Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Automate vs Automic Automation vs Tidal by Redwood comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Automate2.0%
UiPath Platform18.7%
Microsoft Power Automate17.3%
Other62.0%
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
Workload Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Automic Automation8.1%
Control-M19.1%
AutoSys Workload Automation10.2%
Other62.599999999999994%
Workload Automation
Workload Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Tidal by Redwood4.7%
Control-M19.1%
AutoSys Workload Automation10.2%
Other66.0%
Workload Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Ibukun Shweta - PeerSpot reviewer
Automation optimizes scheduling, but improvements needed in error reporting and script execution
In my particular use case, for session management, it would be better if I could get a more granular view into connectivity issues to servers. Sometimes, although your flows or tasks are running as scheduled, connecting to the servers can hit a snag without alerts or error logs to check. Some servers might need patching or could be affected by network issues or latency. The workflow sometimes gets stuck without clarity on the errors. An explicit error report would be helpful, especially when the connection fails unexpectedly. It's complex to analyze problems that might arise from firewall issues or other anomalies that could hinder the flow from executing as expected. The depth of these connection challenges would benefit from better debugging capabilities. As for improvements, if Automate wasn't designed primarily for script execution, that's understandable. However, for Linux, I would prefer to see less complexity in workflows to achieve a natural completion of scripts. There are features, such as 'wait for terminal output,' that should more intuitively detect completion based on the shell prompt. Improving those aspects would make Automate more efficient for my needs. Regarding error reporting, I think Automate should offer better error reporting when connecting to servers. Currently, there are many instances where I see empty logs, indicating that, while tasks are scheduled, commands are not executing successfully. This is a significant concern, especially with critical workloads where visibility into errors is essential.
Peter Grundler - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps to move away from manual tasks and offers wide platform support and web-based interface
Customers want to move away from manual monitoring and checking processes. Automating these processes helps in time-saving and reduces human error. When you automate business processes, it reduces mistakes. It eliminates the risk of manual errors such as typos. There is a 20% to 30% reduction in human error. It fulfills all the needs when it comes to visibility and control across various operating platforms. It is the perfect product for managing processes that span multiple operating platforms. Automic Automation has the widest platform support compared to other products, such as Control-M, Tivoli from IBM, or Stonebranch. It definitely helps with compliance processes. We have had a lot of customers for two years with a focus on compliance, and it works. They were successful. Due to the fact that our customers can automate a lot of things, it reduces operating costs. It is hard to give a number because the savings are different for each customer. If a customer never had any automation, there could be about 80% savings after implementing Automic Automation, whereas for a customer who already has automated tasks, the difference will be less by adding Automic Automation. They might see 5% to 10% more savings. Automic Automation helps improve our ability to meet SLAs. In the recent versions, SLA management has been integrated, which previously was an external component. Because a lot of customers used it and asked Broadcom to implement SLA management into the workload engine, Broadcom included it. We see more and more customers running their SLA management via the Automic Automation product.
Steve Mikula - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Fortra's Automate performs the job effectively and has the capability to alert us of any issues."
"We have tried other RPA solutions like UiPath or Automation Anywhere. They are fantastic products but complex, and it's hard to understand everything. It would be best if you had a skilled developer or several. Automate is easy to implement, administer, and use. It's appropriate for us because our cases are simple and easy to automate. We don't need complicated tools with many features; We prefer to get a significant ROI quickly."
"It gives us a central place to schedule tasks and run them distributed."
"The peace of mind I have using Automate for scheduling tasks allows me to focus on other responsibilities without worrying about operational issues."
"The interface is simple, user-friendly, and very intuitive."
"Compared to other vendors, it's the scheduling tool because a lot of vendors want to charge you extra for their enterprise-level license to have a scheduling tool built in to give you the ability to set up regular schedules to run and do certain data checks."
"We have found the pricing to be very reasonable."
"I like the interface; it makes managing automation easy. We can set different schedules and templates for each task."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is that we can control between a lot of operating systems and other products because we have a lot of old and new products in our environment. It helps us to control all of them together."
"We automate very manual, robust tasks, which are very time consuming and not error-free."
"One of the big features that they did implement, that a lot of people, us included, were asking for for a long time, is the ability to do zero downtime upgrades. They have introduced that."
"It is technology agnostic. It works with all the different legacy solutions we have and it allows us to look at things in one location, as opposed to going to a lot of different places."
