ActiveBatch by Redwood vs Tidal by Redwood comparison

ActiveBatch by Redwood and Tidal Software by Redwood are both solutions in the Workload Automation category. ActiveBatch by Redwood is ranked #19, while Tidal Software by Redwood is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.5. ActiveBatch by Redwood holds a 2.8% mindshare in WA, compared to Tidal Software by Redwood’s 4.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ActiveBatch by Redwood users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Tidal Software by Redwood users who would recommend it.

ActiveBatch by Redwood

Read 36 ActiveBatch by Redwood reviews

1,943 Views
1,477 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Tidal by Redwood

Read 37 Tidal by Redwood reviews

2,191 Views
2,169 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

ActiveBatch by Redwood

Tidal by Redwood

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

Tidal by Redwood and ActiveBatch by Redwood compete in the realm of automation solutions. Tidal stands out for scheduling precision and customization, while ActiveBatch gains the upper hand in user-friendliness and integration capabilities.

Features: Tidal Workload Automation excels with advanced calendaring, job dependencies, and resource allocation customization, enhancing productivity. It supports multi-platform scheduling and integration with various systems. ActiveBatch is known for its extensive library of pre-built job steps, drag-and-drop functionality, and strong cross-platform integration, streamlining workflow automation.

Room for Improvement: Tidal faces challenges with its transporter tool for job transfers and has a steep learning curve, needing better reporting tools. It could enhance its cloud integration and monitoring capabilities. ActiveBatch has complexity in job search functionalities and could improve its user interface to be more beginner-friendly. Both tools would benefit from cloud integration and user experience improvements.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Tidal is primarily deployed on-premises but offers hybrid and private cloud capabilities. Its customer service has improved after transitioning from Cisco to STA. ActiveBatch supports on-premises and cloud environments with reliable customer support, though there is room for enhancing responsiveness and clarity.

Pricing and ROI: Tidal offers flexible licensing models suitable for various organizations, perceived as cost-effective with enterprise agreements. It shows significant ROI in productivity gains and cost management. ActiveBatch also provides competitive pricing and flexible options, but recent changes to subscription models have caused some concerns. Its ROI is notable in complex job scheduling and task automation.

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

Buyer's Guide

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. Tidal by Redwood

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 Workload Automation

19th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Process Automation (34th), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (18th)

Tidal by Redwood

Ranking in Workload Automation

13th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of ActiveBatch by Redwood is 2.8%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tidal by Redwood is 4.7%, up from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Workload Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Tidal by Redwood	4.7%
ActiveBatch by Redwood	2.8%
Other	92.5%

Workload Automation

Featured Reviews

Shubham Bharti

Associate Consultant 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

Steve Mikula

IT Scheduling Manager at Paychex, Inc.

Very reliable processing engine, and scheduling is flawless—crucial elements in our financial transaction processing

Because we've been on it for 20 years, it's pretty easy for us to automate jobs with Tidal at this point. It has become second nature. It's pretty simplistic to set up and get going, although there are different levels of complexity you can have within the product. It depends on how simple you want to keep it. If you just keep it: Job A, Job B, Job C, Job D, that becomes pretty simple. But when you start integrating some complex calendars that use sub-calendars—and you can go three, four, or five deep to set up schedules—it becomes more complicated. The beauty of it is you can go as deep as you need to. We can get really complex or we can keep it simple. We have some use cases for both scenarios. The thing that I like the most is the reliability of the engine. The actual scheduling part of the product is pretty much flawless, but the stability of the product is what I find to be reassuring. We are a financial company, we move billions of dollars a day, and if we don't have our transactions processed in a timely manner we can be penalized and our clients can be penalized. It can have a serious financial impact.

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."

"There are hundreds of pre-built steps."

"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."

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

"It is very useful in sending confidential files through FPP servers."

"The most valuable feature is its stability. We've only had very minor issues and generally they have happened because someone has applied a patch on a Windows operating system and it has caused some grief. We've actually been able to resolve those issues quite quickly with ActiveBatch. In all the time that I've had use of ActiveBatch, it hasn't failed completely once. Uptime is almost 100 percent."

"We are able to integrate it into multiple third-party tools like email, backup, tracking systems, SharePoint, Slack alerts, etc."

More ActiveBatch by Redwood pros

"We use the solution for cross-platform, cross-application workloads. That's the biggest use for us and that's the biggest advantage."

"The Graphical Views feature is also very good for helping us to understand a job stream. It's great for providing a visual overview of the status of a workflow, especially the Critical Path view. That is one of our favorites."

"Tidal Automation software provides real-time monitoring and alerts, allowing users to track job progress and identify potential issues before they cause delays or errors."

"The data management on offer was valuable."

"One of the most useful features is being able to set up a schedule and create dependencies. The calendar can kick off processes at certain times, based on dependencies that you specify, like time, or whether another process has finished. Dependencies are the most useful thing."

"Tidal Automation is very efficient and can quickly automate most manual and repetitive tasks."

