Tidal by Redwood vs VisualCron comparison

Tidal Software by Redwood and SMA Technologies are both solutions in the Workload Automation category. Tidal Software by Redwood is ranked #11 with an average rating of 9.0, while SMA Technologies is ranked #17 with an average rating of 9.0. Tidal Software by Redwood holds a 4.7% mindshare in WA, compared to SMA Technologies’s 1.4% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Tidal Software by Redwood users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of SMA Technologies users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

Tidal by Redwood and VisualCron compete in the IT scheduling and automation category. Tidal seems to have the upper hand with significant large-scale capabilities and intricate permissioning suitable for cross-platform and cross-application workloads, which are essential for financial operations.

Features: Tidal by Redwood offers robust scheduling capabilities, intricate permissioning, and a centralized view for managing tasks across platforms, making it ideal for financial trading firms. VisualCron is known for its user-friendly interface and direct database integration, providing an intuitive experience without requiring deep programming skills.

Room for Improvement: Tidal by Redwood needs more efficient tools for job promotion and enhanced logging, reporting, and cloud integration. VisualCron requires improvements in its interface and documentation, along with a better learning curve for specific features and improved support responsiveness.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Tidal by Redwood supports diverse on-premises and hybrid deployments, with high praise for North American support, though improvement is needed for off-hours support in Asia. VisualCron is favored for straightforward deployment and user-friendly documentation, with generally well-received support but calls for faster response times.

Pricing and ROI: Tidal by Redwood provides a flexible enterprise-scale licensing model with no hidden costs, delivering positive ROI through significant automation capabilities, despite being considered expensive by some. VisualCron offers fair pricing with straightforward licensing, contributing to cost-effective operations. Both solutions show satisfaction in ROI due to improved operational efficiency.

To learn more, read our detailed Tidal by Redwood vs. VisualCron Report (Updated: November 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Tidal by Redwood vs. VisualCron

November 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 879,371 peers since 2012

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 January 2026, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of JAMS is 2.6%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tidal by Redwood is 4.7%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VisualCron is 1.4%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Workload Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
JAMS	2.6%
VisualCron	1.4%
Tidal by Redwood	4.7%
Other	91.3%

Workload Automation

Featured Reviews

Patrick Norton

Manager of Reliability Engineering and Security Operations at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees

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.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

Sourav-Dutta

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…

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

"The dashboard is intuitive."

"JAMS has helped save IT staff time by automating tasks previously performed with scripts, and its scheduling feature has been particularly useful."

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

"The planning capabilities are most valuable."

"JAMS has improved our productivity immensely because everything flows. I don't think we could operate at our current staffing levels without it."

"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."

"While I appreciate the other features, the agent stands out for its ease of installation and configuration for JAMS monitoring."

"I appreciate JAMS for its readily available templates that allow me to create and deliver stand-up presentations within minutes quickly."

More JAMS pros

"The feature that I find to be valuable, as I'm working with other folks, is the ability to cross-schedule across platforms, and the flexibility that comes with that."

"The best feature is that it allows task scheduling based on particular occurrences, like the receipt of files, database updates, or system notifications."

"It's easy to use and easy to administer, and it's very flexible."

"It has been super stable. There are no complaints on stability. We would not be using it if Tidal wasn't stable."

"Tidal Automation is very efficient and can quickly automate most manual and repetitive tasks."

"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."

"We use the solution for cross-platform, cross-application workloads. That's the biggest use for us and that's the biggest advantage."

More Tidal by Redwood pros

"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."

"We don't have to do any coding. We just plug and play and it works."

"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."

"VisualCron is a very powerful program to automate different steps in your business processes. We use it to automate replacing files and inform departments about the replacement."

"What I like about VisualCron is that like its name, it's a very visual tool. In my previous company, there were a lot of scripts for all kinds of services, and through VisualCron, you get to group all flows and get a nice visual overview. VisualCron also has an alerting feature, so you receive alerts from it. VisualCron makes everything clearer and easier to maintain. Every other solution that I was looking for almost always needed a programmer, but with VisualCron, you can do what you need to do without programming skills, so this is another valuable feature of the tool."

"The ability to clone jobs to shorten the time it takes to implement a process has been invaluable, but its flexibility also gives us the ability to create a job that can handle a multifaceted process with a complex workflow."