"The most valuable feature is the one for SAP batch processing... There are certain other mid-level workload automation tools which can handle the OS level, but SAP is something which is really very critical. Automic stands out from the ordinary tools because handling SAP processes is absolutely easy with it."
"The most valuable feature is that it can be installed on any type of application on every kind of operating system and the agent can use it on these applications and systems."
"Integration with most of the platforms that we have within the company's Windows, Linux, and Unix. Integrating these inside the automation agent for scheduling, backups, file transfer, and SAP jobs."
"It is an easy product to use, and we use it for end-to-end process automation."
"Especially in the newer versions of Tidal, the segmentation of user permissions enables us to give people operator permissions for their jobs, to rerun jobs, but view-only for other groups' jobs. We're able to keep people from hurting themselves or other groups accidentally. The permissioning is really good."
"Tidal Workload Automation Software provides the ability to quickly adapt to changing business requirements."
"Tidal Automation by Redwood is a user-friendly solution."
"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."
"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."
"Tidal Automation allows organizations to automate complex workflows and processes, reducing the need for manual intervention and improving operational efficiency."
"It has been super stable. There are no complaints on stability. We would not be using it if Tidal wasn't stable."
"It's the most efficient tool in doing repetitive tasks and saves a lot of time with minimum possibility of error."
 

Cons

"We really need a free development environment for customers. Building and testing automation on production isn't ideal."
"It would be an improvement if Automate had better stability tools, whether by recommending a certain amount of memory because it can be a memory hog at times."
"Some challenges include the system being too loaded or delayed in taking instructions and responding quickly as needed."
"There is a lack of good development for artificial intelligence, such as machine learning."
"Error messages should be better. For error status, there should be better documentation because a lot of times, error messages that you get are quite vague. For example, you get a message saying that the workflow has run into an unknown status, which is vague. It just tells you that it failed, but you don't know how or why it failed. It makes debugging difficult."
"The documentation for errors needs improvement as many of the error messages we receive are very vague."
"I would like to see some better web automation, a wizard like the one in the product WinAutomation would be very nice."
"Currently, there are many instances where I see empty logs, indicating that, while tasks are scheduled, commands are not executing successfully."
"In case we run into performance issues, it is sometimes hard to find out what is the real cause for it."
"I find that documentation is either very good or borderline useless depending on where you go."
"I would like to see more stability in the product and have the transition between versions be more seamless."
"I should be able to grant a user access to execute a job without having to directly list every include, prompt set, output scan, script, login, etc. An inherited read for execution purposes would accomplish the same results without making the admin list every single object every time, as well as deny the user the ability to edit."
"There is room for improvement in reporting. There is a lack of reporting capabilities."
"The only thing that we would like improved is the FTP agent. It only supports SOCKS proxy, and we would like it to also support an HTTP proxy."
"I hope going forward they will make some changes to the documentation. I hope they will write into the documentation what has changed and what the new names are. For example, some features have a new name. I hope they will make a translation the names in the old version to the names in the newer version."
"I'm not sure what data they use to make time estimates. However, most of the time it is not accurate. It's either way too long or way too short."
"When we patch to the next version, there is often a little thing that breaks. It has rarely been a big deal, but I always seem to have to follow up on one tiny issue. It would help if they had some better QA testing of their patches."
"They can do better reporting in terms of production statistics reporting."
"The UI might have the potential to provide a more polished and user-centric encounter, promoting seamless engagements and simplifying the navigation process for individuals interacting with the software."
"From an administrative point of view, I wouldn't give really high marks to the solution. I actually entertained getting the JAWS application at one point. One of the shortcomings with the scheduler is the reporting capabilities. At least at the time, JAWS was the best that they had for a third-party integration. I think they've got things in the pipeline to help alleviate that gap."
"To better fit their unique needs, the solution should give more customization options."
"Tidal Software interface could be more intuitive and user-friendly."
"One area for improvement is the command-line interface and the API to bulk-load jobs. It's a little bit kludgy, but we still manage without it. They're working on it and it's getting better all the time. In addition, the documentation for their API for creating jobs needs to be updated. It's a bit of a learning curve."
"The current user interface of Tidal Software is functional. However, it can be improved to make it more intuitive and user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I like the way this solution is priced because you can buy a license, or you can buy the software outright."
