ActiveBatch by Redwood vs Appian comparison

ActiveBatch by Redwood and Appian are both solutions in the Process Automation category. ActiveBatch by Redwood is ranked #9 with an average rating of 9.4, while Appian is ranked #8 with an average rating of 7.9. ActiveBatch by Redwood holds a 0.6% mindshare in PA, compared to Appian’s 6.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ActiveBatch by Redwood users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Appian users who would recommend it.

ActiveBatch by Redwood

Read 35 ActiveBatch by Redwood reviews

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177 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Appian

Read 63 Appian reviews

4,037 Views
559 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

ActiveBatch by Redwood

Appian

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Appian and ActiveBatch by Redwood are both prominent in the application development and automation space. Appian stands out with its low-code capabilities, while ActiveBatch excels in end-to-end workflow automation. In terms of rapid development, Appian has an upper hand with its low-code platform, whereas ActiveBatch leads in workload automation.

Features: Appian offers rapid development through its low-code platform, compliance with BPMN 2.0, and strong integration capabilities. It excels in agile development and case management, suitable for creating diverse applications. ActiveBatch provides extensive automation features, single pane of glass for workflow visibility, and robust integration capabilities, making it ideal for complex system management and file transfers. Its scheduling and automation features are highly valued for efficiency.

Room for Improvement: Appian needs enhancements in flexibility and customization, especially in UI design and integration features. There's a demand for better mobile and offline capabilities. ActiveBatch could improve its support for event-based triggers and user interface design. Enhancements in cloud integration and dashboard intuitiveness are also needed. Security features in ActiveBatch require strengthening to future-proof its offerings.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Appian supports deployment across public, private, and hybrid clouds, offering versatility and appealing to diverse infrastructure needs. Customer service is rated well, although growth has overstretched it. ActiveBatch focuses on on-premises and hybrid cloud deployments, advantageous for specific infrastructure requirements but less flexible than cloud offerings. Customer service is generally responsive but would benefit from improved guidance and documentation.

Pricing and ROI: Appian's pricing is seen as moderately expensive but justified by robust features and fast ROI through its low-code model. Licenses are flexible, with enterprise options offering cost savings. ActiveBatch aligns its pricing with its value, competitive compared to similar tools. Both products offer positive ROI, with Appian enhancing process efficiencies and ActiveBatch reducing manual efforts through strong automation capabilities. Appian's pricing may involve hidden fees for additional features, while ActiveBatch provides a clear licensing model.

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

Buyer's Guide

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. Appian

June 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 Process Automation

9th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Managed File Transfer (MFT) (11th), Workload Automation (8th)

Appian

Ranking in Process Automation

8th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Business Process Management (BPM) (12th), Rapid Application Development Software (8th), Low-Code Development Platforms (5th), Process Mining (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Process Automation category, the mindshare of ActiveBatch by Redwood is 0.6%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Appian is 6.2%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Process Automation

Featured Reviews

Shubham Bharti

Senior Analyst 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

Nitin-Agarwal

Delivery Manager (Intelligent Business Automation) - Pega at Persistent Systems

Seamless integration enhances workflows while memory optimization can improve complex processes

I am working with all of these products: Pega, Appian, and OutSystems. I use Appian as a process orchestrator for workflow and rule-based routing, and it is preferred when I am developing an enterprise-wide application. The application is mobile-friendly, allowing me to use it across any device…

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

"For developers, it is easy to orchestrate the workflows and the integration has been very easy."

"It has helped with scheduling complex jobs with simple scripts."

"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."

"We use the main job-scheduling feature. It's the only thing we use in the tool. That's the reason we are using the tool: to reduce costs by replacing manual tasks with automated tasks and to perform regular, repetitive tasks in a more reliable way."

"ActiveBatch's Self-Service Portal allows our business units to run and monitor their own workloads. They can simply run and review the logs, but they can't modify them. It increases their productivity because they are able to take care of things on their own. It saves us time from having to rerun the scripts, because the business units can just go ahead and log in and and rerun it themselves."

