Appian RPA vs Control-M comparison

Appian and BMC are both solutions in the Process Automation category. Appian is ranked #22 with an average rating of 9.0, while BMC is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.6. Appian holds a 0.8% mindshare in PA, compared to BMC’s 3.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Appian users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of BMC users who would recommend it.

Appian RPA

Read 3 Appian RPA reviews

833 Views
333 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Control-M

Read 184 Control-M reviews

21,647 Views
3,680 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Appian RPA

Control-M

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 13, 2026

Control-M and Appian RPA compete in the enterprise automation market. Data shows Control-M is preferred for its robust scheduling and integration capabilities, while Appian RPA has the upper hand with its extensive automation features and scalability.

Features: Control-M is recognized for its comprehensive scheduling and workload automation capabilities, enabling seamless orchestration across diverse platforms. It provides seamless integration across various systems and environments. Appian RPA is distinguished by its strong AI integration, advanced process automation features, and enhanced analytical capabilities, offering high levels of automation complexity and adaptability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Control-M offers a structured deployment approach, ensuring stability in complex environments, and provides reliable customer support. Appian RPA provides a cloud-based deployment model, allowing for greater flexibility and quicker setup processes. Its customer service is designed to support advanced automation needs, offering agility and adaptability.

Pricing and ROI: Control-M has a higher initial setup cost but justifies this through substantial long-term ROI due to efficient workload management. Appian RPA offers competitive pricing, focusing on rapid returns with its scalable automation solutions, providing a cost-effective alternative with quicker ROI, particularly beneficial for scalable projects.

To learn more, read our detailed Appian RPA vs. Control-M Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Appian RPA vs. Control-M

December 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

Appian RPA

Ranking in Process Automation

22nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (12th)

Control-M

Ranking in Process Automation

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

184

Ranking in other categories

Managed File Transfer (MFT) (2nd), Workload Automation (1st), AI IT Support (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Process Automation category, the mindshare of Appian RPA is 0.8%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Control-M is 3.7%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Process Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Control-M	3.7%
Appian RPA	0.8%
Other	95.5%

Process Automation

Featured Reviews

Kunal Sharda

Director & Key Managerial Personnel at Newlight Technology Solutions Private Limited

Partnering with comprehensive automation for increased efficiency

The best feature of Appian RPA is that it is highly integrated into the Appian platform itself. It is very easy to configure that in the end-to-end Appian automation solution. The second notable feature is that Appian RPA gives you a lot of flexibility in terms of how you want to design the robotic tasks. It has a very detailed orchestration console which provides details about the entire runtime and the logs of Appian RPA where you can find in detail what the robot did on the virtual machine. Appian provides dashboards where users or admins can log in and see how the robots are performing various robotic tasks. It is very detailed and gives substantial insight into how Appian RPA is functioning or is operational. It also lets you drill down into specific details at each task level.

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Raj Pattni

Batch Admin at NBC Universal

Brings data together from multiple platforms and optimizes cross-environment orchestration

The features of Control-M that I like the most include the ability to easily integrate or bring in different platforms into Control-M. For instance, AWS, mainframe, TWS, and something that's running on Autosys can all be brought into Control-M, converted to how Control-M runs it, and then the batch can be executed. This centralizes various applications in Control-M, which doesn't just have to handle batch processes, but also other tasks like reporting on required data. I find this functionality very useful and the setup is impressive, with more advancements yet to come. With Control-M, my company has achieved several measurable improvements since I started. The metrics indicate that the number of failures has dropped, and we have addressed the issue of excessive false alerts that I encountered when I joined. Previously, we received an overwhelming number of alerts daily, but now we manage to maintain that at a normalized level, perhaps around five to fifteen alerts, depending on running core batches and their setup.

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 best feature of Appian RPA is that it is highly integrated into the Appian platform itself and is very easy to configure in the end-to-end Appian automation solution."

"I find the pricing of Appian RPA reasonable because it is user-based, and we can experiment with it."

"Appian RPA is super easy to use, offering low code, no code capabilities."

