No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

AWS Step Functions vs AutoSys Workload Automation comparison

Why PeerSpot?
Sponsored
 

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 Scheduler
Sponsored
Ranking in Workload Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
AutoSys Workload Automation
Ranking in Workload Automation
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
AWS Step Functions
Ranking in Workload Automation
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of JAMS Scheduler is 3.4%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AutoSys Workload Automation is 6.4%, down from 10.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Step Functions is 2.1%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
JAMS Scheduler3.4%
AutoSys Workload Automation6.4%
AWS Step Functions2.1%
Other88.1%
Workload Automation
 

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.
PK
Assistant VP at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Experience significant automation with robust integration and user-friendly interfaces
There are areas of AutoSys Workload Automation that have room for improvement. They are implementing good enhancements in the R24 release. The web UI needs some improvement. Cloud integrations are limited to 25 or 30 configurable plugins and integrations to the cloud. They can improve in that area. They have separate tools, not AutoSys Workload Automation, such as Atomic and other SaaS-based solutions that can run inside the cloud. AutoSys Workload Automation can be configured in the cloud, but it requires a substantial number of VMs depending on the load. For on-premises deployment, it is a very good solution. They need to increase their footprint in the cloud and improve the web UI. They are making excellent progress in the R24 release.
YM
Senior Software Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Central orchestration has streamlined complex data workflows and now drives timely aviation alerts
The best features AWS Step Functions offers include the ability to deploy it via code. It helps us orchestrate anything that we want. Even if we have Glue jobs for another use case or Lambda that we are currently looking forward to, we are using Lambda to take DynamoDB data for real-time sales monitoring, then it goes to our S3 bucket. We have multiple workflows that are orchestrated by AWS Step Functions, and at the core, the main functionality is based on different frameworks. We have an Athena complete workflow, Glue job-based workflow, and a separate Lambda-based workflow. All of these are separately handled in AWS Step Functions. This is a good point and again with the inbuilt facilities of it, including how we can construct those workflows and add up a catch state or roll back or do multiple iterations using the Map state, that is very helpful for us.The Map state feature has specifically helped my team create a rollback state of the data since we were dropping some of our data assets. In case we want them back, we just wanted to do this. We took a particular layer and provided the data list, including the tables list, and using the Map state, we iterated over this list and one by one we did the backups of this data at the concurrency of five tables in a single execution. The Catch state, on the other hand, allows us to identify any error immediately. If we encounter an error, the Catch state immediately picks it up and we integrated webhooks or email notifications. That is how we are able to identify immediately if we face any error. At the core of our data engineering platform, AWS Step Functions sit at the topmost core of whatever pipelines we have. It is a main orchestration tool for us and helps us save costs. It is a key component of our engineering platform.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"JAMS has improved our productivity immensely because everything flows. I don't think we could operate at our current staffing levels without it."
"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."
"This feature helps my team day-to-day by running hundreds and hundreds of jobs on JAMS in a timely fashion, which is extremely important and sensitive, providing a lot of reporting to the entire firm and beyond."
"Fortra's JAMS helped us centralize job management across our platforms and applications. This is critical because we schedule tasks across multiple applications and operating systems, using triggers and start dates to coordinate their execution."
"JAMS saves us on the order of thousands of hours per year."
"One of the things I like the most, as a SQL DBA, is the fact that we can manipulate tables in the background. Also, the fact that you can have your own views and work with the product the way it fits best is a very helpful feature."
"We can see all the batch execution status within the tool itself, which saves money, time, and cost, allowing us to handle everything in one single tool."
"We use CA Workload Automation AE r11.3.6 to automate enterprise-wide scheduling and file transfers using an FTP plugin."
"It provides us with reliable scheduling of various business workloads."
"It is a lot more powerful and a lot more secure."
"The flexibility of being able to schedule the timing and frequency of different automation scripts makes it easier for us to meet our customers’ business requirements."
"The capabilities of the product to schedule on multiple platforms, multiple operating systems."
"It's very easy to work with. The learning curve is not that steep."
"Centralizing all this into a single workload automation tool using the CA product has really helped a lot of customers."
"It's very stable, it's highly redundant, it's very recoverable within the batch work, and it's easy to use."
"What I like the most about Amazon Step Functions is how easy it is to use."
"At the core of our data engineering platform, AWS Step Functions sit at the topmost core of whatever pipelines we have, is a main orchestration tool for us, helps us save costs, and is a key component of our engineering platform."
"AWS Step Functions was stable, and there were no problems that I can recall."
"It has enabled my organization to create workflows with a lot of different AWS services; it's a general solution that you can adapt to your own needs and is simple to use."
"AWS Step Functions offers advanced workflows that save time and enhance efficiency by reducing delays and ensuring consistent orchestration among various services."
"It's Amazon, it's scalable."
"The solution is stable...The solution is easy to scale."
"The number of historical events is great."
 

