AWS Step Functions vs Tidal by Redwood comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Tidal Software by Redwood are both solutions in the Workload Automation category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.9, while Tidal Software by Redwood is ranked #19. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 1.6% mindshare in WA, compared to Tidal Software by Redwood’s 4.5% mindshare. Additionally, 84% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Tidal Software by Redwood users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

Tidal by Redwood and AWS Step Functions compete in the automation tools category. AWS Step Functions has the upper hand due to its strong integration with AWS services and a user-friendly graphical interface.

Features: Tidal is known for its advanced scheduling capabilities, a robust calendaring system, and user permission segmentation, facilitating cross-platform scheduling flexibility. AWS Step Functions excels with seamless AWS services integration, strong orchestration functionality, and a graphical design interface for simplified workflow execution.

Room for Improvement: Tidal needs improvements in reporting tools, user training, and cloud integration. Its interface presents challenges, and though recent updates to the Transporter tool show promise, historical effectiveness has been lacking. AWS Step Functions would benefit from enhanced pricing models, improved fault tolerance, and better third-party tool integration. It faces challenges related to data limit constraints and pricing complexity.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Tidal operates primarily on-premises with limited cloud integration, hindering scalability. Since leaving Cisco, its customer service is responsive and knowledgeable. AWS Step Functions, a cloud service, offers better scalability and is complemented by highly responsive technical support.

Pricing and ROI: Tidal's pricing offers flexibility, predictability, and noted cost-effectiveness, providing significant productivity and operational efficiency gains. Despite AWS Step Functions' complex pricing linked to usage volumes leading to unexpected costs, its integration and reliability are seen as justifying the expense in AWS-centric setups.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Step Functions vs. Tidal by Redwood Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Step Functions vs. Tidal by Redwood

January 2026

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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 February 2026, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of JAMS is 2.8%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Step Functions is 1.6%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tidal by Redwood is 4.5%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Workload Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
JAMS	2.8%
AWS Step Functions	1.6%
Tidal by Redwood	4.5%
Other	91.1%

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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reviewer2706945

Assistant Manager at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Orchestration and integration simplify processes with seamless stability and reliability

I use the Visual Workflow Editor feature of AWS Step Functions. I mainly work through code and then improve it through the visual aspect. There are two ways to do orchestration: through code and through visual. My main task is to develop flows. I have only implemented AWS Step Functions with AWS services, not with any third-party tools. The integration between AWS Step Functions and other AWS services is excellent, working seamlessly with EventBridge, Glue jobs, and databases. I have not encountered any challenges with customers regarding AWS Step Functions that needed me to find a workaround. The pricing of AWS Step Functions is moderate and not particularly costly. AWS Step Functions is affordable for small, medium, and enterprise businesses as an orchestration tool. I have not used any documentation, manuals, or guides for AWS Step Functions as it's very simple to implement. When help is needed, I consult Stack Overflow or AI for commands. Overall rating for AWS Step Functions: 9 out of 10.

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Jim Gillingham

Batch Production Manager at a consultancy with 201-500 employees

Its versatility, ease of use, scalability, and cost-effectiveness make it a 10/10 and the best of the breed

The company is not really big. One of the areas that they are working on is improving the process of migrating jobs from the lower environment to the upper environment. They had used a tool called Transporter, which was a little difficult to use, but they've now released a new tool in August, which I've not yet used, to do that. It's probably called Repository or something like that, but it's a tool for migrating jobs from the lower environment to the upper environment. That's where they needed to improve, and it looks like they may have, but I haven't tried the tool yet. They can do better reporting in terms of production statistics reporting.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability to sequence jobs is excellent; it means we don't have to schedule them individually, and if one fails, it doesn't unwind the entire workflow."

"JAMS has improved my organization by taking a myriad of manual processes and allowing us to automate them. It enables our folks to focus more on tasks that require their human intelligence and their creativity and less on just mundane tasks. It increases efficiency, accuracy, and consistency."