"It helps us meet our service-level agreements. It is integrated into our CI/CD pipeline. It enhances our operational productivity."

"It has absolutely saved us time. It has made us more efficient. As far as the processing between systems, we don't have as many people. They have been able to focus on other efforts, because we have been able to automate more stuff with Control-M."

"Control-M is very easy to use; there shouldn't be any technical knowledge required for using Control-M, making it more user-friendly compared to other tools in the market."

"Helix Control-M has contributed to the overall stability of our applications and improved user experience."

"The best features of Control-M include the fact that you can easily connect different platforms—for anybody coming to it, if you needed to script a solution that connected Windows and Unix and mainframe, that would be difficult, but with Control-M, you can just sit back and connect a COBOL program running on the mainframe, trigger something on the Windows platform, then do a file transfer on Linux, and that's all basically just drag and drop."

"The product has improved dramatically over the years; it offers a lot in terms of features and capabilities and integration with third-party tools. A wide range of models available with the product is critical in reducing manual and mundane work such as custom script writing. This saves significant amounts of time and, by association, money for the organization."

"First of all, the shift from manual to automation has been valuable. We have a tool that can automate."

"Our customers find the self-service feature the most valuable. Control-M offers great value to businesses by providing an option to see different flows and control and orchestrate the sequence of the execution. It is easy to use and integrate with different solutions. It is a good solution that is easy to implement and deliver."

More Control-M pros

Cons

"There are not any areas that need improvement off the top of my head."

"In my opinion, Appian RPA can be improved."

"There are many competitive products in the market right now, for example, UiPath and Automation Anywhere. These competitive products are now coming up with features which Appian RPA currently does not have."

"Pricing and licensing for Control-M are challenging aspects."

"The stability of Control-M has Not been great. A big thing we've been trying to work on with BMC is observability. Modern applications should be observable and resilient, but we're finding that sometimes Control-M is not very resilient and many times Control-M is not very observable."

"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."

"The main area that could be improved would be documentation, just like every other software product out there!"

"Pricing and licensing for Control-M are challenging aspects."

"Its operations and infrastructure can be improved."

"There should be an expansion in storing more data as it currently provides data storage for only up to 60 days."

"Some features which are hidden are not properly documented in Control-M itself, or maybe documented but not properly given or described with examples."

More Control-M cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"This is an area where it is a little difficult to work with BMC. They want to do licenses by job, which is what we have. For example, the simplest is to license by job, but they can also license by nodes. While the licensing is simple to use, it might not be the correct licensing model for the customer. It is okay because we want to license by job, which is something measurable. At the end of the day, licensing by job is the most important."

"The cost is basically $100 a job, give or take."

"There are human costs in addition to the standard pricing and licensing of this solution."

"It was a little bit pricey. They were proud of the product. A particular module was not free. However, BMC was able to negotiate that particular module into our whole contract itself without having to negotiate an individual price for that module. All that was included in a one-time negotiation, and we've signed a five-year contract on that."

"Its pricing is a little bit high. They could provide an enterprise-level license for an unlimited number of jobs. Currently, it is based on the number of jobs, and if you exceed the number of jobs, there are charges. For example, if your license is for 3,000 jobs per day, but you run 3,050 jobs, you will have to pay for the extra 50 jobs. They charge $120 per job. So, it is too costly."

"BMC's price is based on the number of jobs."

"Its pricing and licensing could be a little bit better. Based on my experience and discussions with other existing customers, everybody feels that the regular Managed File Transfer piece, not the enterprise one, is a little overpriced, especially for folks who already have licensed Advanced File Transfer. We understand that Advanced File Transfer is going away and is going to be the end of life, and there is some additional functionality built into MFT, but the additional functionality does not really correlate with the huge price increase over what we're paying for AFT already. This has actually driven a lot of people to look for alternative solutions."

"You're going to spend a lot of money upfront, but the benefits you're going to get out of it are going to quickly pay for it."

More Control-M pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

23%

Insurance Company

15%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

27%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	37
Midsize Enterprise	23
Large Enterprise	141

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Appian RPA?

