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 #14 with an average rating of 9.7, while Fortra is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.6. ActiveBatch by Redwood holds a 2.2% mindshare in MFT, compared to Fortra’s 10.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ActiveBatch by Redwood users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of Fortra users who would recommend it.

ActiveBatch by Redwood

Read 35 ActiveBatch by Redwood reviews

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690 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

GoAnywhere MFT

Read 68 GoAnywhere MFT reviews

3,083 Views
2,867 Comparison Views

98% 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: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. GoAnywhere MFT

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 Managed File Transfer (MFT)

14th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Process Automation (16th), Workload Automation (13th)

GoAnywhere MFT

Ranking in Managed File Transfer (MFT)

1st

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Managed File Transfer (MFT) category, the mindshare of ActiveBatch by Redwood is 2.2%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GoAnywhere MFT is 10.7%, up from 6.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Managed File Transfer (MFT) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
GoAnywhere MFT	10.7%
ActiveBatch by Redwood	2.2%
Other	87.1%

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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Rohan Suryawanshi

Senior Software Engineer at Opcito Technologies

Automation simplifies file transfer and builds confidence in security

I appreciate the features of GoAnywhere MFT such as advanced workflows to automate all the transfer and reduce manual effort. The logs and reporting are very helpful for checking all the compliances. The encryption is quite good. The main feature which is very useful is connectors to connect it with cloud services such as AWS, Azure, GCP. The automation in GoAnywhere MFT really helps us because it reduced the manual work significantly. We can transfer hundreds of files with zero manual interventions. The audit trails also help during the compliance audits. It has given stakeholders more confidence in the security of file transfer. It also helped developers to securely transfer the files. Overall, the impact was very good and positive in our business and personal improvements.

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."

"Approximately ~20 hours of manual effort have been reduced to ~5 hours with the help of ActiveBatch."

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

"One of the most valuable features is the job templates. If we need to create an FTP job, we just drag over the FTP template and fill out the requirements using the variables that ActiveBatch uses. And that makes it reusable. We can create a job once but use it for many different clients."

"Easy to configure and simple to develop new features."

"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."

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

"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."

More ActiveBatch by Redwood pros

"Compared to other vendors, GoAnywhere MFT stands out with the feature that allows you to create your own workflows. When a file is uploaded, we want some automation to be triggered, something to be done. This feature is exclusively available in GoAnywhere MFT, which I did not see in any other MFT solutions."

"If it's dealing with SFTP or any kind of secure transfer, we don't hear about it. It's good. Everything works."

"The SFTP and encryption functionality works well, and SFTP is the bulk of what we use."

"This solution has improved my organization significantly."

"The best feature of GoAnywhere is that transfers are straightforward if there are no other requirements from the source and destination. It doesn't require much maintenance."

"GoAnywhere stands out for its user-friendly project creation, intuitive testing and troubleshooting, and especially its notification system, which keeps me informed of any issues that need attention, a feature we lacked before."

"The whole application of GoAnywhere MFT is excellent."

"The most valuable feature is the Advanced Workflows."

More GoAnywhere MFT pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"The user interface can be improved so that it is more appealing and accessible to new users."

"The thing I've noticed the most is the Help function. It's very difficult, at times, to find examples of how to do something. The Help function will explain what the tool does, but we're not a Windows shop at the data warehouse. Our data warehouse jobs actually run on Linux servers. Finding things for Linux-based solutions is not as easy as it is for Windows-based solutions. I would like to see more examples, and more non-Windows examples as well, in the Help."

"There is this back and forth, where ActiveBatch says, "Your Oracle people should be dealing with this," and Oracle people say, "No, we don't know anything about ActiveBatch." Then, it all falls back on me as to what happens. Nobody is taking responsibility. This is the biggest failing for ActiveBatch."

"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 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."

"Between version 10 and version 12 there was a change. In version 10, they had each object in its own folder. But on the back end, they saw it at the root level. So when we moved over to version 12, everything was in the same area mixed together. It was incredibly difficult and we actually had to create our own folders and move those objects—like schedules, jobs, user accounts—and manually put those into folders, whereas the previous version already had it."

More ActiveBatch by Redwood cons

"What I can suggest right now about GoAnywhere MFT is the integration of AI for chat support, as I am still trying to find my way around the app."

"A drawback is that it is not as feature-rich compared to its competitor Sterling, which we used before. It has fewer features, though it is more intuitive."

"GoAnywhere MFT has lower capabilities because it has limited features, but it serves its purpose."

"The application uses resources such as network connections to shared directories or SFTP connections. I would appreciate seeing utilization metrics for these resources."

"I would like to be able to do MFA and reset the password via email."

"If the hostname has a dash in it then it does not work."

"There's one persnickety issue about NAS permissions. That is a problem we have run into with GoAnywhere. I would like to see more focus on compatibility with/enforcement of user roles and access permissions across NAS, among other things. We have filed a couple of tickets on that in the past."

"would like to see GoAnywhere MFT integrating with more connectors or rather more integration with third-party tools. I feel there is still room for improvement in that area, but I'm quite satisfied overall."

More GoAnywhere MFT cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"It allows for lower operational overhead."

"Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT pricing is competitive."

"It is moderately priced. If I compare it with other products that we have been using, its price is moderate. There are approximately 30% to 40% savings."

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

"It is very attractive. In terms of the capacity of the product and functionality, it is a good price."

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

"It has flexible and affordable pricing because of custom quotes. The prices depend on the modules one needs and the volume of data being transferred. Overall, they offer custom and flexible pricing with an annual subscription, where you pay for specific features and functionality required."

"The cost was definitely within reason and it has definitely been worth the cost, based on how much we can automate. It has exceeded my expectations."

"The pricing is decent for mid-sized and small-sized companies. It is good for startups or mid-scale companies."

More GoAnywhere MFT pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	13
Large Enterprise	44

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	41
Midsize Enterprise	13
Large Enterprise	32

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?

It is around market value. It is neither too high nor too low, but balanced.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT?

Regarding data parsing on files such as XML and JSON, we mostly perform manipulations on the files themselves. I am unable to accomplish this with the predefined functions provided by GoAnywhere MF...

See all answers

Comparisons

Control-M vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 17% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 14% 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

VisualCron vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 5% of the time

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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 10% of the time

TIBCO Managed File Transfer vs GoAnywhere MFT

Compared 5% of the time

SolarWinds Serv-U Managed File Transfer Server vs GoAnywhere MFT

Compared 3% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ActiveBatch by Redwood

September 2025

Download ActiveBatch by Redwood product report

Buyer's Guide

GoAnywhere MFT

September 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

September 2025

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