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

"The Jobs Library has been a tremendous asset. For the most, that's what we use. There are some outliers, but we pretty much integrate those Jobs Library steps throughout the process, whether it's REST calls, FTP processes, or file copies and moves... That has helped us to build end-to-end workflows."

"It can connect to a number of third-party/legacy systems."

More ActiveBatch by Redwood pros

"Since implementing we have had a faster time to solution, with fewer resources needed."

"Call Web Service Smart Service - Web service integrations with other systems are super simple and fast to create, supported by low code menus."

"It has very flexible adaptation and the ability to save and automate processes."

"Write to Data Store Entity - Saving data in SQL databases is done easily using entities. Entities (CDTs in Appian terminology) define relationships and target schema tables via XSD files."

"Appian helps you do a lot of things. It's easy to configure and build an application platform, and it offers a lot of features that you find in an RPA solution. It's flexible so you can reuse it for a variety of use cases."

"The agile manner that we require to create our workflows. This is probably the most critical part of our solution and the time it takes to start processing the solution."

"Appian is easy to install and set up, and it does not come out with your audit. It has accessible process orchestration and process management. With Appian, the time to market is much faster."

"We appreciate the drag and drop functionality and the easy to access plug and play features."

More Appian pros

Cons

"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."

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

"Some improvements can be made to the user interface."

"Any product is going to have some room for improvement, no matter what. I see the company has already ventured into AWS and they're constantly trying to improve the managed file transfer which they have recently improvised. I think they bought a software called JSCAPE and they're trying to improve it, which is good. I am not sure if JSCAPE would be part of the base product but currently, you have to buy a separate license for it, which doesn't make sense. If it was Microsoft, ServiceNow, or integrating with other software vendors, I would understand but JSCAPE is now in-house and I'm not sure if they can justify having a separate license for JSCAPE. I would probably expect them to be packaging JSCAPE into the base product. They did switch over from a perpetual license model to a subscription model, which hurt the company a little bit. Nobody is offering the perpetual model anymore. As long as the transition is fair for both the companies, I think it should be fine and not burn us out."

"There are some issues with this version and finding the jobs that it ran. If you're looking at 1,000 different jobs, it shows based on the execution time, not necessarily the run time. So, if there was a constraint waiting, you may be looking for it in the wrong time frame. Plus, with thousands of jobs showing up and the way it pages output jobs, sometimes you end up with multiple pages on the screen, then you have to go through to find the specific job you're looking for. On the opposite side, you can limit the daily activity screen to show only jobs that failed or jobs currently running, which will shrink that back down. However, we have operators who are looking at the whole nightly cycle to make sure everything is there and make sure nothing got blocked or was waiting. Sometimes, they have a hard time finding every item within the list."

"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."

"ActiveBatch is a little complex."

"It does have a little bit of a learning curve because it is fairly complex. You have to learn how it does things. I don't know if it's any worse than any other tool would be, just because of the nature of what it does... the learning curve is the hardest part."

More ActiveBatch by Redwood cons

"There should be more flexibility for the developers to choose the look and feel of the UI. They should have a better ability to design their widgets and customize them with different colors, shapes, and sizes. That is a limitation that could be improved upon."

"The tool itself is pretty good, but the main area that we struggled with was the backend. The frontend development is really good, but the backend modeling can be streamlined a little bit. There are good integrations, but tying them through the data layer and then up into the frontend could be improved a little bit. It does read/write on the data source, and you can configure it to just write or just read, but there is a little bit of work involved."

"Appian is easy to set up, but JBoss is complex. JBoss is the application server for running Appian."

"My only request is that they decrease the license costs."

"Architecture of product and scalabiility issues."

"One room for improvement is the ease of UI UX development, like in OutSystems and Mendix."

"There are four areas I believe Appian could improve in. The first is a seamless contact center integration. Appian does not have a contact center feature. The second is advanced features in RPA. The third would be chatbot and email bot integration—while Appian comes with chatbot and email bot, it's not as mature as it should be, compared to the competition. The fourth area would be next best action, since there is not much of this sort of feature in Appian. These are all features which competitors' products have, and in a mature manner, whereas Appian lacks on these four areas. I see customers who are moving from Appian to Pega because these features are not in Appian."