I didn't handle payments or costs. We recommended infrastructure stacks to our clients, who implemented them, and we provided ongoing consulting services.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Appian RPA?

In my opinion, Appian RPA can be improved. We are planning to conduct a proof of concept on volume because we are still not entirely certain about how well the record type feature performs on Appia...

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What is your primary use case for Appian RPA?

We have been working with Appian RPA along with the entire workflow case management suite. Recently, Appian released their AI, which achieved general availability in August 2025. This is a document...

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How does Control-M compare with AutoSys Workload Automation?

Control-M acts as a single, centralized interface for monitoring and managing all batch processes, which is helpful because nothing gets left unattended since it is all visible in one place, and th...

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What do you like most about Control-M?

First of all, the shift from manual to automation has been valuable. We have a tool that can automate.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Control-M?

From what I know about pricing, I would probably put Control-M in the expensive category, but you do pay for what you get; you are paying for a premium product.

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

December 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Control-M

January 2026

Download Control-M product report

Also Known As

Jidoka RPA

Control M, BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer, BMC Australia CTM

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Appian

BMC

Overview

Appian RPA seamlessly integrates with the comprehensive Appian Platform for process automation, offering an end-to-end solution for streamlining workflows and automating repetitive tasks. With features like the Universal RPA Task Recorder and the Low-code Appian Process Modeler, users can quickly build and deploy bots without extensive coding knowledge. Appian RPA ensures governance, dynamic exception handling, secure deployment, and scalability, enabling organizations to maintain automation integrity while efficiently managing digital workers across various environments. By leveraging Appian RPA alongside Appian IDP, AI, business rules, and API integrations, businesses can achieve seamless process automation and drive value quickly, optimizing workflows between humans, digital workers, and systems. With Appian's unified platform for change, organizations can accelerate digital innovation, enhance business efficiency, and create end-to-end automation solutions tailored to their specific needs.

Appian

Control-M SaaS by BMC is tailored for growing teams, offering essential orchestration for managing hybrid cloud workflows starting at $29,000 annually.

Control-M integrates automation, orchestration, and a user-friendly interface to streamline workflows across banking, DevOps, and cloud environments. Key modules like Managed File Transfer and cross-platform support simplify job monitoring, while Batch Impact Manager enhances scheduling. Despite its capabilities, improvements in output analysis, reporting customization, offline access, and API integration are desired by users.

What are Control-M's key features?

Automation and Orchestration: Simplifies workflow management.
Integration: Connects with diverse applications seamlessly.
User Interface: Facilitates easy navigation.
Managed File Transfer: Streamlines secure file movements.
Self-Service: Empowers users to independently manage tasks.
Cross-Platform Support: Handles complex workflows efficiently.
Batch Impact Manager: Enhances scheduling and SLA management.
API Integration: Extends versatility across environments.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Increased Efficiency: Optimizes operations through automation.
Scalability: Supports enterprise growth and workload demands.
Improved SLA Management: Enhances reliability in scheduling.
Cost Savings: Streamlines processes to reduce operational costs.
Process Optimization: Ensures secure and efficient data exchanges.

Control-M is implemented in industries such as finance and enterprise operations, aiding in automating batch processing across platforms like SAP and Teradata. It integrates with secure file transfers, ERP systems, and databases, whether deployed on-premises or cloud, ensuring seamless operation optimization.

BMC

Sample Customers

empark, talan, liverpool, ayesa, aeromexico, teknei

The Bank of East Asia, LINE Bank Taiwan, Coop, Air Europa, Carrefour, Itau Unibanco, Snam, Embraer, ANZ Bank, EDP, Dominio's, Tampa General Hospital, W&W Informatik GmbH, Veterans General, Up Sí Vale, Sky Italia, REWE digital GmbH, Raymond James, Railinc, Navistar, Management Science Associates, Colruyt, CARFAX, Banpara, Aspiag Service, Amadeus, AG Insurance, ING Bank Slaski

Buyer's Guide

Appian RPA vs. Control-M

December 2025

Free Report: Appian RPA vs. Control-M

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