"The versatility of being able to run on many different types of servers is valuable. There is also a versatility of different services that you could run jobs on. It's highly versatile. You can run a lot of different types of scripts on a lot of different types of servers. It interfaces with all of them."

"We use the solution for cross-platform and cross-application workloads. That's one of the core reasons we chose it. It's one of a few things in the industry that can be used for cross-platform integration."

More Tidal by Redwood 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."

"ActiveBatch UI could use a little more help, and video tutorials would be greatly appreciated for user guides."

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

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

"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."

More ActiveBatch by Redwood cons

"The biggest improvement they need to work on is doing better QA checks before they release new patches and service packs. We do find that you can't trust getting the new product right away, as they have to get some bug fixes out. They do tend to have some bugs in the first iteration."

"Tidal Automation could be further integrated with other systems used in the operation of tidal energy systems, such as weather forecasting tools, energy management systems, or asset management software."

"It takes a lot of time to learn the product. I have admins and developers who are working on the products for the last three to four years and still don't know all the functionalities. Tidal has really great things about it, but people are focused on their day-to-day job and the solution is not intuitive."

"I'm still hoping with Explorer to be able to see end-to-end job streams. That's not really something that's easy to see today in the web client. However, I haven't worked with Explorer yet. One of the things that we have found frustrating is not being able to see an end-to-end job stream across multiple applications within Tidal. We use jobs for that right now, but I have high hopes that we'll be able to see that in Explorer."

"Initially, it is complicated to understand the functionalities as there is limited product documentation."

"I know they are working on it, but there needs to be better reporting. Currently, there are only three or four reports that we can get off of the system. That needs to be improved. They already have a solution to this in the new version. I.e., a schedule of all the jobs running for one day, specifically calling out what dependencies that job relies on. It would be like a flow chart of how the day's jobs would run."

"The current user interface of Tidal Software is functional. However, it can be improved to make it more intuitive and user-friendly."

"Understanding and using Tidal Automation could be overwhelming for someone with minimal programming language."

More Tidal by Redwood cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"We are satisfied with the pricing of Tidal. It's in the moderate range and it feels very achievable for us."

"The price is reasonable in terms of the product’s functionality."

"They work with you on licensing. So, it has been great. Everybody has different licensing, but I've had good luck with the licensing. They've been very accommodating. You basically need to buy a license for each physical server, but then you're allowed an unlimited number of virtual servers."

"There have been pricing increases, but with the reduction that our company obtained from Tidal this year, the pricing has become very acceptable for this type of product."

"Tidal is a low-cost tool and not expensive in comparison to other tools."

"I have had no issues with the licensing."

"Right now, we are in a good position with the licensing model that we have with the Tidal vendor. So, we won't have any issues. even if we double in our current production. Initially, Tidal provided us some specs where if you have these number of jobs, then you come under this category. They usually provide a range of jobs from 2,000 to 10,000. You can use these specs for your infrastructure. Whether you have 2,000 or 8,000 jobs, Tidal should support it."

"The solution’s licensing model in terms of its flexibility and transparency regarding costs is pretty good. A person can buy the license, and if you decide to stop support, you can do that but still have the product. So, it's not like you're paying constantly to keep that license alive. Certainly, you want to keep support going too. Once you buy it, you own it. It's not like I have to keep paying somebody to keep using it."

More Tidal by Redwood pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Insurance Company

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	13
Large Enterprise	47

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	38

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about Tidal Automation?

Tidal Automation by Redwood is a user-friendly solution.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tidal Automation?

The price is reasonable in terms of the product’s functionality.

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What advice do you have for others considering Tidal Automation?

I would recommend Tidal Automation by Redwood as the first priority for users looking for any automation tool. Overall, I rate Tidal Automation by Redwood a nine out of ten.

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Comparisons

Control-M vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 16% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 12% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 9% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 8% of the time

GoAnywhere MFT vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 6% of the time

More ActiveBatch by Redwood Competitors

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 29% of the time

Control-M vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 16% of the time

Automic Automation vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 10% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 8% of the time

Astro by Astronomer vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 4% of the time

More Tidal by Redwood Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ActiveBatch by Redwood

October 2025

Download ActiveBatch by Redwood product report

Buyer's Guide

Tidal by Redwood

October 2025

Download Tidal by Redwood product report

Also Known As

ActiveBatch

Tidal Workload Automation, Cisco Workload Automation, Tidal Enterprise Scheduler

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

Tidal Software is a leading provider of enterprise workload automation solutions that orchestrate the execution of complex workflows across systems, applications and IT environments. With a comprehensive portfolio of products and services, Tidal optimizes mission-critical business processes, increases IT cost efficiencies and satisfies legal and regulatory compliance requirements. Hundreds of customers around the world count on Tidal for modernizing their workload automation and driving their digital transformation. Tidal Software is headquartered in Chicago with offices in Houston, London, Minsk, Belarus and Chennai, India. For more information, visit tidalsoftware.com.

Tidal Software by Redwood

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. Tidal by Redwood

September 2025

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