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JAMS vs VisualCron comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 2026

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

JAMS
Ranking in Workload Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VisualCron
Ranking in Workload Automation
25th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Managed File Transfer (MFT) (20th), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (30th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of JAMS is 3.1%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VisualCron is 2.1%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
JAMS3.1%
VisualCron2.1%
Other94.8%
Workload Automation
 

Featured Reviews

LV
Principal Data Base And Infrastructure Engineer at a outsourcing company with 501-1,000 employees
Automation has replaced nightly monitoring and delivers reliable, unified job scheduling
We have really enjoyed working with JAMS in terms of notifications, alerts, and streamlining. There used to be a process with Automate, which is another product from Fortra, but even before that, the other division of the company that we were merging with had a tool that was built in-house called a file handler or file distributor. It was an in-house developed tool, but it was not as streamlined or as efficient as JAMS is. We literally had to have a dedicated nighttime person monitoring. Although we are 24/7, the divisions of the company that we were using JAMS for have been small scale. While we have automated it, we have streamlined it in such a way that notifications go out and alerts go out, but if there is anything, then we get paged and alerted, and if anything needs to happen at midnight, we can wake up. On the other hand, with the tool I mentioned, the file handler and distributor, we used to have a dedicated nighttime person that had to be sitting and monitoring it to see when a file arrived, whether it met the conditions, and then execute the next particular job. By using JAMS, we have gained a lot more efficiencies in terms of all of those to streamline it, and there is no necessary need for having an overnight engineer just keeping an eye on all of this.
Sourav-Dutta - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead - Database Administrator at SMART ENERGY SYSTEMS LLC
It's user-friendly, and I didn't need long to understand the process
We use VisualCron for all our automation needs, like connecting to FileZilla, calling APIs, generating PGP keys, creating encryption files with the PGP key login to Azure, etc. It can automatically log in to SQL Server and execute SQL script jobs in bulk. We had 2,000-3,000 users at my previous…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"JAMS has positively impacted our organization by saving us time, reducing errors, and improving workflows."
"The most valuable feature for us is that it's DR-ready. With respect to disaster recovery, it has the built-in capability for failover to our DR site. If all of the required ports are open, it can be done seamlessly."
"Getting JAMS in place was a game changer for us back then."
"The scheduling and execution of jobs are the most valuable features. The scheduling is important because if there is a task we want to execute at 4:00 AM, there's no way we will have someone who can manually run the job. In addition, we execute 100 to 200 jobs per day, and manual intervention is not an option."
"Previously, we manually managed file transfers by writing our scripts. The automated MFT feature is great for me and the company. It helps us know where the files are going and enables us to track errors if anything fails. It also makes the connection seamless for third-party vendors."
"The code-driven automation for more complex scheduling requirements frees up time because it's really easy to use... It's almost like a stand-alone software that we can't live without."
"It makes everything that we want to do so much easier. We have had a number of instances in the past where we have had developers who have been working on a project, and even though we have had JAMS for all these years, they will create some SQL Server Agent job, or something like that, to run a task. When it is in code review and development is complete, the question always comes around, "Can JAMS do this?" The answer has always been, "Yes." Pretty much anything we have ever developed could be run by JAMS."
"One of the things I like the most, as a SQL DBA, is the fact that we can manipulate tables in the background. Also, the fact that you can have your own views and work with the product the way it fits best is a very helpful feature."
"We don't have to do any coding. We just plug and play and it works."
"VisualCron is a very powerful program to automate different steps in your business processes. We use it to automate replacing files and inform departments about the replacement."
"VisualCronv is currently handling so many different critical processes for our company, it's become a key factor in our livelihood and success."
"The most valuable feature of VisualCron is its ability to schedule interactive jobs so that you can have interdependencies within the job and interdependencies of a job on another job, and so on."
"It has improved our organization with more automation within the business departments and less administration and development in the IT department. Usually, as the IT department, we are the bottleneck for many requirements within the business. With this tool, the business departments are able to perform many task themselves."
"The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%."
"VisualCron is a handy tool that we (the IT department) provide for the business departments to obtain easy access when automating and scheduling."
"I love VisualCron because we previously spent a lot of time writing Power switches to connect to SQL Server. VisualCron makes it easier to execute services or connect to FileZilla by only adding the credentials to the master credentials stored in the solution."
 