"It has definitely drastically improved our capabilities to scale our automation. Before JAMS, there were a lot of manual processes. We had a couple of operators who spent all day doing that. A lot of the time with human intervention and human processes, it is as good as the person who may be following a procedure and human error is a big problem."

"The most valuable feature of JAMS is its user-friendly interface, especially after upgrading from version six to seven."

"The built-in triggers are great."

"The user-friendly and adaptable scheduler allows us to manage various scheduling scenarios."

"Being able to create a series of chained jobs, which are basically linked jobs is valuable."

"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."

More JAMS pros

"What I like the most about Amazon Step Functions is how easy it is to use."

"The JSON app launched recently allows us to define data execution more easily."

"It is a scalable solution."

"If you want to create a workflow to call one Lambda function after another, and other serverless features, it could save you a ton of money. That's for sure."

"One can rate all the calls and that is a good feature."

"The integration capability is easy, whereas building state machines is tricky."

"AWS Step Functions acts as a high-level layer, allowing us to seamlessly integrate with microservices."

"It's a general solution that you can adapt to your own needs and is simple to use. We like that it can be integrated with everything in the AWS suite, and that the creation of the pipeline can be done using the graphical user interface."

More AWS Step Functions pros

"Tidal helps administrators and users to see the information that is relevant to them in that single pane of glass. They can see jobs running, they can see job history, and they can see job progression. If you look at alternatives like Airflow and clouds, you'd have to design your own UI to monitor the progress of the different jobs that you've created in Airflow. So Tidal is huge for us."

"Tidal Automation software provides real-time monitoring and alerts, allowing users to track job progress and identify potential issues before they cause delays or errors."

"It's the most efficient tool in doing repetitive tasks and saves a lot of time with minimum possibility of error."

"By leveraging machine learning algorithms, Tidal Automation can use this data to optimize turbine settings and improve overall efficiency and performance."

"The most valuable feature is the job scheduler, where you can schedule thousands of jobs to execute at specific times."

"We wouldn't be able to do many of the complex scheduling that we do today without it. For us, it is a mission-critical app. Because if it doesn't work or has a problem, then SAP doesn't function. It is that critical. So, it's an essential tool for us to manage and run SAP jobs."

"The Graphical Views feature is also very good for helping us to understand a job stream. It's great for providing a visual overview of the status of a workflow, especially the Critical Path view. That is one of our favorites."

"The versatility of being able to run on many different types of servers is valuable. There is also a versatility of different services that you could run jobs on. It's highly versatile. You can run a lot of different types of scripts on a lot of different types of servers. It interfaces with all of them."

More Tidal by Redwood pros

Cons

"All my machines at work are Macs. JAMS client is a Windows-based thing. It is all built on .NET, which makes perfect sense. However, that means in order for me to access it, I need to connect to a VPN, then log onto one of our Azure VMs in order to access the JAMS client. This is fine, but if for some reason I am unable to do so, it would be nice to be able to have a web-based JAMS client that has all the exact same functionality in it. There are probably a whole bunch of disadvantages that you would get with that as well, but that is definitely something that would make life easier in a few cases."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"JAMS notifications for hung jobs could be improved."

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

"With no programming experience, I find JAMS code-driven automation challenging due to the required PowerShell scripting."

More JAMS cons

"There is room for improvement in terms of integration with other products. It would benefit from more integration with different applications or services."

"Increasing the payload size would be beneficial."

"It is hard to coordinate the declaratory language."

"It is difficult to suggest improvements at the moment."

"The solution's data size limit can be improved."

"I would like to see more data transformation features in Amazon Step Functions like additional operators and logic."

"The price and support are areas with shortcomings where the solution needs to improve."

"The interface can sometimes feel limited, as we're unable to see what AWS is running behind the scenes."

