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Redwood RunMyJobs vs Rocket Zena comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

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
Sponsored
Ranking in Workload Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Redwood RunMyJobs
Ranking in Workload Automation
16th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Rocket Zena
Ranking in Workload Automation
22nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of JAMS is 3.0%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Redwood RunMyJobs is 4.5%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rocket Zena is 3.0%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
JAMS3.0%
Redwood RunMyJobs4.5%
Rocket Zena3.0%
Other89.5%
Workload Automation
 

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.
MaheshKumar6 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Analyst at Electronics For Imaging, Inc
Future-proof and powerful with great support
Improvements include: 1) Cost of the Software. Redwood is more expensive than most of the other Automation Software available today; they could make it budget-friendly. 2) It has limited reporting features. Some basic reporting features are missing. 3) There is no option to extract data in Excel. This feature could help in finding errors in the data. 4) Integration with ServiceNow is not supported. 5) The cloud platform compatibility is not up to the mark. 6) Security standards need to be improved. 7) Handling failure is not great; the workflow stops when a job fails and human intervention is required. 8) Configuration and set-up are difficult for someone with less coding knowledge. 9) They need to provide more documentation to assist new users.
JuanGonzalez6 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Solutions Manager at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees
A continuously evolving, stable solution, with responsive support
The visual whiteboard for design and execution included with the solution is very crucial to those who are new to Rocket Zena, especially so that the learning curve is minimized and they can focus on accomplishing the task. We process our system's payroll through Rocket Zena. The fact that it's a multi-process, multi-layered application, means that we can rely on the solution for kicking off processes, notifying user vendors of the steps, completions, error logging, and historic events from the previous run times. Rocket Zena's ability to automate jobs on the mainframe as a distribution workload automation solution is good. The solution continuously improves over time. We're eager to start the latest upgrade this coming year that'll put us on the cloud. Hopefully, this will improve the product even more. We can run things natively without the scheduler if needed. The solution working properly and up to date without the need for a mainframe scheduler is crucial. We use the solution to manage a few complex operational workflows end-to-end across multiple technology stacks. Rocket Zena does a great job of simplifying our cross-platform processes through automation. The solution helps speed operations up and keeps them automated allowing us to focus on other priorities. The solution helps increase our completion rates by working overnight to meet our SLAs. Rocket Zena completes 30 percent of our workload outside of our standard work hours. Rocket Zena's cross-platform job scheduling helped us save around 40 percent of programming time by automating repetitive tasks. We use the solution to transfer our current files and keep up with our infrastructure on a few automated jobs, such as refreshing our database which happens overnight. The solution helped free up around 15 percent of our engineer's time to focus on more value-added work.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It makes everything that we want to do so much easier. We have had a number of instances in the past where we have had developers who have been working on a project, and even though we have had JAMS for all these years, they will create some SQL Server Agent job, or something like that, to run a task. When it is in code review and development is complete, the question always comes around, "Can JAMS do this?" The answer has always been, "Yes." Pretty much anything we have ever developed could be run by JAMS."
"The most valuable aspect of JAMS is its robustness."
"It's a full-featured job scheduling tool. The part that I liked the best was the support team. This tool was new, and we were all learning it and setting up the different jobs that were complex in nature. Their support team was very responsive in helping us out through the setup and resolving the issues. They have been incredibly awesome."
"One of the things I like the most, as a SQL DBA, is the fact that we can manipulate tables in the background. Also, the fact that you can have your own views and work with the product the way it fits best is a very helpful feature."
"Fortra's JAMS helped us centralize job management across our platforms and applications. This is critical because we schedule tasks across multiple applications and operating systems, using triggers and start dates to coordinate their execution."
"It's worth its weight in gold and we cannot get rid of it now."
"JAMS has been a beneficial monitoring tool for our project in terms of being able to deliver data that is essential for users."
"JAMS is easier to use and cheaper than our previous solution. The installation is more straightforward, and JAMS has a graphical user interface, so it's more accessible."
"Moving to a SaaS solution has a lot of advantages."
"This program works with every browser."
"We can achieve anything that anything that we would like to do. In SAP, it's not generally possible with just with SAP. So we have solution manager as an option, but run by job."
"With automation in place, employees can focus on more strategic tasks that require human expertise, increasing overall productivity."
"Redwood is of value to our organization due to of its ease of use and the ability to automate and orchestrate any platform that we utilize today."
"It saves us a lot of time and money by doing jobs automatically."
"One of Redwood Software's features that I liked was its event-driven automation, which allows IT teams to respond to real-time events, alerts, and notifications from numerous systems."
"Redwood is more flexible and we can schedule the tasks based on different time zones."
"You can click Ctrl-G and bring a diagram view. You're able to view in a diagram format. The view that it provides is easy, and you can move to the left, up, or down. You can double-click on a certain process. It'll drill into that process and all of its underlying components. You can double-click on an arrow or a component, and it'll bring up a screen that'll have all the variables that are assigned to that particular piece, as well as the values at run time. So, the diagram feature of it, at least for me, is pretty valuable."
"Once you master it, it's a pretty good tool."
"I like the whole product, but specifically, I like the license part. It's very easy to acquire a license for this product."
"I have found the scheduling feature the most valuable, as I can map dependencies by using ASG-Zena and it gives a nice, quick visualization as to where things are."
"The most valuable feature is the FTP file transfer."
"We haven't had any problems since we installed it. It runs as expected, we haven't had any critical problems. It helps keeps the business running 24/7."
"Its FTP feature is very good, as is scheduling any process or task with the Zena client. I have found it to be very helpful. If a task fails, it gives you a prompt."
"From a Linux configuration point of view, Rocket Zena is straightforward. It's fairly easy to set up the server and agents once you know how to do it."
 

