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Automic Automation Intelligence [EOL] vs Fortra's Automate comparison

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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

JAMS
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Workload Automation (3rd)
Automic Automation Intellig...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fortra's Automate
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (4th), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (6th)
 

Featured Reviews

LV
Principal Data Base And Infrastructure Engineer at a outsourcing company with 501-1,000 employees
Automation has replaced nightly monitoring and delivers reliable, unified job scheduling
We have really enjoyed working with JAMS in terms of notifications, alerts, and streamlining. There used to be a process with Automate, which is another product from Fortra, but even before that, the other division of the company that we were merging with had a tool that was built in-house called a file handler or file distributor. It was an in-house developed tool, but it was not as streamlined or as efficient as JAMS is. We literally had to have a dedicated nighttime person monitoring. Although we are 24/7, the divisions of the company that we were using JAMS for have been small scale. While we have automated it, we have streamlined it in such a way that notifications go out and alerts go out, but if there is anything, then we get paged and alerted, and if anything needs to happen at midnight, we can wake up. On the other hand, with the tool I mentioned, the file handler and distributor, we used to have a dedicated nighttime person that had to be sitting and monitoring it to see when a file arrived, whether it met the conditions, and then execute the next particular job. By using JAMS, we have gained a lot more efficiencies in terms of all of those to streamline it, and there is no necessary need for having an overnight engineer just keeping an eye on all of this.
DS
Personal Assistant at Centrum.sk
Saves time on manual processes and provides alerts on special scenarios
The installation process is quite straightforward, although some database knowledge is required for setting up the base. Alternatively, someone with the necessary capabilities can handle this step for you. Overall, the installation is especially easy for Windows platforms. Deployment can be completed in three days. The number of people required to manage the tool depends on the size of the environment. One person may suffice for smaller environments, while larger environments may require two or three individuals. The frequency of scheduling requests, additional responsibilities within the environment, and the company's specific needs all play a role in determining the necessary staffing. One or two individuals can handle the maintenance if the setup is stable with minimal changes. However, in the case of frequent changes, more staff may be needed to manage the tool.
Anthony Tuhame - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Manager at Everseen
Automation has reduced night-time server checks and now manages reporting and cloud monitoring
The downsides I normally mention about Fortra's Automate are about reports and deep analytics. While Fortra's Automate can manage our servers, it can give you a problem report that says what happened, but it doesn't give you a clear picture of why it happened or how many times your servers went offline. This pushes us to get another third-party tool. We have to generate those simple reports from Fortra's Automate and push them to another software in Tableau. We use Tableau for analytics to analyze that data and understand what the trends are, what the instance is telling us, and what the clear problem is. It lacks that deep analytics feature. Additionally, I am not impressed with the interface, as it feels outdated and it has taken a long time to see any updates or changes. I believe those are the two downsides, but the customer support is adequate.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The fact that we no longer need to use Excel spreadsheets is huge. Before JAMS, every group was keeping track of their own batch jobs. Nobody really knew what the other jobs were. So, if jobs failed, other groups wouldn't necessarily know. With JAMS, everything is done through a single scheduler. You can choose who to notify."
"The overall product is fantastic. I love it. It has been a fantastic, solid product. If I have one tiny bit of a problem with it, the support team gets in touch with me right away. I don't know if I've had another service that has been as fantastic as the JAMS support team."
"Previously, we manually managed file transfers by writing our scripts. The automated MFT feature is great for me and the company. It helps us know where the files are going and enables us to track errors if anything fails. It also makes the connection seamless for third-party vendors."
"Being able to create a series of chained jobs, which are basically linked jobs is valuable."
"We also use the solution’s Interactive Agents. If we need to push something to our dealer portal, we can just drop a file in a folder and it goes. Running interactive tasks helps me users focus on business processes since I don’t have to take care of running the jobs manually."
"We have over 50 jobs running daily to manage all the integration of our systems and we don’t have to monitor these jobs; they just run, JAMS centralizes the management of jobs in our environment, has streamlined our monitoring, saves us about four hours a week in troubleshooting time, and has helped free up about eight hours a week of IT staff time."
"The key benefits about JAMS is having the ability to run long running jobs on-premise as compared to products like Azure Data Factory."
"I didn't know about JAMS because I don't have a person with any challenges with the purchase administration. The feature or the user interface is user-friendly because of the readable icons or very descriptive icons. Though I'm a beginning user of JAMS, I had no issues using it."
"The tool's online manuals and documentation are good. Its user interface is user-friendly."
"The Action Packs are a good feature."
"The most valuable feature of Automic Automation Intelligence is the ability to see all of the batches from one place. Additionally, there is a multiple scheduler that is useful."
"The benefits I have gained from using Fortra's Automate include reduced manual intervention, saving a lot of time and enabling me to accomplish much more work than would have been possible with individuals, with very minimal errors."
"Fortra's Automate has effectively replaced the workload of an entire employee, saving us significant time and money."
"The product effectively handles all the tasks we require."
"The pricing is excellent. I would give them perfect marks in that regard."
"The key benefit of Fortra's Automate is that it is quite effective with the automation of repetitive IT and business workflows, which is the primary use case we feel is perfect for Fortra's Automate, and it significantly reduces manual intervention."
"Web scraping is quite good since it offers a lot of possibilities."
"The automated analytics have helped improve our business processes since it has increased our efficiency by automating our everyday tasks, freeing up time for us to focus more on strategic activities such as analyzing data and developing new business strategies."
"The best feature of Automate is its ease of use, which is a major selling point."
 

