ActiveBatch by Redwood vs OpCon comparison

ActiveBatch by Redwood and SMA Technologies are both solutions in the Workload Automation category. ActiveBatch by Redwood is ranked #13 with an average rating of 9.0, while SMA Technologies is ranked #7 with an average rating of 9.1. ActiveBatch by Redwood holds a 2.9% mindshare in WA, compared to SMA Technologies’s 1.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ActiveBatch by Redwood users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of SMA Technologies users who would recommend it.

ActiveBatch by Redwood

Read 36 ActiveBatch by Redwood reviews

2,024 Views
1,498 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

OpCon

Read 59 OpCon reviews

1,951 Views
1,736 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

ActiveBatch by Redwood

OpCon

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 2025

OpCon and ActiveBatch by Redwood compete in the automation software category. ActiveBatch seems to have an edge due to its flexibility and advanced integration features, particularly through its API capabilities.

Features: OpCon offers auto-scheduling, Corelation Keystone integration, and a self-service solution manager, which are valuable for automating batch-processing tasks, particularly in the credit union sector. It also enables connecting over multiple platforms with out-of-the-box functionality (OOC). ActiveBatch provides a robust library of pre-built job steps and superior API integration. It facilitates job automation management with complex dependencies and offers real-time monitoring and PowerShell scripting for greater task flexibility.

Room for Improvement: OpCon could improve by enhancing graphical displays and refining the self-service interface. Challenges exist with ease of use and notifications, and users want more dynamic custom templates for complex tasks. ActiveBatch could enhance its GUI and monitoring dashboards, improve cloud support, and provide better internal documentation. More intuitive user experience and deeper integrations are also desired.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: OpCon is primarily deployed on-premises with praised customer support but presents a learning curve and availability issues. ActiveBatch offers more deployment options, including on-premises and cloud, thus providing increased flexibility. Its customer support is noted for being helpful and responsive, often compared favorably against other solutions.

Pricing and ROI: OpCon is a premium yet cost-effective product due to its automation capabilities and offers various licensing models. The ROI is evident through workforce efficiency and time savings. ActiveBatch's pricing is viewed as fair, with flexible agentless models suitable for different business sizes. Strong ROI is noted, although recent price changes might affect perceptions. Both are recognized as valuable investments for their automation returns.

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

Buyer's Guide

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. OpCon

September 2025

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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

ActiveBatch by Redwood

Ranking in Workload Automation

13th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Process Automation (17th), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (14th)

OpCon

Ranking in Workload Automation

7th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of ActiveBatch by Redwood is 2.9%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpCon is 1.8%, down from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Workload Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
OpCon	1.8%
ActiveBatch by Redwood	2.9%
Other	95.3%

Workload Automation

Featured Reviews

Shubham Bharti

Associate Consultant 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.

Read full review

Jose Rivera Hernandez

Senior VP of Technology at Triangle Credit Union

Helps automate all kinds of jobs and it's worth the price because it saves a lot of time and money

One problem that I had with them when we got SMA Technologies is that sometimes the jobs fail, but they automatically restart. SMA Technologies automatically gets a notification that the job has failed, and they restart it on their end, so now, we have the job restarting twice. There were times when we came into the office in the morning, and we had two files because the job ran twice. I do not know if the system can prevent a job from running the second time. If a job has run successfully, or it is running, it should not run again.

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

"Using this tool, if there are any huge failures, we immediately get an email notification, and the proper team will be informed, at which time they can act accordingly."

"ActiveBatch provides summary reports and logs for further analysis and improvements in monitoring servers, which is very handy."

"As far as centralization goes it's nice because we can see all these processes that are tied to this larger process. The commissions, FTP processing, the reporting, the file moves to the business users — all that is right there. It's very easy to read. It's easy to tie it together, visually, and see where each of these steps fits into the bigger picture."

"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."

"ActiveBatch can automate predictable, repeatable processes very well. There is no real trick to what ActiveBatch does. ActiveBatch does exactly what you would expect a scheduling piece of software to do. It does it in a timely manner and does it with very little outside interference and fanfare. It runs when it is supposed to, and I don't have to jump through a bunch of hoops to double check it."

"The nice thing about ActiveBatch is once we have created a specific job that can be easily be replicated to another job, then minimal changes will have to be made. This makes things nice. Reduction of coding is substantial in a lot of cases. The replication of one job to another is just doing a few minor tweaks and rolling it into production. This decreases our development costs substantially."

"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."

"ActiveBatch has reduced work by providing automated workflows across several different applications."

More ActiveBatch by Redwood pros

"The most valuable features are its integration into Windows, into VM, and into AIX, as well as SQL."

