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ActiveBatch by Redwood vs IBM BPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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)
IBM BPM
Ranking in Process Automation
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (7th), Application Infrastructure (6th)
 

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 IBM BPM is 6.0%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Process Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM BPM6.0%
ActiveBatch by Redwood0.8%
Other93.2%
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.
Ateeq Rehman - PeerSpot reviewer
Automation platforms streamline processes and offer flexibility, but AI integration and version upgrades pose challenges
In the technology world, there is always room for improvement. Technologies evolve day by day, especially with the emergence of artificial intelligence and generative AI models. Although IBM BPM is a substantial product, adopting and integrating new technologies quickly is not easy due to the migration and upgrade paths involved. Every time new versions are released, we face business and production challenges that make rapid adoption challenging. The main concern bothering me today regarding IBM BPM is the integration of AI components.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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"
"There are hundreds of pre-built steps."
"We are able to integrate it into multiple third-party tools like email, backup, tracking systems, SharePoint, Slack alerts, etc."
"Approximately ~20 hours of manual effort have been reduced to ~5 hours with the help of ActiveBatch."
"The software offers real-time monitoring and reporting features that let IT teams keep tabs on the progress of their batch operations and workflows."
"ActiveBatch helped us automate and schedule routine tasks such as data backups, file transfers, database updates, and report generation, which frees IT staff to focus on other studies."
"One of the most valuable features of this solution is the versatility of the prebuilt jobs."
"ActiveBatch provides summary reports and logs for further analysis and improvements in monitoring servers, which is very handy."
"It has improved my organization quite a bit. It brought awareness to what the business processes are, even to the business side, who did not necessarily know what they are."
"Compliance with the BPMN 2.0 standard."
"Scalability is good. In the time that I have been there, we have added more JVMs to help with the increased workload, so it does scale."
"It makes the company business processes work more efficiently."
"Its most valuable features are usability and integration with other IBM products."
"I rate the technical support a ten out of ten...The product's installation was easy."
"The initial setup process is easy."
"It excels at analytics. It provides visibility across all activities of a company's processes and performance."
 

Cons

"As more organizations are moving towards a cloud-based infrastructure, ActiveBatch could incorporate more capabilities that support popular cloud platforms, such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud."
"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."
"The user interface can be improved so that it is more appealing and accessible to new users."
"Some of the advanced features in the user interface are a bit confusing even after referring to the documents."
"It could be easier to provide dashboards on how many jobs are running at the same time; more monitoring."
"I can't get the cleaning up of logs to work consistently. Right now, we are not setup correctly, and maybe it is something that I have not effectively communicated to them."
"The documentation is very limited, and it can be improved."
"They should offer pricing that is more affordable."
"The pricing is a little bit high. It's gone up in cost."
"They don't have a mechanism to achieve processes, data sources, and data."
"The options for customization could be improved. More customization using your own code would be beneficial."
"​The initial setup was complex. It is not always easy to launch a new platform and it needed better coordination with IBM."
"I would like to see the solution be able to interact with other customer software solutions."
"The initial setup was complex."
"We have been experiencing bad performance and instability."
"Importing and exporting between multiple environments is more difficult with other tools."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It allows for lower operational overhead."
"If you compare ActiveBatch licensing to Control-M, you're looking at $50,000 as opposed to millions."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"The price of the solution is fair for an enterprise solution that has both cloud and on-premise deployments and when comparing to competitors. Recently IBM has introduced Cloud Pak which allows for more flexible licensing options for automation and other features."
"IBM could improve the price. It is far too expensive."
"​We have definitely seen ROI. When we first kicked it off, we said it had to pay for itself within three years, and it did."
"The pricing is quite high, I would rate it two out of five."
"The price is good but could be a little lower."
"I already compared some solutions related to business process management, and I saw that the cost of IBM BPM is more expensive compared with that of Camunda, for example."
"We chose to purchase IBM BPM because it was bundled with the actual RPA program/solution that we decided to purchase. We decided to use Automation Anywhere tool (RPA), and it is was bundled with IBM BPM."
"The solution is highly-priced."
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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
28%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
5%
 

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 Business30
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise71
 

Questions from the Community

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Which is better, IBM BPM or IBM Business Automation Workflow?
We researched both IBM solutions and in the end, we chose Business Automation Workflow. IBM BPM has a good user interface and the BPM coach is a helpful tool. The API is very useful in providing en...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM BPM?
Once it is installed, maintaining it is not a big issue.
 

Also Known As

ActiveBatch
WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
 

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
Barclays, EmeriCon, Banca Popolare di Milano, CST Consulting, KeyBank, KPMG, Prolifics, Sandhata Technologies Ltd., State of Alaska, Humana S.A., Saperion, esciris, Banco Espirito Santo
Find out what your peers are saying about ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. IBM BPM and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.