AWS Step Functions vs Stonebranch comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Stonebranch are both solutions in the Workload Automation category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.3, while Stonebranch is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.0. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 1.7% mindshare in WA, compared to Stonebranch’s 4.8% mindshare. Additionally, 83% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Stonebranch users who would recommend it.

AWS Step Functions

Read 13 AWS Step Functions reviews

430 Views
161 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

Stonebranch

Read 26 Stonebranch reviews

2,818 Views
960 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

AWS Step Functions

Stonebranch

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between AWS Step Functions and Stonebranch based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Workload Automation solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Step Functions vs. Stonebranch Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Step Functions vs. Stonebranch

June 2025

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Helped 859,129 peers since 2012

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

AWS Step Functions

Ranking in Workload Automation

9th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Business Process Management (BPM) (10th)

Stonebranch

Ranking in Workload Automation

14th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of AWS Step Functions is 1.7%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Stonebranch is 4.8%, up from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Workload Automation

Featured Reviews

Carlos Alberto Marangon

Senior AWS Tech Lead at Nextios

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.

Read full review

Siddharth Matalia

Senior Technical Specialist at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Good GUI and has helpful support but needs a mobile app

This was a migration project where we provided our database, the previous one, and there was a tool that automatically converted the awarded job into Stonebranch. All the conversion was done from the Stonebranch side, and we got a person as well from Stonebranch during migration. There was a person who worked with us a decade back for the AutoSys install as well. He was well aware of our environment, so he helped us a lot. It was easy. It was not that complex. It is much more GUI. That said, we are looking for how the various automation can be done since, through command lines, you can create a number of jobs. While you are creating a single job, it takes 15 minutes with the GUI, however, if you go for the command line, within two or three minutes, your job gets completed. We have built our own solution for automation using some REST API and all those various integrations. It is working for our organization right now. However, we are requesting some kind of solution from Stonebranch. They should have been providing that to us already. For deployment, three or four people were engaged with the setup on their side. To manage everything, they provided us with a person who required help to manage it. Eventually, since it was a cloud platform on their side, if there is some configuration necessary, which they do it. They get a notification, and they fix it very immediately if there is an issue. The response time is very good from their side, and we don't have to worry about maintenance.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a scalable solution."

"It's a general solution that you can adapt to your own needs and is simple to use. We like that it can be integrated with everything in the AWS suite, and that the creation of the pipeline can be done using the graphical user interface."

"What I like the most about Amazon Step Functions is how easy it is to use."

"The integration capability is easy, whereas building state machines is tricky."

"AWS Step Functions offers advanced workflows that save time and enhance efficiency by reducing delays and ensuring consistent orchestration among various services."

"AWS Step Functions acts as a high-level layer, allowing us to seamlessly integrate with microservices."

"One can rate all the calls and that is a good feature."

"If you want to create a workflow to call one Lambda function after another, and other serverless features, it could save you a ton of money. That's for sure."

More AWS Step Functions pros

"I can name the aliases on the agent, so if we need a passive environment for an agent, that's one of the nice features. If our primary goes down, I can bring up the passive one and I don't have to change anything in the scheduling world. It will start running from that new server."

"The tasks are incredibly capable, and as long as you name them with a nice, uniform naming convention, they are very useful. You can create some interesting workflows through various machines, or you can just have it kick off single tasks. All in all, I really like the Universal Task. You can do some mutually exclusive stuff, such as an "A not B" kind of thing. It has a lot of capabilities behind the scenes."

"The support is good from Stonebranch Universal Automation Center."

"When it comes to agent technology and compatibility with other vendors, from a platform perspective it was the one vendor that fit all the platforms that we have, from your old platforms - mainframe, NSK, IBM i - to the new ones, going into cloud and container"

"I love the Universal Controller. It's been great for us. We host it on-premise... It's High Availability, meaning there's failover from one server to the other if one goes down."

"The interface is very user-friendly and easy to navigate."

"The features are upgraded, and every six months they're releasing patches."

"The most valuable feature is the reliability of the agents, because we need them accessible and we need to run stuff. The agent technology and compatibility are top-notch."

More Stonebranch pros

Cons

"The solution's data size limit can be improved."

"I would like to see more data transformation features in Amazon Step Functions like additional operators and logic."

"It is difficult to suggest improvements at the moment."

"There is room for improvement in terms of integration with other products. It would benefit from more integration with different applications or services."

"If AWS Step Functions keeps adding more integrations, it would be even better."

"The price and support are areas with shortcomings where the solution needs to improve."

"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 interface can sometimes feel limited, as we're unable to see what AWS is running behind the scenes."

More AWS Step Functions cons

"Occasionally, we have an agent that doesn't come back up after patching. That doesn't happen very often... It's really just a restart of the agent and it comes back up. But that might be one thing that could be improved."

"It can't handle negative written codes."

"It can be hard to manage the task monitor."

"The Universal Controller is decent for the money it costs... It needs some work to have full features, compared to other products that are out there, specifically IBM's Workload Scheduler."

"I would rate Stonebranch somewhere in the middle for ease of setup. It wasn't too straightforward for us because our infrastructure is complex."