"The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%."

"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."

More VisualCron pros

Cons

"It does validations when you try to delete an object and if there are any dependencies in place, the deletion process will not proceed... there is no information provided as to what it was that caused the validation to fail... it's quite a tedious process to find which object is getting in the way."

"The JAMS automation code isn't so clean."

"It is important to receive notifications if a charged job fails and SQL is halted. JAMS does not provide halted notifications by default, which is a critical feature that needs to be added."

"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."

"JAMS has built-in reporting. I've never really used it. I tried using it a few years ago and I couldn't figure it out. It was wonky. It could be improved upon."

"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."

"JAMS lacks source control features. Our previous solution had job control language, but JAMS doesn't. When migrating between versions, JAMS doesn't migrate all the data, like job change history, etc. Also, the scheduler doesn't have a way to make jobs invisible, so you can temporarily turn a job off if you decide not to run it today."

"The documentation is not super... It's not as quick and slick as I'd like it to be."

More JAMS cons

"One of the weaknesses of the product is, when something happens, it's difficult to find out the root cause. There are a lot of logs you can take a look at in Tidal. Sometimes, they are useful, but other times, they're not. That is mostly relegated to the administrative team. Users for the most part don't see that and don't know anything about that. They just know they have a problem, then it's up to the administrative team to see what happened and figure out the problem."

"The GUI, the graphical user interface, gets a little bit busy."

"One thing I would like to see improved is that, currently, when an action is executed and finishes in Tidal, it's marked as either "success" or "failure." I would like more options that would flag a job according to multiple options, rather than just "good" or bad"... Tidal has told us that it's possible to do so through the product or with a workaround."

"They can do better reporting in terms of production statistics reporting."

"Tidal's adaptability and user-friendliness could be increased by integrating it with additional programmes and platforms."

"I'm still hoping with Explorer to be able to see end-to-end job streams. That's not really something that's easy to see today in the web client. However, I haven't worked with Explorer yet. One of the things that we have found frustrating is not being able to see an end-to-end job stream across multiple applications within Tidal. We use jobs for that right now, but I have high hopes that we'll be able to see that in Explorer."

"The current user interface of Tidal Software is functional. However, it can be improved to make it more intuitive and user-friendly."

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

More Tidal by Redwood cons

"The documentation is a bit weak."

"Our suggestion to make it better and more manageable in terms of GDPR: Implement it in a very partnership way."

"An area for improvement in VisualCron is its cluttered interface. It isn't always easy to find all functionalities, so what VisualCron needs is a user interface expert who can improve the interface. There's a learning curve in terms of finding what you need from the interface of VisualCron. The technical support for VisualCron also needs improvement in terms of response time. Currently, there's no live support or hotline you can call to get quick answers, so this is what I'd like to see in the next version of VisualCron. A less cluttered and more streamlined interface, where you don't need to hunt for some of the features, is also what I'd like to see in the next VisualCron update."

"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."

"The only problem I face when I use the tool is that it doesn't contain much documentation or it doesn't have many video tutorials on its features."

"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."

"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 would like for VisualCron to expand audit log to show who changed job variables that are initialized per job run."

More VisualCron cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."

"In the end, you'll find that it's really worth the price. There is some sticker shock, but it's worth every dime."

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

"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."

"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."

"There are no additional costs other than the license for Fortra's JAMS which is affordable."

"It's expensive, to be honest, but it does the job."

"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."

More JAMS pricing and cost advice

"They work with you on licensing. So, it has been great. Everybody has different licensing, but I've had good luck with the licensing. They've been very accommodating. You basically need to buy a license for each physical server, but then you're allowed an unlimited number of virtual servers."

"We've been able to purchase more adapters because the cost of the product has been very reasonable."

"Our annual maintenance cost is competitive for what we have and what they do."

"Our licensing model for Tidal is on an annual basis. It is very good and works well for us. Tidal's licensing is very transparent and simple. It lets you know, for the amount you use, that's the price that you pay. So, we buy X number of licenses, and we know that this is where we are. I'm very happy with that. I saw the licensing modules on other platforms, and I didn't like them. Other companies and solutions would calculate the connections, adapters, and instances. I think that's the reason that BMC was pretty expensive: They just didn't understand what our needs are."

