ActiveBatch by Redwood vs GoAnywhere MFT comparison

ActiveBatch by Redwood and Fortra are both solutions in the Managed File Transfer (MFT) category. ActiveBatch by Redwood is ranked #10 with an average rating of 9.4, while Fortra is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.7. ActiveBatch by Redwood holds a 2.1% mindshare in MFT, compared to Fortra’s 10.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ActiveBatch by Redwood users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Fortra users who would recommend it.

ActiveBatch by Redwood

Read 35 ActiveBatch by Redwood reviews

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712 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

GoAnywhere MFT

Read 57 GoAnywhere MFT reviews

2,754 Views
2,561 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

ActiveBatch by Redwood

GoAnywhere MFT

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 8, 2025

ActiveBatch by Redwood and GoAnywhere MFT both compete in the enterprise automation market. ActiveBatch appears to have an edge in platform integration and workflow customization, while GoAnywhere MFT excels in secure file transfers and encryption.

Features: ActiveBatch offers robust automation features, including integration across diverse platforms, numerous built-in steps to enhance efficiency, and extensive customization options for complex workflows. It provides comprehensive visibility of workflows through a single pane of glass, reducing manual efforts and optimizing processes. GoAnywhere MFT focuses on secure file transfers, utilizing extensive encryption features, comprehensive workflow automation, and built-in file monitoring systems to improve data exchange efficiency and security.

Room for Improvement: ActiveBatch users face a steep learning curve due to its complexity, with struggles in onboarding and navigation. Suggested enhancements include better help resources and cloud platform integration. GoAnywhere MFT could improve its UI design and documentation for novice users, and enhance Cloud Connectors to improve cloud service integration.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both ActiveBatch and GoAnywhere MFT are primarily deployed on-premises but support various environments including cloud options. ActiveBatch receives mixed reviews for its technical team, while GoAnywhere is praised for prompt and efficient service. Both platforms could improve user experience by streamlining support processes for consistent responsiveness.

Pricing and ROI: ActiveBatch offers flexible licensing and a valuable agentless model, leading to significant ROI through operational efficiencies. GoAnywhere MFT is reasonably priced, with users finding value in its robust security features and ease of use. Its flexible licensing structure is appealing to organizations mindful of data transfer costs. Both solutions provide long-term savings and value, although pricing remains a key consideration for future feature expansion.

To learn more, read our detailed ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. GoAnywhere MFT Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. GoAnywhere MFT

July 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 Managed File Transfer (MFT)

10th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Process Automation (9th), Workload Automation (9th)

GoAnywhere MFT

Ranking in Managed File Transfer (MFT)

2nd

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Managed File Transfer (MFT) category, the mindshare of ActiveBatch by Redwood is 2.1%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GoAnywhere MFT is 10.1%, up from 6.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Managed File Transfer (MFT)

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.

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Vidyasagar Gupta

File Transfer Analyst at IG Group

Enables secure and efficient file transfers with customizable automations

The biggest improvement I've seen since using GoAnywhere MFT for three to four years is in security; control over our network security is the biggest factor to consider, and the solution automatically identifies and blocks attempts to attack our system. Additionally, the transfer speed is impressive; even if files are in GBs, it doesn't take much time to transfer, increasing our organization's efficiency significantly. In my opinion, the best feature of GoAnywhere MFT is its user-friendly UI; it's very simple to use compared to other managed file transfer tools such as MOVEit and Axway, which are a bit more complicated. While we don't use any connectors for services such as Salesforce, SharePoint Online, or MS365, GoAnywhere MFT does have the capability of connecting to these systems either through SFTP, HTTPS protocols, or API-based connections. The way it works here is different; we set up a resource-based connection to connect to various services such as SAP or Salesforce. The range of connectors that GoAnywhere MFT provides out of the box is quite extensive; it covers everything from legacy tools that support AS2 connections to the latest services such as AWS and Azure Blobs. I'm very satisfied with the connectivity options available in GoAnywhere MFT; they include everything you can think of, and as long as the system you want to connect to accepts connections, we can connect using AS2, AS4, and other cloud connectors. In relation to the agents, they are crucial for extending MFT automation to remote systems. I've noticed that in my previous organization, agents were not used as we connected via network shares, which led to occasional connectivity issues. Now, using agents increases the file transfer speed by about 20 to 30%, and they provide a more stable connection compared to legacy network shares.

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 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."

"From a scheduling point of view, it is pretty good."

"By implementing a sophisticated scheduling mechanism, the system allows for the precise triggering of jobs at user-selected frequencies, enabling a seamless and automated execution of tasks according to specified time intervals."

"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."

"The software offers real-time monitoring and reporting features that let IT teams keep tabs on the progress of their batch operations and workflows."

"There are hundreds of pre-built steps."

"One of the valuable features is the ability to trigger workflows, one after another, based on success, without having to worry about overlapping workflows. The ability to integrate our BI, analytics, and our data quality jobs is also valuable"

"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."

More ActiveBatch by Redwood pros

"When users say, 'I'm building spreadsheets that I would like to be uploaded on a regular basis into the IBM i,' we are able to accommodate that request within a matter of hours rather than the days it would take to create programs to do that. That is very useful. It has eliminated several dozens of scripts for us."

"GoAnywhere MFT is the best; we prefer it."

"I appreciate how files are being transferred. Before a file is shared with anyone, there is a scanning process that takes place, and the file is securely shared without any problem or malware existing in the file."

"It is very easy to use. It is easy to create projects in a graphical environment. The configuration and the setup of the environment is very easy"

"The most valuable feature is customer data transfers for traditional SFTP. Some of our biggest customers are on the platform, and it works out very well for us as a big selling point."

