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Automic Automation vs VisualCron 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

JAMS Scheduler
Sponsored
Ranking in Workload Automation
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Automic Automation
Ranking in Workload Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
104
Ranking in other categories
Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (16th)
VisualCron
Ranking in Workload Automation
25th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Managed File Transfer (MFT) (21st), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (30th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of JAMS Scheduler is 3.6%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Automic Automation is 4.5%, down from 7.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VisualCron is 2.4%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
JAMS Scheduler3.6%
Automic Automation4.5%
VisualCron2.4%
Other89.5%
Workload Automation
 

Featured Reviews

SP
Developer at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees
Centralized scheduling has improved automation and reduces manual monitoring for complex workflows
The best features JAMS Scheduler offers are centralized job scheduling, dependency management, and monitoring. I also appreciate the alerts and retry options because they help us handle failures without constantly checking jobs manually. Centralized scheduling makes it easier to manage all our jobs from one place instead of maintaining multiple schedulers or scripts. Dependency management is especially useful for chaining workflows because JAMS Scheduler can automatically trigger the next job only when the required previous step completes successfully. Another useful feature is the monitoring and alerting. If a scheduled job fails or runs longer than expected, we can quickly identify it and take action, which is particularly helpful for production support and reducing manual monitoring. JAMS Scheduler has helped quite a bit with identifying common job failures, missed schedules, dependency issues, and execution errors. The alerts and job history make it easier to identify the failure point and take corrective action without manually checking every workflow. JAMS Scheduler's code-driven automation has been useful for handling more complex scheduling logic and workflows that go beyond simple time-based triggers. It is important for us because we can combine scripts, dependencies, conditions, and parameters to support different production scenarios without creating too much manual intervention.
Peter Grundler - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at Tricise
Helps to move away from manual tasks and offers wide platform support and web-based interface
Customers want to move away from manual monitoring and checking processes. Automating these processes helps in time-saving and reduces human error. When you automate business processes, it reduces mistakes. It eliminates the risk of manual errors such as typos. There is a 20% to 30% reduction in human error. It fulfills all the needs when it comes to visibility and control across various operating platforms. It is the perfect product for managing processes that span multiple operating platforms. Automic Automation has the widest platform support compared to other products, such as Control-M, Tivoli from IBM, or Stonebranch. It definitely helps with compliance processes. We have had a lot of customers for two years with a focus on compliance, and it works. They were successful. Due to the fact that our customers can automate a lot of things, it reduces operating costs. It is hard to give a number because the savings are different for each customer. If a customer never had any automation, there could be about 80% savings after implementing Automic Automation, whereas for a customer who already has automated tasks, the difference will be less by adding Automic Automation. They might see 5% to 10% more savings. Automic Automation helps improve our ability to meet SLAs. In the recent versions, SLA management has been integrated, which previously was an external component. Because a lot of customers used it and asked Broadcom to implement SLA management into the workload engine, Broadcom included it. We see more and more customers running their SLA management via the Automic Automation product.
Sourav-Dutta - PeerSpot reviewer
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…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"JAMS Scheduler has indeed helped centralize the management of jobs across all platforms and applications in our department."
"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."
"JAMS Scheduler helps centralize the management of jobs across all platforms and applications, which is very important for our organization because it has improved scalability and reduced costs."
"By using JAMS, my company has seen benefits such as getting to know about Google products and the latest features that are newly launched by Google, and they help me in building my projects portfolio and engaging with knowledge."
"We have seen a practical return on investment, mainly through reduced manual monitoring and fewer missed job executions."
"Saving five to six hours of our working time weekly is significant because it reduces the need for manual scheduling, which is vital for our job and routine checks, helping my team focus more on their other operational responsibilities and making our workflow more organized."
"We looked at other companies, like VisualCron, that were cheaper, but one of the main sticking points was the fact that they wouldn't have provided a central location for us to monitor across all servers. That was one of the biggest selling points of JAMS."
"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."
"If you would have to start all your jobs manually, it would cost you a lot of time and money."
"The two main things about it are its versatility and stability."
"We automate very manual, robust tasks, which are very time consuming and not error-free."
"The scheduling feature is very user-friendly."
"The functionality is great, the scripting language is very powerful. They can adapt to most use cases. Very good community of different companies and a user base so when we have problems we can go to other people."
"Compared to other products, the stability is remarkable."
"We can run the solution on both cloud and on-prem environments."
"One of the big features that they did implement, that a lot of people, us included, were asking for for a long time, is the ability to do zero downtime upgrades. They have introduced that."
"VisualCron has enabled us to efficiently automate and maintain many tasks with minimal effort from our internal IT resources."
"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."
"It helped us reduce manual steps."
"VisualCron makes everything clearer and easier to maintain."
"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."
"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 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."
"VisualCronv is currently handling so many different critical processes for our company, it's become a key factor in our livelihood and success."
 