"Stonebranch Universal Automation Center could improve the analytics."

"It would be ideal if they had the exact same features as the CA Workload Automation DE series. It would be helpful to have calendaring options."

"There is room for improvement with its connectivity with the Microsoft SRS system. It is very weak. They keep telling us it works with it, and technically it does, but it does not provide a lot of visibility. We have lost a lot of visibility migrating to Stonebranch, compared with just running tasks on the SRS server. That's really about the only thing that is a sore point for us."

More Stonebranch cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."

"The solution's price is reasonable."

"Stonebranch is cheaper than Control-M, so many companies are using Stonebranch."

"When we reviewed this solution against other vendors, Stonebranch blew everybody out of the water in terms of cost."

"Outside of licensing fees, there aren't any other costs."

"The price of the solution is at a medium level compared to the competition."

"I don't have pricing information, but I do know it's cheaper than our old legacy system. Other than the standard licensing fees there are no additional costs."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

30%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

26%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

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.

See all answers

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 ).

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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Comparisons

Camunda vs AWS Step Functions

Compared 32% of the time

IBM BPM vs AWS Step Functions

Compared 15% of the time

Control-M vs AWS Step Functions

Compared 14% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs AWS Step Functions

Compared 10% of the time

Pega Platform vs AWS Step Functions

Compared 6% of the time

More AWS Step Functions Competitors

Control-M vs Stonebranch

Compared 30% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Stonebranch

Compared 14% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs Stonebranch

Compared 13% of the time

ESP Workload Automation Intelligence vs Stonebranch

Compared 8% of the time

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs Stonebranch

Compared 6% of the time

More Stonebranch Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AWS Step Functions

June 2025

Download AWS Step Functions product report

Buyer's Guide

Stonebranch

May 2025

Download Stonebranch product report

Also Known As

Amazon Step Functions, Step Functions

Stonebranch Universal Automation Center

Overview

AWS Step Functions enables orchestration of complex workflows, parallel task execution, and seamless integration with AWS services, simplifying ETL automation and data pipeline management.

With AWS Step Functions, developers streamline task automation and ensure smooth microservices orchestration. It simplifies development and manages interdependencies, validates data, and integrates AWS services for cost-effective workflows. It offers a user-friendly graphical interface for creating pipelines, scalable parallelization via the "map" state, control over historical events, and visualization with JSON. Enhanced by a dashboard-like view, it aids in visual workflows and debugging.

What are the most valuable features?

Seamless AWS Integration: Easily integrates with the entire AWS suite for efficient workflow creation.
User-Friendly Graphical Interface: Simplifies creating and managing workflows with visual tools.
Scalable Parallelization: Utilizes the "map" state for efficient parallel processing tasks.
Control Historical Events: Manages and controls historical data and events effectively.
Visualization and Debugging: Provides a dashboard-like view to enhance understanding and debugging.

What are the benefits and ROI to look for?

Streamlined Development: Simplifies orchestration and automates task management.
Cost-Effective Workflows: Creates efficient, cost-saving workflows by integrating with AWS services.
Enhanced Data Validation: Ensures data correctness by managing interdependencies.
Automation of ETL Jobs: Automates data extraction, transformation, and loading processes seamlessly.

In specific industries such as finance, healthcare, and e-commerce, enterprises implement AWS Step Functions to manage data pipelines, orchestrate microservices, and automate complex ETL jobs. They benefit from seamless integration with AWS services, enhanced data validation, and streamlined development, resulting in efficient and cost-effective workflows tailored to their operational needs.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Stonebranch automates enterprise-level workload and task scheduling across platforms like Linux, Windows, and mainframe, managing thousands of daily tasks for improved efficiency and visibility.

Stonebranch enables organizations to streamline job scheduling by replacing older systems with a robust solution that automates complex workflows, batch processing, and secure file transfers. Its compatibility with multiple platforms and enhanced visibility aid teams in efficiently managing business processes, database interactions, and IT workflows. Equipped with a Universal Controller and Agent, it provides seamless integration across diverse systems, empowering users with greater control over their tasks. While it fosters digital transformation, there are opportunities for enhancements in areas like graphical workflow overviews and API functionality.

What features does Stonebranch offer?

User-friendly interface for intuitive navigation
Robust agents ensuring reliable task execution
Comprehensive workflow automation tools
Platform-agnostic compatibility for diverse systems
Secure file transfer capabilities
High scalability for growing needs
Effective error handling features

What benefits should users expect?

Improved efficiency in task management
Streamlined processes reducing operational complexities
Enhanced visibility and control over workflows
Seamless integration with existing systems
Support for digital transformation initiatives

Organizations in industries such as finance and healthcare implement Stonebranch for its ability to automate complex processes, manage mainframe and distributed environments, and securely transfer sensitive data. Its platform-agnostic nature caters to the demanding needs of these industries, providing a reliable backbone for essential operations.

Stonebranch

Sample Customers

Alpha Apps, The Guardian, SGK, Bigfinite

Nissan, Coop, United Supermarkets, Groupon, CSC, Orbitz, Johnson & Johnson, BMW, Qantas.

Buyer's Guide

AWS Step Functions vs. Stonebranch

June 2025

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