Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow vs JAMS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 8, 2025

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

Amazon Managed Workflows fo...
Ranking in Workload Automation
21st
Average Rating
6.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
JAMS
Ranking in Workload Automation
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow is 1.2%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of JAMS is 2.0%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2499300 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manages multiple version changes during development, but the user interface needs improvement
The deployment process could have been more straightforward. It involved enabling the service and choosing between small, medium, or large configurations, followed by reading the documentation to determine the best fit for our use case. However, the documentation provided is good. The installation of the service itself takes only a few minutes.
Patrick Norton - PeerSpot reviewer
Support has been among the most helpful and knowledgeable we've ever worked with but performance monitoring needs improvement
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 control for jobs internally, as this feature would solve several problems for me. JAMS has some quirks. It has a bit of a learning curve. Some exceptions are not intuitive, such as when a job is terminated due to exceeding its defined runaway time limit. This generates a misleading exception message that is difficult for new users to understand and requires experience to interpret correctly. Stalled jobs present a unique challenge, particularly when pushing a system like JAMS version six to its limits. While rare, these instances occur when jobs become unresponsive despite appearing in API queries but not in the monitoring console. Although workarounds exist, they highlight the need for improved native monitoring capabilities within JAMS. Currently, the system assumes flawless operation, necessitating supplemental monitoring tools to detect issues like excessive pending or stalled jobs, ensuring timely intervention by our teams.

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 product's main strengths is that it is well-suited for a DevOps pattern, allowing us to automate our CI/CD pipeline."
"JAMS has improved our productivity immensely because everything flows. I don't think we could operate at our current staffing levels without it."
"Previously, we manually managed file transfers by writing our scripts. The automated MFT feature is great for me and the company. It helps us know where the files are going and enables us to track errors if anything fails. It also makes the connection seamless for third-party vendors."
"The dashboard is intuitive."
"The scheduling and execution of jobs are the most valuable features. The scheduling is important because if there is a task we want to execute at 4:00 AM, there's no way we will have someone who can manually run the job. In addition, we execute 100 to 200 jobs per day, and manual intervention is not an option."
"The planning capabilities are most valuable."
"JAMS has helped save IT staff time by automating tasks previously performed with scripts, and its scheduling feature has been particularly useful."
"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."
"While I appreciate the other features, the agent stands out for its ease of installation and configuration for JAMS monitoring."
 

Cons

"The documentation provided is good."
"There could be a better simulation for banning the termination. You have to simulate every one of the processes in order to have an idea for better planning. This kind of simulation is broken and needs improvement."
"The documentation is not super... It's not as quick and slick as I'd like it to be."
"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."
"I would like to see the ability to interface with Microsoft group-managed service accounts, but they're still in the research phase. They need to ensure everything's legit and safe. The report designer and dashboards could also be improved. We're running 7.3, so I don't know if they have updated the reporting in 7.5, but I think the reports and dashboards could be better."
"As an admin, I would like to have a web-based GUI instead of a client application that we have to install on our PCs."
"With no programming experience, I find JAMS code-driven automation challenging due to the required PowerShell scripting."
"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 knowledge was hard-won knowledge. It was difficult to come by, and if I should ever lose this developer, then I would be hard-pressed to find anyone who could create JAMS custom execution methods quite 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 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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not an inexpensive solution but it is less expensive than other options."
"Fortra's JAMS pricing structure has deteriorated significantly since its acquisition by Fortra."
"JAMS is priced competitively compared to similar solutions and offers flexible licensing options to cater to user needs."
"Take advantage of its scalability. You can start small. The initial cost is very reasonable. Once you have started picking up the tool and adopting it, then you can scale up from there and buy more agents."
"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."
"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."
"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."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"This is a good product at a fair price."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Workload Automation solutions are best for your needs.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Transportation Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Healthcare Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 Control M.
What needs improvement with Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow?
We encounter challenges transitioning from a graphical user interface like Control M to a code-based approach. It does not have a user interface for building or configuring schedules, which makes i...
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow?
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. The scheduling as code feature works efficiently to promote changes t...
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 functionality and importance of the tool, although the increase did unsettle our management.
What needs improvement with JAMS?
A major improvement would be the integration of AI to help us accomplish various tasks. AI could assist in simplifying operations and could potentially enhance the tool's capabilities.
 

Interactive Demo

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC, Broadcom, Redwood Software and others in Workload Automation. Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.