Cons

"The UI could be better. There were some things that were not quite intuitive, such as the search tool. When we tried to search for jobs, we had to clear the entire search and then go in and enter the new search query. That's something that wasn't intuitive for a new user."
"For scalability, I would rate it as seven because when we have a huge volume, sometimes the tool is not so responsive."
"Sometimes the UI is not the most responsive I've ever used. But because it does its job, I don't complain."
"The JAMS automation code isn't so clean."
"We have had a lot of people working from home who can't always connect to the JAMS server. We use VPN, as most companies do, and we have it set up so that everybody can access the JAMS server. But many times, our people cannot access it... JAMS could do a better job of telling you what the problem is when you try to log in to the server."
"One issue which can prevent jobs from running is when a script gets into a loop."
"JAMS handles exceptions fairly well but there are some areas where it might improve a little bit. It has to do with being able to automatically handle exceptions, out-of-the-box, rather than having to code them."
"The client is horrible. Every time JAMS puts out a survey on what they can improve, I always say, "The client: When you are setting up jobs, it is quite horrible." The response has been, "Well, we are just using the Windows foundation," and I am like, "Why isn't it only your product?" We can get around it now that we know its quirks, but it is not the most user-friendly of tools out there. The UI is completely unintuitive. We had to go and open up a support ticket with JAMS just to get something back. It is not user-friendly at all."
"Having a graphical user interface for the dashboard would be great."
"Enhancing the user interface would make it more appealing to new users with limited technical knowledge."
"Redwood RunMyJobs should add more good features."
"Due to the abundance of competing automation technologies available on the market, connectivity with any cloud platform can be improved."
"Currently, our developers aren't able to access their own objects in the user acceptance testing server and production system server as they are assigned the developer access role, which is kind of a solid role, and no changes or additions can be made to it."
"It lacks some of the common reporting features. I'm a bit surprised that there aren't some standard reports to be able to extract any data on usage. They've described to us that customers have different reporting needs, so they let them develop those, but reporting is a common need. It would be helpful to have it as part of the solution."
"It has limited reporting features; some basic reporting features are missing."
"Redwood automation software could be made more user-friendly and intuitive, making chores and automation processes easier for users to complete."
"Another one that is probably a little bit bigger for me is that when there is an issue or there's an error, it writes on a different screen."
"Another one that is probably a little bit bigger for me is that when there is an issue or there's an error, it writes on a different screen. I have to find the actual process name and go to a different screen to view the alert that got generated. On that screen, everyone's processes, not just the processes of the folks in my department, are thrown. It takes me a while to find the actual error so that I could go in there and look at the alert. It could be because of the way it was set up, but at least for me, it isn't too intuitive."
"The UI is not intuitive, and it would be nice if there was a web interface."
"In the web interface, it stacks the tasks across the top, and they accumulate until you close or clean those out. That seems a little cumbersome. You must right-click and close all tabs constantly to keep the console clean and manage your views."
"In the next release, I would like the user experience to be improved. The user interface should be more appealing to gen-z."
"The scheduling mapping is a little disjointed. There is no wizard-type approach."
"One area where it could be improved is communication between the different servers. Sometimes there are processes that have already been completed but we get a status notification that they're still active."
"The documentation has room for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"JAMS is relatively inexpensive, with additional costs only incurred for tags, other services, and optional support renewals."
"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."
"Fortra's JAMS pricing structure has deteriorated significantly since its acquisition by Fortra."
"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."
"JAMS is priced competitively compared to similar solutions and offers flexible licensing options to cater to user needs."
"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."
"It initially surprised me because we went from an application that was priced by connection to agents/the number of agents to an application that was priced based on the number of job executions. At that time, many of the products we looked at were also priced on job execution. That seems to be more common in the business or in the vendors that provide solutions out there, but that was probably our biggest difference."
"The pricing and the licensing are good. It is affordable and can be used to improve and optimize productivity."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
6%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
8%
Insurance Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise20
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise55
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JAMS?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that the pricing was acceptable. I have gone with JAMS licen...
What needs improvement with JAMS?
I am fine with what JAMS offers and have nothing to suggest for improvement. JAMS' code-driven automation is not wide...
What is your primary use case for JAMS?
My main use case for JAMS is scheduling, which is the primary usage. I am mainly using JAMS for scheduling various jo...
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Also Known As

No data available
Redwood Software - Workload Automation Edition, Redwood Business Process Automation - Workload Edition, RunMyJobs, Redwood RunMyJobs
ASG-Zena
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital
AMD, American Home Shield, Avaya, Burberry, Centrica, City of Dallas, The Container Store, Core & Main, Daikin, Dart Containers, Deere, Energizer, Epson, Halliburton, Keen Foodware, National Gypsum, Rockport Group, Ryder, Technicolor, The University of Michigan, Virgin Money, Whitbread
Fraternidad Muprespa
Find out what your peers are saying about Redwood RunMyJobs vs. Rocket Zena and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.