"What could be improved is more on the front end perspective, like the user interface and the mobile application aspect."

More Appian cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"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."

"It allows for lower operational overhead."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"You can't really test the software properly without actually buying the license first."

"The license is a bit expensive and the pricing model is sometimes confusing for new users or business users. It is difficult for them to know what volume of usage they will have to be able to purchase the best-suited license at the beginning."

"The tool is quite costly."

"The license is not very cheap. It's on the expensive side."

"The price of the solution is reasonable and is paid annually. The price of the solution depends on how many users use the solution. It can range from $50,000 to $200,000. For example, for 20,000 users the price can be approximately $200,000."

"I'm sure it is cost-effective, but right now, we're just toying around with it. So, I don't have any hard numbers."

"The price is high."

"We will have to have a dialogue or negotiate a price for future use. To start with, it is a reasonable price. As we go ahead, we will have to make sure the costs are inline with our expectations as we grow our user base and workloads."

More Appian pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

20%

Educational Organization

15%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ActiveBatch Workload Automation?

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ActiveBatch Workload Automation?

I'd advise users to start by knowing what the actual requirement is and thoroughly assess the automation needs. New users should take advantage of the demos and trial versions so they get an idea o...

See all answers

What needs improvement with ActiveBatch Workload Automation?

After upgrades we are facing a few issues and errors triggered, so focusing on this would be appreciated. Some of the advanced features in the user interface are a bit confusing even after referrin...

See all answers

Which do you prefer - Appian or Camunda Platform?

Appian is fast when building simple to medium solutions. This solution offers simple drag-and-drop functionality with easy plug-and-play options. The initial setup was seamless and very easy to imp...

See all answers

Is Appian a suitable solution for beginners who have no additional preparation?

Appian is actually pretty big on educating its users, including with courses that reward you with certifications. There is a whole section on their company’s website where you can check out the edu...

See all answers

Is it easy to set up Appian or did you have to resort to professional help?

We had some issues when we were setting up Appian. It was quite surprising, since this is a low-code tool which, in its essence, means it is meant for business users and inexperienced beginners. So...

See all answers

Comparisons

Control-M vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 18% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 13% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 11% of the time

Stonebranch vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 10% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 9% of the time

More ActiveBatch by Redwood Competitors

OutSystems vs Appian

Compared 11% of the time

ServiceNow vs Appian

Compared 11% of the time

Salesforce Platform vs Appian

Compared 10% of the time

Camunda vs Appian

Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Power Apps vs Appian

Compared 7% of the time

More Appian Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ActiveBatch by Redwood

June 2025

Download ActiveBatch by Redwood product report

Buyer's Guide

Appian

April 2025

Download Appian product report

Also Known As

ActiveBatch

Appian BPM, Appian AnyWhere, Appian Enterprise BPMS

Overview

ActiveBatch by Redwood automates and manages batch processes, data integration tasks, and workflow scheduling. It's used for file transfers, data processing, server monitoring, and report generation, supporting both on-prem and cloud environments.

Organizations implement ActiveBatch by Redwood to automate complex job scheduling and data workflows, integrating seamlessly with FTP, SQL, PowerShell, and other systems. With features like real-time monitoring, error handling, and centralized management, users can significantly boost productivity while minimizing manual intervention. Its flexibility in supporting on-premises and cloud environments makes it adaptable for diverse IT landscapes. The tool simplifies workflow orchestration with an extensive library of pre-built steps and robust API integrations, ensuring efficiency in handling various workloads.

What are ActiveBatch by Redwood's key features?

Job automation: Automates routine and complex jobs.
Real-time monitoring: Offers instant insights into job performance.
Customizable workflows: Tailors workflows to specific business needs.
PowerShell integration: Supports advanced script execution.
Job triggering: Initiates tasks based on specific conditions.
File handling: Manages file transfers and processing efficiently.
Server management: Monitors and handles server tasks consistently.
API integration: Connects with various applications for streamlined operations.
Alerting: Provides notifications for critical job events.
Flexible scheduling: Enables detailed and adaptable job scheduling.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Centralized management: Simplifies oversight of all processes.
Productivity boost: Reduces manual effort and errors.
Time savings: Accelerates task completion and workflow execution.
Comprehensive visibility: Enhances monitoring of all job activities.
Reliable performance: Ensures consistent task execution.
Scalability: Adapts to growing business and IT needs.