Cons

"I would enhance the compatibility feature of JAMS because sometimes when the server is under high load, it does not inform us and we cannot get answers."
"There could be a better simulation for banning the termination. You have to simulate every one of the processes in order to have an idea for better planning. This kind of simulation is broken and needs improvement."
"The search capability needs to be improved because when we try to search for a job, it's hard to do."
"The product does not allow the users to cut and paste the job names from the screen."
"JAMS lacks source control features. Our previous solution had job control language, but JAMS doesn't. When migrating between versions, JAMS doesn't migrate all the data, like job change history, etc. Also, the scheduler doesn't have a way to make jobs invisible, so you can temporarily turn a job off if you decide not to run it today."
"One thing that I know that the JAMS people said that they were working on that would be huge for us is a search capability so that you could search for tasks. It may be available in version 7 or in a future release of 7. I think that's on their roadmap. But right now, for us to do a search, we have to search through database queries."
"With no programming experience, I find JAMS code-driven automation challenging due to the required PowerShell scripting."
"The error messages from JAMS often need clarification, hindering our ability to resolve issues swiftly."
"The job reporting feature needs improvement."
"Integration of the solution could be improved."
"The solution could benefit by having more connectors and customized widgets. Additionally, a dashboard that people could use for videos would be helpful."
"There are newer AWS services such as Lambda or Security Hub that security analysts use to detect malicious traffic or alerts, but the integration is not available for these, so we still rely on custom scripting because there are no options for drag-and-drop with these newer services."
"One aspect I dislike about Fortra's Automate is that debugging slows me down."
"I have encountered challenges with error handling and alerting, as some jobs fail and require retries."
"The product also has a limited use case in some respects."
"Some challenges include the system being too loaded or delayed in taking instructions and responding quickly as needed."
"I wish Fortra's Automate could shorten the time it takes to debug complex workflows because they tend to take much longer than expected."
"Automate could simplify the UI for creating a workflow for automation. As a technical person, I can understand it easily. However, there are few activities in the software that our HR department cannot understand."
"The areas that have room for improvement in Fortra's Automate include the reporting and analytics functionality, where the analytics could be more detailed."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."
"The licensing model for JAMS is straightforward and based on the number of agents, not the number of jobs you run. It's cheap and fairly simple."
"This is a good product at a fair price."
"In the end, you'll find that it's really worth the price. There is some sticker shock, but it's worth every dime."
"Our licensing is pretty cheap because we have a state solution. So, we pay only $1,000 a year."
"It's expensive, to be honest, but it does the job."
"JAMS is relatively inexpensive, with additional costs only incurred for tags, other services, and optional support renewals."
"It was $10,000 for the first year. Then, there is a maintenance cost for licensing every year that we get billed $5,000 for every year."
"The price of Automic Automation Intelligence depends on the connectors used. For example, if you wanted to connect to Dell BMC, you would need a connector."
"Automic Automation Intelligence's licensing costs are expensive and can be yearly or monthly."
"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."
"While solutions like UiPath and Blue Prism cost around $11,000-$12,000 for each license, this product costs around $7,000 and you can keep it forever."
"From a distributor's side, one of the biggest selling points is its price point. Without going into any numbers, compared to UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and Blue Prism, we're significantly cheaper. The main difference is that other competitors usually charge you per process. However, in Automate's case, it's priced per bot. So, a bot can run multiple processes at the same time, but you are only priced for a single bot."
"From a distributor's perspective, one of the biggest selling points of Automate is its price point."
"I'm only involved in running the product and maintaining the systems, so I can't speak to the cost."
"I like the way this solution is priced because you can buy a license, or you can buy the software outright."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Construction Company
13%
Performing Arts
11%
University
10%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise23
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JAMS?
I was not really involved in the pricing, setup cost, and licensing at that level. I am more involved in the technica...
What needs improvement with JAMS?
To improve JAMS, it should resolve the issues with the JD Edwards application and the need for the SSH client connect...
What is your primary use case for JAMS?
My main use case for JAMS is to install, set up, and configure for customers working with JD Edwards application. A s...
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What is your primary use case for HelpSystems AutoMate?
I use Fortra's Automate to automate our workflows and reports mainly. For example, we normally task it to generate an...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortra Automate?
When we installed Fortra's Automate, I was present. We use Automate Plus, and we are running about 20 bots or instanc...
What needs improvement with Fortra Automate?
The interface of Fortra's Automate is similar to GoAnywhere. I am not completely pleased with it, although it is intu...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Terma Suite
HelpSystems Automate, Automate
 

Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital
Information Not Available
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
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC, Broadcom, JAMS Software and others in Workload Automation. Updated: July 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.