Cons

"I would like to see the ability to interface with Microsoft group-managed service accounts, but they're still in the research phase. They need to ensure everything's legit and safe. The report designer and dashboards could also be improved. We're running 7.3, so I don't know if they have updated the reporting in 7.5, but I think the reports and dashboards could be better."
"The error messages from JAMS often need clarification, hindering our ability to resolve issues swiftly."
"Sometimes the UI is not the most responsive I've ever used. But because it does its job, I don't complain."
"The ACL or access permission area needs to be improved. When it comes to defining and providing security permissions, it's a bit confusing if you are new to JAMS. JAMS needs to improve the features for security access or permissions."
"The search capability needs to be improved because when we try to search for a job, it's hard to do."
"Fortra is getting much better with documentation and examples, but there is still room for improvement."
"It is important to receive notifications if a charged job fails and SQL is halted. JAMS does not provide halted notifications by default, which is a critical feature that needs to be added."
"The cost has definitely gone up tremendously. That is where I do know, as much as the feature sets are there, and if the newly acquired company is going to be doing a pushback, they might just say, 'Do we still need to pay this much? Or at that point, should we look into an alternative?'"
"The documentation is a bit weak."
"An area for improvement in VisualCron is its cluttered interface."
"There are some conditions in the mail trigger, but you can only use them as an "AND" condition, not as an "OR" condition. This is an improvement that could be useful. For example, some people put "invoice" in the subject and others put "invoice" in the body. If I want to make a trigger for everybody whose sending invoices, I have to make two jobs for this now."
"I've mentioned before that it would be great to see a move away from SQLCE and XML configuration files."
"VisualCron is software, and you will experience performance degradation when you scale up. VisualCron takes too much memory or CPU power. We have to increase the hardware resources of a specific server or system."
"VisualCron's command console is a little bit difficult to understand and needs to improve."
"The error timeout and info could be better. When making web request calls, it will time out sometimes and we won't get any useful info out of the error response."
"The only problem I face when I use the tool is that it doesn't contain much documentation or it doesn't have many video tutorials on its features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's expensive, to be honest, but it does the job."
"Definitely check how many single processes you want to run and count them as jobs. That is how you would work out your pricing on JAMS. For example, if you're running a number of commands and you can put them all into one script and run that script, you can count that as one job."
"This is a good product at a fair price."
"Fortra's JAMS pricing structure has deteriorated significantly since its acquisition by Fortra."
"In the end, you'll find that it's really worth the price. There is some sticker shock, but it's worth every dime."
"Take advantage of its scalability. You can start small. The initial cost is very reasonable. Once you have started picking up the tool and adopting it, then you can scale up from there and buy more agents."
"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."
"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."
"The price is a bit high."
"The pricing is extremely fair, and because of that I recommend purchasing multiple instances to split out the processing load across multiple application servers."
"ROI is 95 percent."
"We are fine with a rather cheap setup. Licensing with VisualCron is fair. You have a simple one-year licence in different sizes. There isn't a licensing jungle with hundreds of options and opt-ins."
"VisualCron is correctly priced because it wasn't very cheap, and it wasn't overly expensive, so the price for it was set correctly. When my previous company bought VisualCron, it was €800 per server per year. On a scale of one to five, I would rate the pricing for VisualCron a five because it was just right. The tool was affordable, and it has one of the most competitive pricing in the market."
"ROI is one month."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
25%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise23
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JAMS?
I was not really involved in the pricing, setup cost, and licensing at that level. I am more involved in the technical side rather than the commercial side.
What needs improvement with JAMS?
To improve JAMS, it should resolve the issues with the JD Edwards application and the need for the SSH client connection in the current version, which has been a problem for a while. I suggest impl...
What is your primary use case for JAMS?
My main use case for JAMS is to install, set up, and configure for customers working with JD Edwards application. A specific example of how I use JAMS during an install or setup for a customer incl...
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Comparisons

 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital
7 Eleven, ABB Sécheron SA, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Amazon Europe Core, Apple, Assa Abloy, Aston Martin, Banco Santander, BMW (Australia)
Find out what your peers are saying about JAMS vs. VisualCron and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.