In various industries, ActiveBatch by Redwood is used to streamline operations, whether in finance handling large-scale data processing, healthcare managing patient records, or retail optimizing supply chains. It addresses specific needs by offering robust automation, efficient job scheduling, and seamless integration with existing systems, driving operational excellence and efficiency.

ActiveBatch by Redwood

Appian is a unified low-code platform and solution used by businesses to build enterprise applications and workflows. This product adapts to the needs of clients and the technologies they are already using to combine their data in a single workflow and maximize resources. The platform has four main components through which it transforms the work process for companies of various sizes. They are:

Complete automation: Through complete automation, companies are able to coordinate and manage employees, existing systems, bots, data, and artificial intelligence (AI) in a single workflow. The solution offers a way to centrally manage all third-party automation vendors as well.
Low-code applications: Appian offers the ability to build applications faster with visual development and low-code tools. All applications are ready-made to be suitable for mobile.
Low-code data: Appian lets companies source data from multiple types of sources, eliminating the need for data migration. Through no-code and low-code solutions and industry-standard connectors, the platform also eliminates the need for data silos.
Enterprise ready: The platform offers options for companies to scale their businesses to an enterprise level without complications.

Appian is utilized across a diverse set of industries, including automotive and manufacturing, energy and utilities, education, financial services, telecom and media, transportation, retail, insurance, healthcare, and life sciences. The most frequent use cases of Appian are customer journey, governance, risk and compliance, operational efficiency, supply chain, distributed order management, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) management.

Appian Features

Appian has various features that allow users to create solutions for their businesses. These features can be separated into a few groups according to function, including automation, low-code application development, and integrations and data. Some of the most frequently used features of Appian include:

Robotic process automation (RPA): Users of Appian can assign software bots to perform rules-based tasks that need to be repeated over a set course of time. This can improve efficiency and performance within an organization while saving human resources.
Intelligent document processing: The tool offers a feature for quick and accurate extraction and structuring of data. This can reduce time and costs for organizations because it eliminates the need for outsourcing such services.
AI: Appian utilizes artificial intelligence to enhance applications, workflows, and automation. AI is also used to address complex processes and unique situations.
Business rules: Organizations can automate and simplify work processes while adhering to their operating procedures.
Application development: Appian provides a low-code development feature that allows users to deploy applications over ten times faster than through conventional approaches. This feature not only allows for quick application building, but also applications that run on multiple types of platforms, seamless data integration, and business scalability.
Integrations and data: Appian allows for data integration from a wide array of sources without the need for migration. This contributes to easy access to data across systems, real-time data insights, improved user experience, and accelerated development.

Appian Benefits

The benefits of using Appian include:

The solution ensures seamless organization growth, as it supports various UX patterns, common data schemes, and upgrades, used to facilitate application development on a bigger scale.
Appian can increase process speed and deliver applications considerably faster compared to conventional development.
The platform is easy to use and suitable for complete beginners to build applications and workflows.
Appian offers a variety of design tools that facilitate development and deployment.
Appian offers detailed real-time data insight which allows organizations to access relevant information about their processes as they are developing.
The solution offers clients the ability to move data between the cloud, on-premise, and hybrid configurations.
The platform is easy to optimize, which allows businesses to utilize it according to their personal needs.
Appian offers connectivity across web, mobile, email, voice, and chat, providing a multi-channel experience for companies and their clients.

Reviews from Real Users

A practice leader - digital process automation at a computer software company values Appian highly because the product is easy to develop, low-code, and has a good user interface.

Alan G., an advisory board member at Codecon VR, Appian offers a clear application life cycle, easy to learn documentation, and comes with a fundamentals course.

Appian

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

Hansard Global plc, Punch Taverns, Pirelli, Crawford & Company, EDP Renewables, Queensland Government Department of State Development, Infrastructure and Planning (, Bank of Tennessee

Buyer's Guide

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. Appian

June 2025

Free Report: ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. Appian

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