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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
9.5
AWS Step Functions reduce development time and costs, enhance scalability and reliability, streamline workflows, and improve ROI.
Sentiment score
7.4
Control-M reduces long-term costs through automation, efficiency, better resource management, and enhanced integration, leading to workforce optimization.
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.
It has reduced the total cost of ownership by 30% to 40%.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
AWS Step Functions support is generally effective, especially for enterprise users, though experiences can vary for smaller organizations.
Sentiment score
7.4
Control-M technical support is praised for responsiveness and expertise, despite rare criticisms for slow ticket processing and response delays.
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.
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.
They do not always provide timely support.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
AWS Step Functions is scalable and adaptable, efficiently handling high demand and diverse business needs for various users.
Sentiment score
7.7
Control-M efficiently scales with minimal issues, handling extensive workloads, though resource enhancement is necessary for optimal cloud integration.
They can handle multiple simultaneous requests effectively.
It can absorb more workload wherever needed.
As the workload on Control-M increases, its scalability is much higher.
I would rate it a nine out of ten for scalability.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
AWS Step Functions offers strong stability and reliability, ensuring uptime with contingency plans and integration of third-party services.
Sentiment score
7.7
Control-M is stable and reliable, efficiently handling large workloads with regular updates and minimal disruptions.
If one zone fails, others handle the demand, ensuring high availability.
The downtime is higher compared to AWS.
The stability of the Helix Control-M solution is good.
 

Room For Improvement

AWS Step Functions needs better data handling, integration, pricing clarity, and dynamic coding to improve performance and usability.
Control-M users desire enhanced features, integration, reduced costs, seamless upgrades, better customization, and improved support and documentation.
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.
There should be an automation system for developers to set it up more easily and quickly.
What they've done about scheduling, other people are still trying to figure out.
 

Setup Cost

AWS Step Functions pricing is complex and variable, with mixed reviews on cost-effectiveness and integration benefits.
Control-M's high pricing suits enterprises needing robust automation, but challenges smaller organizations with complexity and additional feature costs.
Pricing for Step Functions is very cheap.
The cost is average, provided it is configured correctly.
Pricing is generally affordable, though some features cost a bit more.
The best cell phone will always be more expensive.
The pricing is moderate, not too low or too high compared to other solutions.
 

Valuable Features

AWS Step Functions simplify pipeline creation with integration, visualization, automation, and advanced workflows, enhancing application development and execution.
Control-M excels in automation, integration, and user interface, enhancing workflow management with scheduling, file transfer, and API capabilities.
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.
Control-M provides workflow orchestration, including scheduling, deploying, managing, and monitoring workflows.
 

Categories and Ranking

AWS Step Functions
Ranking in Workload Automation
13th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (12th)
Control-M
Ranking in Workload Automation
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
121
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (3rd), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of AWS Step Functions is 1.5%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Control-M is 23.1%, down from 26.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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.
Pedro Fuentes - PeerSpot reviewer
Cost-effective, excellent support, and centralized access and control
They have a department that handles requests for enhancements. I talked to Control-M guys back in October or November when they had a gathering here in Atlanta. We talked about not being able to go back in history in Helix Control-M for more than two weeks. We submitted a request for enhancement. They told us that they are working on it, and they are thinking of expanding that to 30 days. We would like to see it expand to 90 days, but they are working on it. In Control-M, we were able to go back 180 days, but that was on-prem. The storage of that data was on our own servers. We know that storage is money, and we do not expect them to store that much of the data, but at least 30 to 60 days seem proper.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
31%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
The primary use case was the execution of scripts and data migration related to data lakes. We were using Python and other AWS Step Functions ( /products/aws-step-functions-reviews ).
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon Step Functions?
I would recommend AWS Step Functions to others. Overall, I rate AWS Step Functions an eight out of ten.
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.
 

Also Known As

Amazon Step Functions, Step Functions
Control M
 

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: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.