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AWS Step Functions vs Control-M 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.3
AWS Step Functions reduce development time and costs, enhance scalability and reliability, streamline workflows, and improve ROI.
Sentiment score
6.9
Control-M boosts ROI by automating tasks, reducing costs, improving efficiency, and enhancing data management for large enterprises.
The main return on investment with Helix Control-M has been a reduction in downtime and minimization of manual interventions, which has improved our operational efficiency.
You can run a million batch jobs or tasks at night when all of your highly skilled people are at home sleeping.
By implementing automation tools, you can minimize human errors and improve efficiency.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.9
AWS Step Functions support is reliable, but users desire quicker, tailored assistance; enterprise support offers rapid, expensive yet effective help.
Sentiment score
7.3
Control-M's support is praised for effectiveness and resources, though some users face delays and require issue escalation.
I use enterprise support, which is excellent, providing responses within fifteen minutes.
The speed of reply and the content of their responses usually solve the problems that arise.
They quickly evolve with changing technology trends, easily adopt new features, and incorporate them into the product.
The technical support is very polite, helpful, and available 24/7.
If something fails at 3 AM in the morning, you need to fix it and get it back up and working really quickly.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.0
AWS Step Functions are valued for efficient scalability, handling demand spikes and multiple requests, suitable for medium to large organizations.
Sentiment score
7.6
Control-M is scalable and adaptable, efficiently managing complex operations across industries, despite occasional server load and cost concerns.
They can handle multiple simultaneous requests effectively.
There isn't much need for scalability when creating orchestration in AWS Step Functions, which explains the rating of six.
Our license doesn't limit our ability to configure Control-M as needed, allowing us to easily create new agents or environments.
It can absorb more workload wherever needed.
As the workload on Control-M increases, its scalability is much higher.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
AWS Step Functions are praised for stability and reliability, ensuring consistent performance and uptime across multiple availability zones.
Sentiment score
7.7
Control-M is praised for stability and reliability, with minimal issues often linked to external factors and resolved quickly.
If one zone fails, others handle the demand, ensuring high availability.
I never faced any faults or issues due to its stability with AWS, making it very reliable with no downtime and 100% reliability.
The downtime is higher compared to AWS.
The testing and development phases need to be more rigorous before releasing patches.
Once properly implemented, the system becomes very stable, which is one of its strongest attributes.
 

Room For Improvement

AWS Step Functions needs improvements in data limits, integrations, pricing, and execution visibility while enhancing fault tolerance and third-party support.
Control-M users desire better reporting, lower costs, improved interfaces, enhanced integrations, simplified upgrades, and offline capabilities.
There is room for improvement in terms of integration with other products.
They could provide more documentation and tutorials to make the initial setup easier to understand.
We've experienced main problems with MFTE where having one setup means when an error occurs, the entire service goes down.
Documentation should be maintained for all versions since they provided the application.
 

Setup Cost

AWS Step Functions pricing fluctuates based on usage, leading to potential high bills despite being cheaper than Azure Workflow.
Enterprise buyers face high costs with Control-M, but many find its comprehensive features a worthwhile investment despite complex licensing.
Pricing for Step Functions is very cheap.
The cost is average, provided it is configured correctly.
The licensing cost is very high, and they often consider switching to IBM Workload Scheduler or other options.
Control-M tends to be more expensive compared to other solutions, but users get great value from it.
Control-M is among the highest-priced solutions in the market.
 

Valuable Features

AWS Step Functions enable efficient workflow automation with integration, orchestration, parallel tasking, and management through a user-friendly interface.
Control-M enhances workflow management with intuitive interfaces, robust automation, and seamless integration, improving flexibility, efficiency, and productivity.
AWS Step Functions offers advanced workflows that save time and enhance efficiency by reducing delays and ensuring consistent orchestration among various services.
Step Functions provide seamless integration with AWS services, which enhances the speed of application development.
It was particularly valuable for its integration capabilities, allowing for execution of scripts and data migration.
Automation is more advanced, deployment is fast, and version control has been simplified.
The user interface is comprehensive and lets me view all my jobs on one page, monitor everything, and access the job history.
It is easy to integrate Control-M with technologies for data ops or DevOps processes as things change, and it is not complex compared to other workload automation tools available in the market.
 

Categories and Ranking

AWS Step Functions
Ranking in Workload Automation
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (10th)
Control-M
Ranking in Workload Automation
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (2nd), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of AWS Step Functions is 1.6%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Control-M is 19.1%, down from 26.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Control-M19.1%
AWS Step Functions1.6%
Other79.3%
Workload Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Alberto Marangon - PeerSpot reviewer
Automate complex workflows with seamless AWS integration
Step Functions provide seamless integration with AWS services, which enhances the speed of application development. The JSON app launched recently allows us to define data execution more easily. The Standard Workflows feature includes error replay capabilities, which are crucial for efficient error management. The Amazon State Language (ASL) in JSON format facilitates workflow automation and accelerates the deployment of Step Functions.
Mark_Francome - PeerSpot reviewer
Easily connects to different platforms and ties everything together in a centralized screen
Areas of Control-M that have room for improvement include the reporting feature. The reporting on Control-M hasn't changed much over the years, although it is in a different internal format. It used to be Crystal Reports, and now they've upgraded that. It would be better if that was really flexible where you could define your own reports. You can customize it a little bit, but when people come in with complex questions, you should be able to use that tool and access anything in the database. Control-M has two internal databases that are core to the product. You can go in and do your own SQL queries against the database, but this reporting tool should really be able to do everything that you can do with SQL, and give you good information. Instead, you end up having to export to spreadsheets and then change and update them. It can be very labor-intensive to get this information out. Other than the reporting, they've addressed most things over the years. Control-M is a tool that's been around for more than 30 years, so they have actually fixed most issues that you would encounter. They have a request for enhancement process that most users have sent requests to, but it doesn't move very quickly. The other challenge is they're supporting so many different platforms; BMC just wants it to be a trouble-free release. When users request new features, such as improved reporting, BMC's priority remains maintaining a clean-running system.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
29%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise113
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Step Functions?
The integration capability is easy, whereas building state machines is tricky.
What is your primary use case for Amazon Step Functions?
My customer's usual use cases for AWS Step Functions that I've been working with include orchestration, flows, diagram creation, and creating a flow for multiple Glue jobs to run a single pipeline.
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon Step Functions?
I use the Visual Workflow Editor feature of AWS Step Functions. I mainly work through code and then improve it through the visual aspect. There are two ways to do orchestration: through code and th...
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...
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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Control-M?
Pricing for Control-M depends on the licensing model, with different options such as the per-agent model or the per-job model. BMC is phasing out the per-agent model in favor of per-job licensing, ...
 

Also Known As

Amazon Step Functions, Step Functions
Control M
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Alpha Apps, The Guardian, SGK, Bigfinite
CARFAX, Tampa General Hospital, Navistar, Amadeus, Raymond James, Railinc
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Step Functions vs. Control-M and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.