More AWS Step Functions cons

"Initially, it is complicated to understand the functionalities as there is limited product documentation."

"We've had some quirky stuff happen on an occasional basis where a job does not take off. For example, a job we expected to be finished by 3:00 a.m. is sitting there and not executing when we come in in the morning. We have to go all the way back to the dependencies and then we can see that one of the dependencies has become unscheduled, for some reason. No changes were made to the schedule but this prerequisite job has, all of a sudden, become unscheduled. I have brought this up with Tidal's support but they have never had an answer for it."

"Tidal Software interface could be more intuitive and user-friendly."

"There are several improvement points that our team has provided to the vendor."

"From an administrative point of view, I wouldn't give really high marks to the solution. I actually entertained getting the JAWS application at one point. One of the shortcomings with the scheduler is the reporting capabilities. At least at the time, JAWS was the best that they had for a third-party integration. I think they've got things in the pipeline to help alleviate that gap."

"I don't know if Tidal wants to get into the business of monitoring long-running jobs, but that could be a feature for the future: a job launching and monitoring tool. Using Tidal for monitoring doesn't seem like a good fit, but if they could offer something that did that as an add-on or include it, it might be helpful."

"The user interface is the place that needs the most work. If and when we find issues with the product, they are usually in that area. If I had to choose, that's where I'd want issues, as opposed to in the engine. But the UI is average. It's a little sluggish at times and there are some bugs in it."

"Their software installation and update process could use some improvements. I'm pretty sure they're working on that, but that's definitely an area where it could be streamlined a lot. There's still a lot of manual work that you have to do with the schedule when you deploy masters or do the agents."

More Tidal by Redwood cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It was $10,000 for the first year. Then, there is a maintenance cost for licensing every year that we get billed $5,000 for every year."

"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 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."

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

"This is a good product at a fair price."

"I haven't been involved in the financial side for several years, but we buy one host and unlimited agents, and we get a reasonable price for that. We're happy with the amount we pay and the scalability it provides."

"The pricing is very fair. We have seen very minimal to no price increases over the years. We are not banging down the door of support all the time either. I would imagine if we were a company that submitted a dozen support tickets a week for the last nine years, then it might be a little different because we would be eating up everybody's time. However, for what we get out of it, the pricing is extremely fair. Back when we were originally looking and brought in JAMS, we were looking at a couple of the other competitive products that were in this space, but the pricing from JAMS was far and away better than what the other competitors could offer for the same functionality."

"For what it does, the product is priced very well."

More JAMS pricing and cost advice

"The solution is expensive."

"The solution's price is reasonable."

"Their pricing seems very fair. It is more than the other solutions, but the functionality and the support are very much there. You pay for the job scheduler, and then they have certain things that are built into it, such as the FTP processes. If you then want to do JD Edwards jobs, you need an adapter. If you want to do SQL jobs, there is another adapter. Similarly, if you want to do Oracle jobs, there is an adapter. It is like there is the base and then there are the adapters for the jobs that you want to do, but it seems that's also how they pay for each of those adapters and keep them up to date."

"BMC is really expensive. The other solutions are about the same price. I think Tidal is even cheaper than the others, such as CA, Stonebranch, and JAMS."

"Our yearly licensing costs are between $10,000 to $20,000. They have always been reasonable with us. I like that non-production licensing is about half the cost of production licensing. Licensing is by adapter typically. We have had scenarios where we have had to take an adapter from one environment to another, and they've allowed us to do that. They have made it a very reasonable process. There's definitely a feeling that they will work with you."

"The solution has no hidden costs. It helps me to plan forward into the future. I know that I can add another 100 or a thousand jobs, and that's how much it will cost me today."

"The solution’s licensing model in terms of its flexibility and transparency regarding costs is pretty good. A person can buy the license, and if you decide to stop support, you can do that but still have the product. So, it's not like you're paying constantly to keep that license alive. Certainly, you want to keep support going too. Once you buy it, you own it. It's not like I have to keep paying somebody to keep using it."