Cons

"When looking at a folder in JAMS with many jobs, it would be good to have better information in the list display of what's inside those jobs. We get some information, but other important details are missing."
"All my machines at work are Macs. JAMS client is a Windows-based thing."
"There are some improvements needed for JAMS Scheduler; I would like to see more detailed error diagnostics and clearer troubleshooting guidance when scheduled jobs fail."
"Another improvement I suggest for JAMS Scheduler is concerning the JAMS Scheduler desktop client. After prolonged non-use, it just freezes for me, and I cannot even close the scheduler."
"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."
"JAMS doesn't allow us to implement SOC controls. We are a company that trades stocks on the New York Stock Exchange, so all our transactions are audited. It has a feature that saves the file for only a month but doesn't segregate the data between finance and SOC-related compliance."
"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 cost has definitely gone up tremendously. That is where I do know, as much as the feature sets are there, and if the newly acquired company is going to be doing a pushback, they might just say, 'Do we still need to pay this much? Or at that point, should we look into an alternative?'"
"Our recent experience with technical support has not been good, because it took a couple of months to get feedback. Traces and reports were sent, but were not analyzed for at least two months before providing feedback, and they did not give the right traces. This took two months to find out, so that was not too good."
"I would not recommend using Automic's technical support for complex problems."
"The interface could be made more user-friendly in terms of job creation and scheduling, especially when doing bulk job creation."
"The tool lacks interoperability features."
"There has to be a better way to visualize things in the application without having so many windows open."
"There are some problems when using the new interface, which is normal, as it is a new technology."
"I would like to see more types of Calendars in the next release of this solution."
"There are certain jobs that are triggered one after another. It would be helpful to have a more user-friendly way of seeing how these jobs are connecting from one server to another."
"I've mentioned before that it would be great to see a move away from SQLCE and XML configuration files."
"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."
"I want to improve the UI in VisualCron, as it's not as user-friendly, particularly when setting up the task scheduler. If you're familiar with the tool, then no problem, but if not, you'll have a problem typing text because sometimes, the cursor points to other places, so there's an issue with text box alignment in VisualCron. That was painful for me when I was just a VisualCron novice, but when you become used to it, there won't be a problem."
"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."
"The documentation is a bit weak."
"An area for improvement in VisualCron is its cluttered interface."
"Some preferences and permissions are not quite self-explanatory, but those are rather advanced features."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"JAMS is priced competitively compared to similar solutions and offers flexible licensing options to cater to user needs."
"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."
"In the end, you'll find that it's really worth the price. There is some sticker shock, but it's worth every dime."
"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 pricing of JAMS has not been an issue for us, as it has allowed us to save time."
"There are no additional costs other than the license for Fortra's JAMS which is affordable."
"For what it does, the product is priced very well."
"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."
"Automatic is heavily integrated in our organization. The cost to change would be a huge factor for us, and we have not found any other product that is better out there."
"Do your own proof of concept. Make sure you know what you want. Be clear about what you want the product to do for you. Go out and meet with the vendor, then test it."
"We have received a lot of time and cost efficiencies from using the product."
"The pricing is based on the number of servers and agents."
"I only know that AWA is cheaper than Control-M, but I'm not aware of the numbers."
"Its price is way up there with BMC. It is a little bit on the expensive side."
"The cost of arrays is high. If you want to buy an array for an application, and see value from it, you need about half a million dollars. That is too expensive."
"Before I joined this company, Automic had a contract with its parent company, and their pricing was very competitive. However, when we split into multiple businesses, the contract increased significantly, becoming an expensive tool."
"The price is a bit high."
"The pricing is extremely fair, and because of that I recommend purchasing multiple instances to split out the processing load across multiple application servers."
"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."
"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
17%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise30
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise67
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JAMS?
My experience with pricing for JAMS Scheduler was good. The pricing was reasonable, and the vendor only charged us fo...
What needs improvement with JAMS?
JAMS Scheduler can be improved by sectioning off credentials and also the web functionality and setting that up.
What is your primary use case for JAMS?
My main use case for JAMS Scheduler is to trigger integrations as well as send out alerts and reports. For sending al...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Automic Workload Automation?
The pricing was client-wise, but they are changing it to execution-wise pricing. So, we are in negotiation.
What needs improvement with Automic Workload Automation?
Automic Automation has some disadvantages; it is more simplified, and sometimes it can be complicated. The technical ...
What is your primary use case for Automic Workload Automation?
I have been dealing with Automic Automation for probably around ten years. I have been both a partner with Automic, w...
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Also Known As

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Automic Dollar Universe
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Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital
ING, Adidas, 84.51, ESB
7 Eleven, ABB Sécheron SA, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Amazon Europe Core, Apple, Assa Abloy, Aston Martin, Banco Santander, BMW (Australia)
Find out what your peers are saying about Automic Automation vs. VisualCron and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.