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ActiveBatch by Redwood vs BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 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 Managed File Transfer (MFT)
18th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (34th), Workload Automation (19th)
BMC Control-M Managed File ...
Ranking in Managed File Transfer (MFT)
7th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Managed File Transfer (MFT) category, the mindshare of ActiveBatch by Redwood is 2.2%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer is 3.6%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed File Transfer (MFT) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer3.6%
ActiveBatch by Redwood2.2%
Other94.2%
Managed File Transfer (MFT)
 

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.
SirajShaik - PeerSpot reviewer
Improve operational efficiency through workflow orchestration
Its stability and the feature list are rich compared to other tools in the market. I have experienced a thirty percent reduction in operational time for developers, increasing efficiency in workflow orchestration design. The UI is great, with a minimal learning curve and caters to both click-and-monitor users and those who want to code.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"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."
"One of the most valuable features of this solution is the versatility of the prebuilt jobs."
"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."
"As far as centralization goes it's nice because we can see all these processes that are tied to this larger process. The commissions, FTP processing, the reporting, the file moves to the business users — all that is right there. It's very easy to read. It's easy to tie it together, visually, and see where each of these steps fits into the bigger picture."
"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."
"ActiveBatch has reduced work by providing automated workflows across several different applications."
"BMC Control-M's Application Workflow Orchestration is very advanced."
"It has a nice dashboard for loading up the file transfers, so it's easy to follow the success or failure rates of the operations."
"There's another feature called Workload Archiving, where the data for all the jobs can be stored for however many days that we want, which is very useful for any historical analytics."
"The most valuable feature is the automation process."
"Its stability and the feature list are rich compared to other tools in the market."
"The most valuable thing is that it works as advertised. We don't take advantage of some of the features like we should because that's not our primary role and responsibility in the environment that we manage. We only want to make sure that a file gets to where it was supposed to go, or we pull in a file and it comes to us correctly."
"I am a partner and an implementer for Control-M. Once purchased by my clients, I implement this solution and provide daily support for this scheduling tool."
"The solution supports all file transfers."
 

Cons

"Providing some detailed training materials could be very helpful for new users who have very limited technical information about the tool."
"ActiveBatch is a little complex."
"ActiveBatch UI could use a little more help, and video tutorials would be greatly appreciated for user guides."
"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."
"Except for the GUI, everything looks good."
"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."
"I have faced struggles to understand, set up the tool, and implement it in my early days as a new user."
"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."
"We're only using the functionality that we need to use. However, we've had an opportunity to work with one application owner here who wanted to do some transfers in the cloud and things like that. I know that there were some challenges on that, but they finally got all that set up. There was a learning curve though."
"Offering it as open source for free would be great, however, that's unlikely."
"One can opt for either a job-based license or a job execution-based license, which sometimes can be troublesome. If the job count exceeds a limit, you may need to procure additional licenses from BMC."
"There are eight different kinds of dashboards in Workflow Insights, but there could be more because there is third party software that provides more dashboard styles."
"Password vaulting would be a feature that should be included."
"Their support can be improved. I would like them to provide support in Spanish and have more knowledge."
"Scalability is something that needs to be improved."
"I would love to see REST API integration and more plugins for Google Cloud Platform compared to AWS and Azure."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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 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."
"If you compare ActiveBatch licensing to Control-M, you're looking at $50,000 as opposed to millions."
"It allows for lower operational overhead."
"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 rate the solution's price a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is low or really affordable, and ten is high or really expensive. It is a really expensive tool."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The licensing is a bit more expensive than other tools, so if a client is focused on the cost, that would be something to consider. The licensing should be cheaper."
"Its cost is high for small companies."
"BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer is expensive."
"Apart from the standard license, if we avail any additional features, there's an extra cost. For example, Workload Archiving is an additional feature from the standard product, so we pay extra for that."
"I switched to this solution within the last year. I switched from the servers payment package to the job payment package, and it is very expensive."
"Yearly licenses are based on the number of jobs."
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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
23%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
7%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise47
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer?
It is a highly scalable solution...I rate the product's initial setup a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer?
The pricing for licensing has increased. I'd rate the pricing three out of ten.
What needs improvement with BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer?
BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer already works great, though there could be improvements for transferring large files, particularly those that are in gigabytes, as it sometimes poses problems.
 

Also Known As

ActiveBatch
No data available
 

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
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Find out what your peers are saying about ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
871,469 professionals have used our research since 2012.