"We are satisfied with the pricing of Tidal. It's in the moderate range and it feels very achievable for us."

"If you are willing to shop around to other vendors, you can possibly get a good price on your support license."

"We pay maintenance annually through Blue House of about $9,000. That's for our two environments: production and test."

More Tidal by Redwood pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

27%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Performing Arts

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	7
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	5

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	38

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about JAMS?

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

See all answers

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...

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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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Amazon Step Functions?

The integration capability is easy, whereas building state machines is tricky.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Amazon Step Functions?

My customer's usual use cases for AWS Step Functions that I've been working with include orchestration, flows, diagra...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Amazon Step Functions?

I use the Visual Workflow Editor feature of AWS Step Functions. I mainly work through code and then improve it throug...

See all answers

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 22% of the time

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Compared 12% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 6% of the time

ESP Workload Automation Intelligence vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

JAMS

January 2026

Download JAMS product report

Buyer's Guide

AWS Step Functions

February 2026

Download AWS Step Functions product report

Buyer's Guide

Tidal by Redwood

January 2026

Download Tidal by Redwood product report

Also Known As

No data available

Amazon Step Functions, Step Functions

Tidal Workload Automation, Cisco Workload Automation, Tidal Enterprise Scheduler

Interactive Demo

JAMS Software

Demo not available

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Demo not available

Tidal Software by Redwood

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

AWS Step Functions integrate seamlessly with other AWS services to offer efficient pipeline and workflow management. Its intuitive design allows for streamlined orchestration, easily handling complex tasks.

AWS Step Functions provide robust orchestration and automation capabilities, simplifying the creation of workflows with graphical and JSON-based designs. It excels in managing tasks through advanced parallelization and error handling features. Automatic scaling further enhances performance, ensuring reliability in varied environments. However, improvements are needed in IDE integration, larger data handling, and fault tolerance. Users find value in its capacity for microservice orchestration and data integration, although dependency on the Amazon ecosystem and limited third-party integrations pose challenges.

What are the key features of AWS Step Functions?

Integration with AWS Services: Facilitates seamless coordination with AWS offerings like Lambda and Glue.
Graphical and JSON-Based Design: User-friendly interfaces simplify workflow design and management.
Advanced Orchestration: Efficiently manages task execution with parallelization and error handling.
Automatic Scaling: Ensures optimal performance by adjusting resources as needed.
Microservice Integration: Supports smooth microservice communication and operation.

What benefits should organizations assess when considering AWS Step Functions?

Enhanced Efficiency: Automates and streamlines task execution across platforms.
Scalability: Adapts to workloads, providing flexibility in resource management.
Improved Workflow Management: Facilitates reliable and error-free operations.
Visualization and Automation: Simplifies complex processes with visual tools.
Data Validation and Script Execution: Integrates data operations smoothly within data lakes.

In industries managing data pipelines, AWS Step Functions orchestrate workflows, execute parallel ETL jobs, and integrate various AWS services, enabling smoother operations and efficient data migration. Companies benefit from streamlined processes and robust handling of interdependent tasks.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Tidal Software is a leading provider of enterprise workload automation solutions that orchestrate the execution of complex workflows across systems, applications and IT environments. With a comprehensive portfolio of products and services, Tidal optimizes mission-critical business processes, increases IT cost efficiencies and satisfies legal and regulatory compliance requirements. Hundreds of customers around the world count on Tidal for modernizing their workload automation and driving their digital transformation. Tidal Software is headquartered in Chicago with offices in Houston, London, Minsk, Belarus and Chennai, India. For more information, visit tidalsoftware.com.

Tidal Software by Redwood

Sample Customers

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

Alpha Apps, The Guardian, SGK, Bigfinite

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Buyer's Guide

AWS Step Functions vs. Tidal by Redwood

January 2026

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