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Control-M vs ServiceNow Orchestration comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

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

Control-M
Ranking in Process Automation
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
123
Ranking in other categories
Managed File Transfer (MFT) (3rd), Workload Automation (1st)
ServiceNow Orchestration
Ranking in Process Automation
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Process Automation category, the mindshare of Control-M is 4.6%, up from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Orchestration is 4.2%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Process Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Ujjwal Sachdeva - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient automation and boosted workflow but needs better integration methods
Control-M is a bit faster compared to other solutions. The job and coding are easier. Also, my DevOps and Ops teams work collaboratively with it, enhancing its efficiency. The workflow is much easier compared to the ACS services we were using. Automation is more advanced, deployment is fast, and version control has been simplified.
Dinesh Kumar Raghu - PeerSpot reviewer
Fastest upgrading technology in the market currently
In each upgrade, ServiceNow is enhancing its product across various areas. They continuously improve different aspects one by one, ensuring that their service evolves with the changing needs. However, frequent upgrades may negatively impact the performance of instances. Therefore, for now, I don't recommend any additional upgrades. The current version fulfills everyone's requirements, and ServiceNow automatically updates annually, keeping pace with industry standards. They've been performing well, so I see no need for further upgrades, especially considering their consistent updates.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We have a team called pro-mon and they monitor all the jobs for us. A single view for them makes it easy for them to monitor things."
"Technical support is very helpful and available 24/7."
"The best feature of Control-M is its orchestration capabilities for any orchestration that's required. Control-M has positively impacted my organization by helping with orchestrating complex tasks."
"A large bank in South Africa would have more than one million jobs to be run each and every night. If something goes wrong in the middle of a million jobs, it can be very complicated if you're managing that via scripts or manually. Control-M solves that problem."
"The best feature of Control-M is its orchestration capabilities for any orchestration that's required."
"Maintaining and monitoring of workloads have been and continue to be the most valuable feature in our environment."
"I find it very helpful to be able to keep track of all our help desk tickets."
"The unified view where you can define, orchestrate, and monitor applications, workflows, and data pipelines is important because we have more than one team working on Control-M. We have a support team, a job-creation team, and a SAP team. We can all work together on it. It avoids anyone from working on his part and not using the latest modifications."
"The iTerm suite is also crucial for visibility and optimization."
"Orchestration is commonly utilized by major corporations. The process of linking methods in ServiceNow, known as the RTS chain to parent methods, is executed seamlessly and efficiently. It's quite impressive and significant in its impact."
"Employee onboarding, de-boarding, and other service-provision features make the process easier and it saves us a lot of time."
"Provisioning of new systems is among the most impactful features for automating complex workflows with ServiceNow Orchestration."
"Great with IT processes and business processes."
"There are a lot of ready to use orchestration custom packs."
"It is a very stable product, highly affordable."
"The interface of the solution is very user friendly and it is easily accessible via a simple URL. This makes it easier to complete the UI based tasks but using other features require expertise in languages like Java. But along with that, there are limitation in terms of network connectivity testing and administrator faces regular challenges in conducting connectivity tests due to these limitations."
 

Cons

"It is a very strong product, but the reporting could be better."
"Control-M could benefit from incorporating AI features for better job scheduling."
"We've also had a few database bugs within our organization. I think we are migrating to OpenJDK rather than just regular Java and that has since shown some issues with our Control-M instance, timing out and causing our jobs to stop running. We are still working with BMC to fine-tune that and get that resolved."
"The reporting tool still needs a lot of improvement. It was supposed to get better with the upgrade, and it really didn't get better. It needs help, because it's such a useful thing to have. It needs to be more powerful and easier to use."
"While they have a very good reporting facility, the reports that I'm asked to produce, a lot of times aren't necessarily what we need."
"It can definitely expand promotions, so that a single job can be moved. Currently you can only promote a job by promoting the entire table."
"The only thing that comes to mind is the cost. If it could be more competitive, it would be great."
"The infrastructure could be improved."
"There can be gaps in integration."
"It is a highly complex platform to work on."
"There is still room for more integrations. Or, it would be nice to bundle multiple products together rather than selling everything as a model as that turns out to be a bit costly."
"We cannot perform GUI automation using the tool."
"From my space, the only thing that I can say is the spinning up with Google Cloud Services."
"Frequent upgrades may negatively impact the performance of instances. Therefore, for now, I don't recommend any additional upgrades."
"Efficiency of some features could be improved."
"There should be connectors to cover at least the top industry applications, and they should be easier to configure in a plug-and-play fashion."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its cost can be more competitive. One of the main things customers look at is the cost. It's not affordable. The cost is very high, according to my customers."
"Compare to other tools Pricing and licensing was more. It should be decrease."
"This is now from my previous years as support for banks and big companies. If it's not enterprise scale, I find that it's too expensive for smaller companies. You really have to be quite big and need to have a dedicated support staff to run it, then you'll be fine. What we've seen at smaller companies, it's too expensive because they want to automate everything. Now, stuff that can literally run once a day for the rest of their lives is costing them $3 a job a day. It becomes too expensive, eventually. They are not seeing the return on investment because it's not business critical. Nobody is going to die or they're going to lose money if that job didn't run exactly at 11 minutes past 4:00. It's definitely for bigger enterprise companies, especially banks or healthcare providers. We have had an instance where Control-M was unavailable due to external factors for 20 minutes and there was a loss of almost a million euros because the solution involved logistics."
"This product saves hours in a day based on my experience working here versus other companies with manually operations."
"Cost-wise, it is good."
"It is a little bit expensive."
"We have a five-year contract with task-based licensing."
"The annual licensing within BMC Control-M is on a per task basis. Three- and five-year contracts are also offered. The customer usually buys a bundle of tasks, e.g., 5,000 tasks, then my team configures Control-M for their usage."
"It is quite expensive because we've had some customers come back and say it's quite pricey because in order for them to go ahead with Orchestration, they must have already been paying for Discovery, service mapping, and a few other things."
"It is not very expensive."
"The solution is costly and orchestrations are very expensive."
"ServiceNow doesn't give a clear cost indication. They have different contracts with different organizations and it's all about negotiation, so you don't know how they are doing at the cost level."
"In terms of price, this solution is at the higher end of what you'll find."
"The cost of the solution is based on the number of plugins, conductors and integrations used and is charged annually. The licensing cause has been increasing gradually which makes it difficult to access. Initially offer free features but over the time the charges rise which make it an expensive solution with limited features. Along with that, the integration issues persist and require additional middle where and internet connectivity for effective usage."
"Pricing is custom to every customer."
"This is an expensive product, but it is the best in the market considering the features and lack of competitors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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?
Its cost can be more competitive. One of the main things customers look at is the cost. It's not affordable. The cost is very high, according to my customers. The licensing cost is very high, and t...
What do you like most about ServiceNow Orchestration?
The interface of the solution is very user friendly and it is easily accessible via a simple URL. This makes it easier to complete the UI based tasks but using other features require expertise in l...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow Orchestration?
The cost of ServiceNow Orchestration is considered medium; it is expensive but powerful. I would rate the pricing experience as a six out of ten.
What needs improvement with ServiceNow Orchestration?
The third-party integrations are challenging when the tools are not from ServiceNow ( /products/servicenow-reviews ) partners. This presents issues when integrating solutions from other vendors.
 

Also Known As

Control M
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CARFAX, Tampa General Hospital, Navistar, Amadeus, Raymond James, Railinc
experian, BEACHBODY, HealthPartners, Banosoft
Find out what your peers are saying about Control-M vs. ServiceNow Orchestration and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,481 professionals have used our research since 2012.