"The solution is easy to learn and user-friendly, which makes it accessible even to those without programming backgrounds and extensive scripting training. Newcomers can quickly get to grips with the platform, and as it's a more object-oriented application, it's easier to use and program."

"Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT supports the PeSIT protocol."

"It was very stable compared to other solutions we have used, so I would not complain regarding this."

More GoAnywhere MFT pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"The product should be improved by providing a customization option."

"We have faced a couple of issues where we were supposed to log a defect with ActiveBatch. That said, the Active batch Vendor Support is very responsive and reliable."

"I have faced struggles to understand, set up the tool, and implement it in my early days as a new user."

"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."

"One thing I've noticed is that navigation can be difficult unless you are familiar with the structure that we have in place. If someone else had to look at our ActiveBatch console and find a job, they might not know where to find it."

"Except for the GUI, everything looks good."

More ActiveBatch by Redwood cons

"I like that you can tweak the interface so much, but it would be nice to be able to tweak it some more. The ability to further tweak the interface would be advantageous, as our end users had some questions about modifications that we could not address."

"At present, HelpSystems GoAnywhere MFT integrates with an antivirus solution, but it's a bit kludgy."

"For training, there should be some sites or resources on YouTube or Udemy. They do not have that currently."

"The solution's support for the Unix platform and AS2 should be improved."

"There have been cases where we needed support due to the application getting stuck for no reason, and usually, the issue gets fixed by restarting the application. However, we never get a clear understanding of why the issue occurred and how we could prevent it."

"The pricing is not favorable sometimes when we use it for a few people. Even if we purchase additional licenses, no discount is given."

"Fortra needs to offer more use cases for GoAnywhere MFT during training."

"The customer support is a bit slow from their end. The time lag they take to respond to our queries is more than expected, so I would give a solid seven out of ten for the customer support."

More GoAnywhere MFT cons

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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"It allows for lower operational overhead."

"The pricing of GoAnywhere MFT is affordable compared to other similar products. It's not expensive, according to me. What influenced my purchase decision was the fact that the product was quite affordable."

"Licensing can be expensive and it depends upon which features you want to buy."

"Its pricing is fair. It is not the most expensive, and it is not the cheapest. For what we get in our environment, the pricing model works pretty well."

"Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT is an inexpensive solution."

"It would be good for the company to explore a modular approach to selling the product so it could be cheaper and more attractive to users."

"Pricing is based on a one-time license."

"The pricing for GoAnywhere MFT seems reasonable when compared to other similar services, especially cloud services. Azure is significantly more expensive."

"The pricing is not favorable when we use it for a few people."

More GoAnywhere MFT pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Insurance Company

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

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

What do you like most about Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT?

GoDrive eliminates the need to use the exchange server for file sharing.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT?

The pricing for GoAnywhere MFT is quite fair.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT?

The cloud connectivity of GoAnywhere MFT to connect to different applications such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon, or Google Cloud could improve, as it's a little bit patchy right now. They do provide ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Control-M vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 18% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 15% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 10% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 9% of the time

JAMS vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 3% of the time

More ActiveBatch by Redwood Competitors

JSCAPE by Redwood vs GoAnywhere MFT

Compared 14% of the time

IBM Sterling File Gateway vs GoAnywhere MFT

Compared 12% of the time

MOVEit vs GoAnywhere MFT

Compared 11% of the time

Control-M vs GoAnywhere MFT

Compared 5% of the time

BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer vs GoAnywhere MFT

Compared 5% of the time

More GoAnywhere MFT Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ActiveBatch by Redwood

July 2025

Download ActiveBatch by Redwood product report

Buyer's Guide

GoAnywhere MFT

July 2025

Download GoAnywhere MFT product report

Also Known As

ActiveBatch

HelpSystems GoAnywhere MFT, GoAnywhere MFT, GoAnywhere Managed File Transfer,

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

GoAnywhere MFT offers user-friendly workflow features, advanced security, and seamless integrations. Its intuitive interface supports streamlined operations and rapid project creation, making it suitable for managing secure file transfers.

GoAnywhere MFT provides sophisticated automation through Advanced Workflows, enabling reduced manual tasks and improved efficiency. With centralized data exchange, file monitoring, and comprehensive security protocols, it supports scalability, encryption, and IP filtering for enhanced protection. Users appreciate its adaptability with systems including IBM and Epic, contributing to improved process management and significant time savings. While beneficial, enhancements in DNS support, user interface intuitiveness, and customer service responsiveness are potential growth areas. License costs are noted as high, with demands for better documentation, cloud service integrations, and improved scalability and load-balancing functionalities.

What are the key features of GoAnywhere MFT?

User-Friendly Workflows: Intuitive interface streamlines operations.
Advanced Security: Includes encryption, IP filters, and monitoring.
Seamless Integrations: Adapts to systems like IBM and Epic.
Automation: Simplifies processes with reduced manual tasks.
Scalability: Grows with business needs.

What are the benefits and ROI of using GoAnywhere MFT?

Improved Efficiency: Reduces workload through automation.
Time Savings: Accelerates project delivery.
Enhanced Security: Protects data with advanced protocols.
Adaptability: Supports multiple platforms and integrations.
Process Management: Simplifies and streamlines data exchange.

GoAnywhere MFT is deployed by organizations for secure file transfers across systems like financial, healthcare, and corporate sectors. It supports SFTP, FTP, and HTTPS for data exchanges and is highly effective in automating processes and managing large file movements efficiently. It integrates well with cloud platforms like Azure and accommodates environments such as Windows, Linux, and IBM iSeries.

Fortra

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

McKesson City of Modesto, California Kwik Trip Northwestern University Charter Communications

Buyer's Guide

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. GoAnywhere MFT

July 2025

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