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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
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
139
Ranking in other categories
Managed File Transfer (MFT) (4th), Workload Automation (1st)
ServiceNow Orchestration
Ranking in Process Automation
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Process Automation category, the mindshare of Control-M is 4.6%, up from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Orchestration is 3.5%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Process Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Control-M4.6%
ServiceNow Orchestration3.5%
Other91.9%
Process Automation
 

Featured Reviews

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.
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

"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."
"It has multiple features. You can plan your execution in Control-M. It provides one single window where you can define workflows regardless of geographic boundaries and platforms. A batch process can be executed from this single window. It provides insights into your processes. Your business people will know what process they are running and what is the state of the process. Instead of knowing that they're not going to meet the SLA the next morning, the business people immediately know the changes in their process. Control-M is very easy. I can tell a non-technical person that this is how it works, and he would be able to easily understand it. Business people can understand the methodology of Control-M and the intuitive features that it has. It has a fantastic graphical user interface and is easy to understand. You just have to drag and drop but in a very intuitive way. Monitoring features are also good. It has different color coding schemes, which can help you to understand the status of your workflow. An operator who is not that technical and is just monitoring the status of the application can see by color-coding the status of a process. If anything goes wrong or a process is stuck, it gives you a hint. You can just right-click and see the logs and the output. Even if the system is not right there in the data center and is located somewhere else, you can monitor it right from there and see the workflows."
"The workflow is much easier compared to the ACS services we were using."
"The File Watcher utility, cyclic jobs, and email alert notification are valuable."
"We can tie together all the workloads across the estate and make the whole process reactive to events."
"They transitioned to Control-M based on its features related to SLA and workflow visibility, which significantly helped them."
"Control-M is infinitely scalable. We only need to add agents. BMC will take care of it if you need anything on the SaaS side, but we can handle the rest using our agent architecture."
"We used Control-M's Python Client and cloud data service integrations with AWS and, as a feature, it was very customizable. It gave us a lot of flexibility for customizing whatever data maneuver we wanted to do within a pipeline."
"The solution effectively automates business processes."
"The iTerm suite is also crucial for visibility and optimization."
"Employee onboarding, de-boarding, and other service-provision features make the process easier and it saves us a lot of time."
"It's probably the best product out there."
"It is a very stable product, highly affordable."
"The product has a flexible interface for development."
"It's scalable."
"The data visualization is good."
 

Cons

"I would like to see them adopt more cloud. Most companies don't have a single cloud, meaning we have data sources that come from different cloud providers. That may have been solved already, but supporting Azure would be an improvement because companies tend not to have only AWS and GCP."
"The stability of Control-M has Not been great. A big thing we've been trying to work on with BMC is observability. Modern applications should be observable and resilient, but we're finding that sometimes Control-M is not very resilient and many times Control-M is not very observable."
"Control-M SaaS is very expensive."
"The UI can be challenging for new users due to its learning curve."
"I would like not to have to reach out to a third-party application company to do automated notifications. Right now, we still have people manually calling people and emailing people. There's a company called xMatters - and there are others - that has an API through Control-M that can automate any aspect of failure management. I'd like to see it build right into the product. I'd like to see a better notification product."
"The company has been working with BMC on the MFT. There are still some things about MFT which don't work the way that we want with our needs. So, we would like to see that improved."
"Integration with some applications and platforms is complex and requires development. We have done some integration with the application integrator, but it was more like a manual solution. This is an area that can be improved."
"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."
"I would like a user experience module to be added."
"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."
"It is a highly complex platform to work on."
"The third-party integrations are challenging when the tools are not from ServiceNow partners. This presents issues when integrating solutions from other vendors."
"From my space, the only thing that I can say is the spinning up with Google Cloud Services."
"Efficiency of some features could be improved."
"There can be gaps in integration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"BMC's price is based on the number of jobs."
"Pricing varies depending on which components and modules you are using."
"Licensing costs are around $3000 a year."
"This is an expensive product compared to other solutions, although I think that it is a good one. We are in a good position with licensing, as we can run 10,000 jobs."
"The pricing is moderate, not too low or too high compared to other solutions."
"The product price is reasonable. I rate the pricing an eight."
"One of the restrictions that we had was with some of the licensing, and not having any insight on the financials part of the product. I don't know what the licensing on the product is, but we don't have an unlimited enterprise license. So, there might be a limitation on either the cost of the licensing or the number of seats."
"For the tooling that you get, the licensing is acceptable. It has competitive pricing, especially with all the value that you get out of it. There are additional costs with some of the additional modules, but they are all electives. Out of the box, you get the standard Control-M experience and the standard license. They're not forcing some of the modules on you. If you decide that you do need them, you can always purchase those separately."
"Pricing is custom to every customer."
"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."
"The solution is costly and orchestrations are very expensive."
"This is an expensive product, but it is the best in the market considering the features and lack of competitors."
"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."
"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."
"In terms of price, this solution is at the higher end of what you'll find."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise115
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise8
 

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?
For on-premises, the task pricing is somewhat expensive, but for SaaS, it is very expensive.
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: November 2025.
873,085 professionals have used our research since 2012.