Cons

"In terms of improvements, I believe JAMS can enhance its user interface for better user experiences."
"The JAMS automation code isn't so clean."
"As an admin, I would like to have a web-based GUI instead of a client application that we have to install on our PCs."
"JAMS could be improved with a web client that is accessible and as fast as a normal website, eliminating the need to RDP to the servers to access the JAMS client."
"JAMS notifications for hung jobs could be improved."
"Right now there's not much of an Azure integration with JAMS at the moment directly because we run separate pipelines."
"The cost has definitely gone up tremendously. That is where I do know, as much as the feature sets are there, and if the newly acquired company is going to be doing a pushback, they might just say, 'Do we still need to pay this much? Or at that point, should we look into an alternative?'"
"It is important to receive notifications if a charged job fails and SQL is halted. JAMS does not provide halted notifications by default, which is a critical feature that needs to be added."
"We see improvement possibilities in the processing provision of predefined evaluations or individual objects, or in the Self Service portal, which can be used by any user to monitor objects or start objects."
"The lack of documentation, that is an issue. When we do need to bring it down for maintenance, it is always a scary moment for us because we have never had it crash."
"The job flow could use a little more improvement."
"They could do better supporting it. They have too many of the same type of products, so sometimes it doesn't get as much attention as it should."
"However, when compared to other products in the market, it is still behind other solutions."
"When we started the new product and we introduced it, we started getting some new alarm types and the agent went offline."
"AutoSys Workload Automation could improve in the Linux environment. The previous versions of the AutoSys Workload Automation let you take the profile of the user that you were using to run the tasks that you're going to automate, but in the latest versions, you can't do that, you need to make more definitions and it's a little bit difficult. It was easier in the previous versions."
"More benefits with the agent upgrades, and that's about it. Other than that we have no complaints with it. It's been awesome."
"The pricing of the solution can be improved."
"It wasn't easy to understand the licensing model. It's like if you use just a little, it's cheap, but it becomes more expensive as you use more. It's like a hook that ties you inside the Amazon ecosystem. So, it creates a dependency."
"The solution's data size limit can be improved."
"If AWS Step Functions keeps adding more integrations, it would be even better."
"There is room for improvement in terms of integration with other products. It would benefit from more integration with different applications or services."
"One area for improvement is the payload size. Currently, I sometimes have to save data as a file since I cannot pass it within Step Functions, necessitating caching in processes."
"The solution's pricing could be cheaper. It is cheaper than Airflow."
"I think AWS Step Functions is good, but the UI in the console can be much more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"JAMS is close to the lower end of the pricing models for enterprise scheduling solutions. They are much cheaper than Control-M, as well as some other products that I've used. I also don't know of another solution where you can actually get true, unlimited licensing, where you can have as many instances and as many agents as you want."
"In the end, you'll find that it's really worth the price. There is some sticker shock, but it's worth every dime."
"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."
"The pricing of JAMS has not been an issue for us, as it has allowed us to save time."
"Definitely check how many single processes you want to run and count them as jobs. That is how you would work out your pricing on JAMS. For example, if you're running a number of commands and you can put them all into one script and run that script, you can count that as one job."
"This is a good product at a fair price."
"It's certainly a lot cheaper than Tivoli and Control-M. In comparison to them, you get a lot more bang for your buck. You get pretty much the whole functionality and more, in some cases, when compared to Control-M, but at a fraction of the price."
"All licensing models are a little overpriced, but JAMS offers a good value, especially given their support response times and ability to handle unforeseen issues like the SFTP transfers. I hope to find more use cases to get a better bang for our buck."
"The price of this solution is reasonable and there is an annual license required."
"It is overpriced."
"CA pricing has been a problem, and not looked upon favorably here at all."
"We paid to use the solution monthly."
"Validate how many agents you need beforehand."
"The pricing needs to be improved. Some of my client's complained that it was too expensive."
"I certainly think the pricing is worth the value."
"There is an annual license to use AutoSys Workload Automation."
"The solution's price is reasonable."
"The solution is expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Workload Automation solutions are best for your needs.
912,788 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
33%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise23
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise79
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
 

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?
In terms of improvements, I believe JAMS can enhance its user interface for better user experiences. I would like to ...
What is your primary use case for JAMS?
My primary use case for JAMS is enterprise workload automation and batch job orchestration. I use it to schedule and ...
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 b...
What needs improvement with AutoSys Workload Automation?
There are areas of AutoSys Workload Automation that have room for improvement. They are implementing good enhancement...
What is your primary use case for Amazon Step Functions?
My main use case for AWS Step Functions is in our data platform where we are trying to generate alerts. For generatin...
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon Step Functions?
I rate AWS Step Functions a nine out of ten on a scale of one to ten. I chose a nine out of ten because it is basical...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Step Functions?
AWS Step Functions helps us save costs as it is a self-managed service and is serverless. We look out for the inbuilt...
 

Also Known As

No data available
CA Workload Automation, CA Workload Automation AE
Amazon Step Functions, Step Functions
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital
Gaumont, Mercantil do Brasil, CCEE, Hanwha Life
Alpha Apps, The Guardian, SGK, Bigfinite
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Step Functions vs. AutoSys Workload Automation and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
912,788 professionals have used our research since 2012.