"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."

"There have been pricing increases, but with the reduction that our company obtained from Tidal this year, the pricing has become very acceptable for this type of product."

"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."

"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

"ROI is one month."

"ROI is 95 percent."

"The pricing is extremely fair, and because of that I recommend purchasing multiple instances to split out the processing load across multiple application servers."

"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."

"The price is a bit high."

"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."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Workload Automation solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

879,371 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Performing Arts

Computer Software Company

28%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Insurance Company

Manufacturing Company

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	3
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	38

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	5

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...

See all answers

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 Tidal Automation?

Tidal Automation by Redwood is a user-friendly solution.

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Tidal Automation?

I would recommend Tidal Automation by Redwood as the first priority for users looking for any automation tool. Overal...

See all answers

What do you like most about VisualCron?

The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VisualCron?

The price is a bit high. However, it is okay.

See all answers

What needs improvement with VisualCron?

The documentation is a bit weak. The tool must provide a better set of documentation.

See all answers

Comparisons

Control-M vs JAMS

Compared 19% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs JAMS

Compared 11% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs JAMS

Compared 10% of the time

Stonebranch vs JAMS

Compared 8% of the time

Rocket Zena vs JAMS

Compared 5% of the time

More JAMS Competitors

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 25% of the time

Control-M vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 14% of the time

Automic Automation vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 9% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 8% of the time

AWS Step Functions vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 2% of the time

More Tidal by Redwood Competitors

Microsoft Power Automate vs VisualCron

Compared 24% of the time

Control-M vs VisualCron

Compared 18% of the time

OpCon vs VisualCron

Compared 10% of the time

Fortra's Automate vs VisualCron

Compared 9% of the time

Stonebranch vs VisualCron

Compared 5% of the time

More VisualCron Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

JAMS

December 2025

Download JAMS product report

Buyer's Guide

Tidal by Redwood

December 2025

Download Tidal by Redwood product report

Buyer's Guide

VisualCron

December 2025

Download VisualCron product report

Also Known As

No data available

Tidal Workload Automation, Cisco Workload Automation, Tidal Enterprise Scheduler

No data available

Interactive Demo

JAMS Software

Demo not available

Tidal Software by Redwood

Demo not available

SMA Technologies

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

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

VisualCron offers task automation through a visual interface, eliminating the need for programming skills. With capabilities like alerting and variable usage, users benefit from integration with databases, timely task execution, and cross-platform operations.

VisualCron empowers users by simplifying complex workflows. It allows seamless task automation through features like interactive scheduling and role-based operations. Users appreciate its integration capabilities, replacing multiple tools with a comprehensive automation solution. The support system ensures quick assistance, making it a reliable choice for workflow visualization and task execution. However, areas like error handling and interface design require enhancements for improved user experience.

What are the key features of VisualCron?

Visual Interface: Users automate tasks without needing programming skills.
Integration: Connects with databases and multiple systems to streamline operations.
Alerting: Notifies users about tasks and system statuses.
Task Scheduling: Allows interactive management of automated tasks.
Credentials Management: Enables cross-platform operations securely.

What benefits can users expect when evaluating VisualCron?

Increased Efficiency: Reduces the time spent on manual processes.
Cost Reduction: Eliminates the need for multiple tools by consolidating functionalities.
Enhanced Support: Offers robust post-sales support for quicker assistance.
Streamlined Workflows: Simplifies complex task automation.

Organizations leverage VisualCron in industries like finance and logistics to automate tasks such as encryption and secure file transfers. It's also integral in managing data operations, facilitating communications between systems, and executing SQL jobs, enhancing operational efficiency across sectors.

SMA Technologies

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

7 Eleven, ABB Sécheron SA, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Amazon Europe Core, Apple, Assa Abloy, Aston Martin, Banco Santander, BMW (Australia)

Buyer's Guide

Tidal by Redwood vs. VisualCron

November 2025

Free Report: Tidal by Redwood vs. VisualCron

Find out what your peers are saying about Tidal by Redwood vs. VisualCron and other solutions. Updated: November 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

879,371 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Tidal by Redwood vs. VisualCron report.

See our list of best Workload Automation vendors.

We monitor all Workload Automation reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.