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ActiveBatch by Redwood vs Appian comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

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
34th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
Managed File Transfer (MFT) (18th), Workload Automation (19th)
Appian
Ranking in Process Automation
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (9th), Rapid Application Development Software (10th), Low-Code Development Platforms (3rd), Process Mining (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Process Automation category, the mindshare of ActiveBatch by Redwood is 0.8%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Appian is 5.8%, down from 9.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Process Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Appian5.8%
ActiveBatch by Redwood0.8%
Other93.4%
Process Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Shubham Bharti - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Kunal Sharda - PeerSpot reviewer
Experience enables seamless automation and elevates process efficiency while embracing innovative technologies
The features of Appian that have proven to be the most beneficial are its capability to create processes and integrate with external systems while ensuring data consistency across all the systems. The latest features of Appian are quite useful around the UI/UX design and the artificial intelligence integrations. Appian is aiding in leveraging AI technologies in multiple ways: one way is for developers, as they make development efficient and quick by enabling developer co-pilots across various phases of the application, which helps design Appian quickly and provides suggestions along the way. Another way is through AI Skills, which can be integrated anywhere in the process model to leverage artificial intelligence for tasks such as extracting data from documents, summarizing information from documents or long paragraphs, and building custom prompts with Appian. Appian also utilizes AI for business users, providing a feature called process each view, enabling business users to create their own dashboards, reports, and gain insights from their data and processes using artificial intelligence. It's multi-fold and always growing.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The software offers real-time monitoring and reporting features that let IT teams keep tabs on the progress of their batch operations and workflows."
"It can connect to a number of third-party/legacy systems."
"We leverage the solution's native integrations regularly. We have to get files from a remote server outside the organization, and even send things outside the organization. We use a lot of its file manipulation and SFTP functionality for contacting remote servers."
"Error Handling is one of the best standout features of ActiveBatch."
"ActiveBatch provides summary reports and logs for further analysis and improvements in monitoring servers, which is very handy."
"The automation feature is a very valuable feature as the associates do not have to worry about performing repetitive tasks (i.e. endpoint security scans on a daily basis) that would take several hours to complete on a daily basis."
"We are able to integrate it into multiple third-party tools like email, backup, tracking systems, SharePoint, Slack alerts, etc."
"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."
"Appian is a stable product and works very well."
"Form building capabilities and well thought out process modelling are key points to this product."
"The application life cycle is very clear. I started learning it and giving some workshops to my team. Creating the users and the building is very structured. Documentation is nice and it's easy to learn."
"With low-code, we don't need a lot of coding, and then from the plumbing perspective, there is a complete CI/CD pipeline that exists within Appian that can be leveraged for open deployment."
"The most beneficial aspect of Appian is its data management capabilities and the process engine in general."
"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."
"The most valuable features are the low coding and low code data."
"It's a stable product."
 

Cons

"It could be easier to provide dashboards on how many jobs are running at the same time; more monitoring."
"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."
"Whenever there is an overload, we are seeing crashes happening."
"The help center and documentation are not that helpful."
"Except for the GUI, everything looks good."
"The reporting needs improvement. There is a real need for the ability to generate audit reports on the fly. It needs to be a lot easier than what I can do right now. This is a major item for me."
"The user interface can be improved so that it is more appealing and accessible to new users."
"They should offer pricing that is more affordable."
"Authoring tool is slow to use resulted in limitations on how quickly solutions can be built."
"Something I would like to see improved is an SQL database connection."
"The UI of Appian is more internal. Recently, there has been an addition of an external user portal for the customer-facing stuff. It's still coming out."
"It is also not easy to learn. Training tutorials could be improved."
"From a reseller's point of view, subscription licensing could be improved to be more cost-effective, especially for new prospects and smaller investments."
"Appian could be improved by making it a strict, no-code platform with free-built process packs."
"Appian could improve their customer-facing initiatives."
"Native mobile capabilities or hybrid mobile app capabilities are very limited. Things like offline sync, offline storage, access to smartphone device features, etc. are not supported by the Appian platform yet."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"If you compare ActiveBatch licensing to Control-M, you're looking at $50,000 as opposed to millions."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"You can't really test the software properly without actually buying the license first."
"BPM done right is a huge value proposition for almost any company, and with Appian's low code rapid development model, the ROI can be huge, while the break-even point should be accelerated tremendously."
"If you're doing an enterprise-wide digital transformation, Appian is worthwhile, but not for just one or two use cases because the license costs are higher."
"The licensing will be on a monthly basis. We are estimating that cost to be around $2000 to maybe $3,000 per month. We don't foresee any costs above that."
"It's good value for the price."
"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."
"The price of this solution is a little high here in Mongolia."
"I think that if somebody is really serious at looking at business value, then by all means, the product is well worth the value. You get representative business value for the price that you pay for the product, and for the implementation of the product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
7%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise46
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise41
 

Questions from the Community

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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...
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...
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...
 

Also Known As

ActiveBatch
Appian BPM, Appian AnyWhere, Appian Enterprise BPMS
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. Appian and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,952 professionals have used our research since 2012.