"Compared to other products, the pricing model for this solution is much more convenient, flexible, and adaptable to the Portuguese reality."
"It has gone up in price. The price of Fortra's Automate has increased since we first started using it. It does a lot but also costs a lot. It was a lot more affordable before Fortra owned the software."
"The cost is a bit high for a small business like ours, but we manage with Fortra's Automate."
"The pricing is quite reasonable. We can run the process with one bot. The limitation is at the server level because they have some resources, and sometimes that is enough. It isn't too expensive, so you can get a good return off of one, and you can also have a pack of five bots that is quite competitive."
"I believe the price falls within a reasonable range, which significantly influenced our decision regarding the product. This aspect is crucial for any technological solution, especially in our country where enterprises might be hesitant to invest heavily in something untested or uncertain about its practicality and potential returns."
"Once you buy the software, you just pay for the support for backend help."
"I'm only involved in running the product and maintaining the systems, so I can't speak to the cost."
"There are different licensing fees for cases where high availability is important."
"We have received a lot of time and cost efficiencies from using the product."
"I'm not sure about licensing costs, but I know the base price is about $3,000, and you can get some kind of discount per node."
"It costs to scale. While, it is scalable, the add-ons are expensive."
"The cost of arrays is high. If you want to buy an array for an application, and see value from it, you need about half a million dollars. That is too expensive."
"Automatic is heavily integrated in our organization. The cost to change would be a huge factor for us, and we have not found any other product that is better out there."
"They have changed the pricing on their licensing, and it's cheaper than before."
"The cost of the solution depends on the number of systems that are being orchestrated."
"There are project, system, and server costs. Some of the things that they are doing is introducing new products. They are introducing what they call their Repository, which is a way for you to move a job. That doesn't cost anything to us, because it is reusing a tool called Transporter. The repository is the successor to Transporter, so we already own it and are sort of grandfathered in. But that new product requires a server and database, so now we have to go out and get a server and database. So, there is a cost there."
"The solution has no hidden costs. It helps me to plan forward into the future. I know that I can add another 100 or a thousand jobs, and that's how much it will cost me today."
"If you are willing to shop around to other vendors, you can possibly get a good price on your support license."
"The price is reasonable in terms of the product’s functionality."
"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."
"We pay maintenance annually through Blue House of about $9,000. That's for our two environments: production and test."
"We are satisfied with the pricing of Tidal. It's in the moderate range and it feels very achievable for us."
"...it is a pretty affordable scheduler tool that lets us do a lot. You get a lot of bang for the buck... The licensing model is hugely flexible."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solutions are best for your needs.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Performing Arts
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Insurance Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise66
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise38
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about HelpSystems AutoMate?
We use it for specific cases, mainly secure file transfers, which are vital for us. And it works for us.
What is your primary use case for HelpSystems AutoMate?
The main purpose is for automation. That has been the purpose why I have been using it so far.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortra Automate?
Regarding pricing, it is very friendly. I would not say that it is really cheap or very expensive, but it fits within...
What do you like most about Automic Workload Automation?
It is easy to manage complex workloads and use electronic workflow automation.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Automic Workload Automation?
The pricing was client-wise, but they are changing it to execution-wise pricing. So, we are in negotiation.
What needs improvement with Automic Workload Automation?
The support and knowledge of incident management could be enhanced. There have been unresolved issues persisting for ...
What do you like most about Tidal Automation?
Tidal Automation by Redwood is a user-friendly solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tidal Automation?
The price is reasonable in terms of the product’s functionality.
What needs improvement with Tidal Automation?
Initially, it is complicated to understand the functionalities as there is limited product documentation. The setup a...
 

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate
Automic Dollar Universe
Tidal Workload Automation, Cisco Workload Automation, Tidal Enterprise Scheduler
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Aldergrove Financial Group, Preferred Health Professionals, Mindbeam Technologies, First Credit Union in British Columbia, Vestcom International, Prime Liberty Benefits, University of Tampa, CNLBancshares, World Precision Instruments, BJ's Restaurants, Globe Pequot Press, Accudata Technologies, Norton Healthcare, Pacific Toxicology Laboratories
ING, Adidas, 84.51, ESB
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about UiPath, Automation Anywhere, Microsoft and others in Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Updated: August 2025.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.