"We recently did a branch acquisition of another bank, though not a full bank. With that, we had to convert all of their ACH transactions. It was a very complicated product that we received from our core provider, Fiserv, for some translation programs. It was very cumbersome to run through the process, convert it out, get output files, etc. Without anyone touching it, I was able to automate the full process from pulling in the files from this other bank, converting everything needed, and posting it to our customer's account 24-hours throughout the day."

"I have been pleased with the support that we can get from the European partners. I think they are very good. All the time, when we have a question, they have an answer. It is very reassuring to have that support every day. Then, you can concentrate on your job and OpCon is just there to work. For us, it's perfect."

"It makes everything simpler. Once OpCon is in, it just repeats itself day after day. We don't have to worry about whether a process will be missed. It will run every single time. We are not dropping jobs or missing stuff. When you have multiple institutions, it's very easy to miss jobs. You get on a roll, start doing things, and then forget somebody. With OpCon, everything is done."

"One of the advantages of OpCon is the ability to use the API and web services. We couldn't do that with our previous solution. We have been able to change our procedure for ticketing. When a job is down, we can immediately create a ticket from OpCon in our ticketing solution, which is ServiceNow, using the web services."

"Previously, we would receive a file from a vendor, then we would have to go through and make changes to individual accounts in our core system. There are probably between 10 to 20 accounts any given week. It probably took around five minutes for it to run through the report and make all the changes, and that was if there was nothing complicated with all very straightforward changes. Now, that is done in 30 seconds."

"We have found it scales very well. We run thousands of thousands of jobs every day, and sometimes thousands of jobs in a few hours."

"There are three features which are valuable: the automated calendar functions; the notification process for failed jobs or unscheduled events occurring, via email and text messaging; and the ability for the scheduling package to communicate across multiple platforms."

More OpCon pros

Cons

"It could be easier to provide dashboards on how many jobs are running at the same time; more monitoring."

"An area for improvement in ActiveBatch Workload Automation is its interface or GUI. It could be a little better. There isn't any additional feature I'd like to see in the tool, except for the GUI, everything looks good."

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

"The monitoring dashboard could have been more user-friendly so that in the monitoring dashboard itself we can see the total number of jobs created in the system and how many were currently active/scheduled/chained."

"There are very few documents that provide us with detailed information on the troubleshooting of errors that occur during integration with the existing environment."

"The help center and documentation are not that helpful."

"They have some crucial design flaws within the console that still need to be worked out because it is not working exactly how we hoped to see it, e.g., just some minor things where when you hit the save button, then all of a sudden all your job's library items collapse. Then, in order to continue on with your testing, you have to open those back up. I have taken that to them, and they are like, "Yep. We know about it. We know we have some enhancements that need to be taken care of. We have more developers now." They are working towards taking the minor things that annoy us, resolving them, and getting them fixed."

"A nice thing to have would be the ability to comfortably pass variables from one job to another. That was one of the things that I found difficult."

More ActiveBatch by Redwood cons

"The initial setup is very complex, but that's not necessarily something that needs to be improved. I'm told that in the next version they're improving the upgrade process. So that's in the works already."

"The initial setup was fairly complex."

"It would be nice to go to a fully thin client."

"Usage is a little complex. It's not like you can bring somebody in and they can just use it. They have to be trained... As far as complexity goes, it's right up there."

"The UI refresh rate is really bad and needs improvement."

"Do your first install, your first upgrade, with SMA. It's simple, it's as per the manual, as per the training, but you need that little bit of confidence."

"The biggest area where there is room for improvement would be integration with their code. They've got a function for embedded scripts and it would be nice if that worked with a code or versioning management system, like GitLab."

"The one area it needs some help in is the mainframe area because that is not its strength. They support the mainframe but it's not something that they are good at."

More OpCon cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

"Scaling is pricey."

"OpCon cost us $80,000 in 2017 money, and that included everything: support, installation, onsite assistance during the conversion, etc. It's been a worthwhile investment by far."

"Operating OpCon comes with a cost."

"I have seen some contracts, and it seems that Control-M is a lot more expensive than OpCon, but I do not know the pricing of OpCon. Control-M seems to be four or five times more expensive than OpCon."

"I am the one who signs the contract. In the beginning, when I started working here, it seemed very expensive, but after I learned everything that it does, I found it worth the price."

"While the base pricing is reasonable, the à la carte options are making the overall cost more complicated and potentially problematic."

"The cost is based on the number of jobs. You pay for what you use. For us, the support cost is between €20,000 and €30,000 per year. It's too expensive."

"While the overall cost is reasonable, I'm interested in exploring options for making the managed automation solution, specifically the mass solution, more cost-effective."

