the results of the job that ran on the mainframe. It happens sporadically during times of really busy CPU usage. We're expecting that enhancement from them in the fourth quarter."

"There is room for improvement with its connectivity with the Microsoft SRS system. It is very weak. They keep telling us it works with it, and technically it does, but it does not provide a lot of visibility. We have lost a lot of visibility migrating to Stonebranch, compared with just running tasks on the SRS server. That's really about the only thing that is a sore point for us."

"There is a component called the OMS, which is the message broker. We rely on infrastructure, resiliency, and availability for that piece. If that could change to be highly available just as a software component, so that we don't have to provide the high-available storage, etc. for it, that would be a plus. It would just be cheaper to run."

"It can't handle negative written codes."

"Occasionally, we have an agent that doesn't come back up after patching. That doesn't happen very often... It's really just a restart of the agent and it comes back up. But that might be one thing that could be improved."

More Stonebranch cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"It allows for lower operational overhead."

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

"Outside of licensing fees, there aren't any other costs."

"Stonebranch is cheaper than Control-M, so many companies are using Stonebranch."

"When we reviewed this solution against other vendors, Stonebranch blew everybody out of the water in terms of cost."

"I don't have pricing information, but I do know it's cheaper than our old legacy system. Other than the standard licensing fees there are no additional costs."

"The price of the solution is at a medium level compared to the competition."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

27%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ActiveBatch Workload Automation?

Managing the workload and monitoring the tasks were very difficult with manual interventions. Now, by using ActiveBatch, the process is automated and it runs tasks on a scheduled basis.

See all answers

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

I'd advise users to start by knowing what the actual requirement is and thoroughly assess the automation needs. New users should take advantage of the demos and trial versions so they get an idea o...

See all answers

What needs improvement with ActiveBatch Workload Automation?

After upgrades we are facing a few issues and errors triggered, so focusing on this would be appreciated. Some of the advanced features in the user interface are a bit confusing even after referrin...

See all answers

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Comparisons

Control-M vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 21% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 17% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 13% of the time

Tidal by Redwood vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 8% of the time

VisualCron vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 8% of the time

More ActiveBatch by Redwood Competitors

Control-M vs Stonebranch

Compared 32% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs Stonebranch

Compared 15% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Stonebranch

Compared 11% of the time

ESP Workload Automation Intelligence vs Stonebranch

Compared 9% of the time

JAMS vs Stonebranch

Compared 3% of the time

More Stonebranch Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ActiveBatch by Redwood

May 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Stonebranch

April 2025

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Also Known As

ActiveBatch

Stonebranch Universal Automation Center

Overview

ActiveBatch by Redwood automates and manages batch processes, data integration tasks, and workflow scheduling. It's used for file transfers, data processing, server monitoring, and report generation, supporting both on-prem and cloud environments.

Organizations implement ActiveBatch by Redwood to automate complex job scheduling and data workflows, integrating seamlessly with FTP, SQL, PowerShell, and other systems. With features like real-time monitoring, error handling, and centralized management, users can significantly boost productivity while minimizing manual intervention. Its flexibility in supporting on-premises and cloud environments makes it adaptable for diverse IT landscapes. The tool simplifies workflow orchestration with an extensive library of pre-built steps and robust API integrations, ensuring efficiency in handling various workloads.

What are ActiveBatch by Redwood's key features?

Job automation: Automates routine and complex jobs.
Real-time monitoring: Offers instant insights into job performance.
Customizable workflows: Tailors workflows to specific business needs.
PowerShell integration: Supports advanced script execution.
Job triggering: Initiates tasks based on specific conditions.
File handling: Manages file transfers and processing efficiently.
Server management: Monitors and handles server tasks consistently.
API integration: Connects with various applications for streamlined operations.
Alerting: Provides notifications for critical job events.
Flexible scheduling: Enables detailed and adaptable job scheduling.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Centralized management: Simplifies oversight of all processes.
Productivity boost: Reduces manual effort and errors.
Time savings: Accelerates task completion and workflow execution.
Comprehensive visibility: Enhances monitoring of all job activities.
Reliable performance: Ensures consistent task execution.
Scalability: Adapts to growing business and IT needs.

In various industries, ActiveBatch by Redwood is used to streamline operations, whether in finance handling large-scale data processing, healthcare managing patient records, or retail optimizing supply chains. It addresses specific needs by offering robust automation, efficient job scheduling, and seamless integration with existing systems, driving operational excellence and efficiency.

ActiveBatch by Redwood

Stonebranch automates enterprise-level workload and task scheduling across platforms like Linux, Windows, and mainframe, managing thousands of daily tasks for improved efficiency and visibility.

Stonebranch enables organizations to streamline job scheduling by replacing older systems with a robust solution that automates complex workflows, batch processing, and secure file transfers. Its compatibility with multiple platforms and enhanced visibility aid teams in efficiently managing business processes, database interactions, and IT workflows. Equipped with a Universal Controller and Agent, it provides seamless integration across diverse systems, empowering users with greater control over their tasks. While it fosters digital transformation, there are opportunities for enhancements in areas like graphical workflow overviews and API functionality.

What features does Stonebranch offer?

User-friendly interface for intuitive navigation
Robust agents ensuring reliable task execution
Comprehensive workflow automation tools
Platform-agnostic compatibility for diverse systems
Secure file transfer capabilities
High scalability for growing needs
Effective error handling features

What benefits should users expect?

Improved efficiency in task management
Streamlined processes reducing operational complexities
Enhanced visibility and control over workflows
Seamless integration with existing systems
Support for digital transformation initiatives

Organizations in industries such as finance and healthcare implement Stonebranch for its ability to automate complex processes, manage mainframe and distributed environments, and securely transfer sensitive data. Its platform-agnostic nature caters to the demanding needs of these industries, providing a reliable backbone for essential operations.

Stonebranch

Sample Customers

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

Nissan, Coop, United Supermarkets, Groupon, CSC, Orbitz, Johnson & Johnson, BMW, Qantas.

Buyer's Guide

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. Stonebranch

April 2025

Free Report: ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. Stonebranch

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