More OpCon pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Insurance Company

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Computer Software Company

45%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	13
Large Enterprise	47

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	29
Large Enterprise	19

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about OpCon?

My favorite feature is the dashboard feature, which shows jobs that are running, and completed, any failures, and provides dashboard reporting.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpCon?

I am the one who signs the contract. In the beginning, when I started working here, it seemed very expensive, but after I learned everything that it does, I found it worth the price. I would recomm...

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What needs improvement with OpCon?

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Comparisons

Control-M vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 16% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 13% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 9% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 8% of the time

Automic Automation vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 8% of the time

More ActiveBatch by Redwood Competitors

Control-M vs OpCon

Compared 25% of the time

IBM Workload Automation vs OpCon

Compared 11% of the time

VisualCron vs OpCon

Compared 10% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs OpCon

Compared 10% of the time

UiPath Platform vs OpCon

Compared 7% of the time

More OpCon Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ActiveBatch by Redwood

November 2025

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Buyer's Guide

OpCon

October 2025

Download OpCon product report

Also Known As

ActiveBatch

No data available

Overview

ActiveBatch by Redwood enhances efficiency with features like job scheduling, integration, and real-time monitoring. It supports diverse platforms, automates tasks, and offers a single-pane view with robust security.

ActiveBatch streamlines automation by offering drag-and-drop functionality, pre-built job steps, and native integrations. Its customizable workflows and alert system aid in managing complex workloads like data processing and server monitoring across hybrid environments. While it effectively reduces manual errors and enhances productivity, areas like navigation and support for cloud platforms need enhancement. New users may face challenges due to its complexity and steep learning curve, and further improvements in reporting, mobile access, and training could provide additional support to users.

What important features does ActiveBatch offer?

Comprehensive Job Scheduling: Manages and automates complex workloads efficiently.
Integration Capabilities: Seamlessly connects with different platforms and applications.
Real-time Monitoring: Offers a single-pane view for quick issue identification.
Customizable Workflows: Tailors processes to specific organizational tasks.
Robust Alert System: Ensures timely notifications for critical events.
Data Protection: Incorporates strong security measures for secure operations.

What benefits should be considered when evaluating ActiveBatch?

Enhanced Efficiency: Automates repetitive tasks, reducing manual intervention.
Improved Productivity: Streamlines processes across hybrid environments.
Error Reduction: Decreases likelihood of manual errors.
Platform Support: Provides integration with diverse systems.

In finance, ActiveBatch is implemented for orchestrating batch processes and data management. The healthcare industry utilizes it for automating patient data updates and server monitoring, while the retail sector benefits from file transfers and inventory management automation.

ActiveBatch by Redwood

OpCon enhances automation with features like auto-scheduling and Corelation KeyStone integration, empowering users with self-service capabilities. Its intuitive interface and flexibility boost productivity, providing reliable automation and efficient file transfers.

OpCon is a powerful automation platform known for streamlining operations through features like auto-scheduling and robust integration capabilities. It facilitates seamless automation, allowing users to execute tasks without direct environment access and simplifies job dependencies. Users benefit from self-service capabilities, which enable easy task execution by non-IT staff, reducing errors and human intervention. With its modern interface, OpCon supports efficient file transfers and integrates effectively with multiple systems, enhancing productivity. While offering significant scalability, OpCon users suggest improvements in web functionality, script-writing, and graphical displays, along with enhancements in user authorization and notification systems. There is also a need for better template management, clearer logging, improved mobile accessibility, and expanded training resources.

What are OpCon's Key Features?

Auto-scheduling: Efficiently automates task scheduling.
Corelation KeyStone Integration: Allows for automation without direct environment access.
Self-service Capabilities: Enables non-IT users to execute tasks with ease.
Modern Interface: Simplifies job dependencies and task management.
File Transfers: Supports secure and efficient file management.
Flexibility: Integrates with diverse systems to boost productivity.

What ROI Can Users Expect?

Increased Productivity: Automation reduces manual task dependency.
Error Reduction: Streamlined processes minimize human intervention.
Scalability: Supports growing business needs effectively.
Time Savings: Frees up resources for strategic initiatives.

OpCon is widely used in industries like financial services, where automation and scheduling tasks are critical. Financial institutions rely on OpCon for core processing tasks, including reporting, automated workflows, and vendor file exchanges. The platform handles high volumes of jobs across platforms, ensuring efficient operations and reducing reliance on manual processes.

SMA Technologies

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

LOHR, Carnival Cruise Lines, Herbalife, Digital Federal Credit Union, Synergent, Frandsen Bank & Trust

Buyer's Guide

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. OpCon

September 2025

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