Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator vs VisualCron comparison

Sponsored
 

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:
 

Categories and Ranking

JAMS
Sponsored
Ranking in Workload Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VisualCron
Ranking in Workload Automation
17th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Managed File Transfer (MFT) (15th), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (15th)
VMware Aria Automation Orch...
Ranking in Workload Automation
16th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of JAMS is 2.6%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VisualCron is 1.4%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator is 0.6%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
JAMS2.6%
VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator0.6%
VisualCron1.4%
Other95.4%
Workload Automation
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2770605 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Has streamlined complex job scheduling across scripting languages while reducing manual effort
JAMS could be improved with a web client that is accessible and as fast as a normal website, eliminating the need to RDP to the servers to access the JAMS client. A functionality running on the JAMS server to continuously check the JAMS agents would ensure they are working properly. If an agent is not responding, a feature to restart the service from the job server machine would be beneficial. The upgrade process, particularly when switching from V6 to V7, could be clearer in terms of documentation, ideally with screenshots showing exactly what needs to be done on each screen.
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…
Mayank-Goyal - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Consultant at MBCOM
Have streamlined multi-cloud provisioning and reduced virtual machine delivery time from days to hours
In terms of Orchestrator as a tool there is a lot of room for improvement, specifically in being more developer-friendly though it has come a long way. From that perspective, certain modern features are missing, especially when compared to developer tools such as Visual Studio Code or other code editors. That's essential, considering it's the primary development tool for VMware. In terms of Automation, there should be more features that align with what public cloud interfaces can provide. Not everyone is a developer; therefore, if they can offer out-of-the-box features for the most common scenarios that customers need, it would be highly beneficial for end users.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The overall product is fantastic. I love it. It has been a fantastic, solid product. If I have one tiny bit of a problem with it, the support team gets in touch with me right away. I don't know if I've had another service that has been as fantastic as the JAMS support team."
"I find the historical tracking feature of JAMS invaluable for reviewing past events."
"The fact that we no longer need to use Excel spreadsheets is huge. Before JAMS, every group was keeping track of their own batch jobs. Nobody really knew what the other jobs were. So, if jobs failed, other groups wouldn't necessarily know. With JAMS, everything is done through a single scheduler. You can choose who to notify."
"The most valuable aspect of JAMS is its robustness."
"The product is easy to use."
"The planning capabilities are most valuable."
"JAMS offers diverse scheduling capabilities for any kind of job, including Linux, PowerShell scripts, and SQL, enabling automation of jobs, which has proven beautiful after three years of usage."
"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."
"It helped us reduce manual steps."
"What I found most beneficial from VisualCron is that you can directly connect it with different databases, user accounts, and credentials. You can run queries from one machine to another using the credentials, unlike PowerShell, that's run by the machine itself. With VisualCron, you can directly ask other machines and run requests through user credentials. Suppose you have an AWS or Azure environment. In that case, you can maintain the connection between on-premises and cloud-based machines, which is the type of setup in the organization I'm working for. You can directly call some of the services via VisualCron on your local on-premises machine, and I found that an excellent feature of the tool."
"The ability to clone jobs to shorten the time it takes to implement a process has been invaluable, but its flexibility also gives us the ability to create a job that can handle a multifaceted process with a complex workflow."
"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."
"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."
"The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%."
"'ve only had a few cases where I've had to request support in the past 12 years of use, but the support response time and resolution were was extremely quick."
"Primarily, customers are looking for workflows and day-to-day actions, as well as advanced templates."
"With automation, I can provision a virtual machine in just one to two hours; this is a drastic improvement."
"Primarily, customers are looking for workflows and day-to-day actions, as well as advanced templates."
"The best features of VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator include peace of mind and lesser complexity; simplicity is crucial, and there is no complexity in the system."
 

Cons

"The UI could be better. There were some things that were not quite intuitive, such as the search tool. When we tried to search for jobs, we had to clear the entire search and then go in and enter the new search query. That's something that wasn't intuitive for a new user."
"We have had a lot of people working from home who can't always connect to the JAMS server. We use VPN, as most companies do, and we have it set up so that everybody can access the JAMS server. But many times, our people cannot access it... JAMS could do a better job of telling you what the problem is when you try to log in to the server."
"JAMS could be improved with a web client that is accessible and as fast as a normal website, eliminating the need to RDP to the servers to access the JAMS client."
"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."
"One thing that I know that the JAMS people said that they were working on that would be huge for us is a search capability so that you could search for tasks. It may be available in version 7 or in a future release of 7. I think that's on their roadmap. But right now, for us to do a search, we have to search through database queries."
"The product does not allow the users to cut and paste the job names from the screen."
"As an admin, I would like to have a web-based GUI instead of a client application that we have to install on our PCs."
"When looking at a folder in JAMS with many jobs, it would be good to have better information in the list display of what's inside those jobs. We get some information, but other important details are missing."
"I want to improve the UI in VisualCron, as it's not as user-friendly, particularly when setting up the task scheduler. If you're familiar with the tool, then no problem, but if not, you'll have a problem typing text because sometimes, the cursor points to other places, so there's an issue with text box alignment in VisualCron. That was painful for me when I was just a VisualCron novice, but when you become used to it, there won't be a problem."
"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."
"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."
"I would like for VisualCron to expand audit log to show who changed job variables that are initialized per job run."
"VisualCron's command console is a little bit difficult to understand and needs to improve."
"The documentation is a bit weak."
"VisualCron seems to operate like an efficient machine when it comes to improvements and enhancements and new features. I always appreciate the quick response I get when bringing up an issue or coming up with suggestions. I've mentioned before that it would be great to see a move away from SQLCE and XML configuration files."
"Our suggestion to make it better and more manageable in terms of GDPR: Implement it in a very partnership way."
"VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator is a very solid and acceptable product, but after the transition to Broadcom, prices are very high."
"I would like to see improvements related to AI integration, which could make understanding from a language perspective easier."
"There are areas of VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator that have room for improvement, specifically in being more developer-friendly."
"Some students, especially beginners, may find the learning curve to be steep due to a lack of requisite knowledge in backend languages like YAML, Python, or JavaScript."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It was $10,000 for the first year. Then, there is a maintenance cost for licensing every year that we get billed $5,000 for every year."
"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."
"I haven't been involved in the financial side for several years, but we buy one host and unlimited agents, and we get a reasonable price for that. We're happy with the amount we pay and the scalability it provides."
"Our licensing is pretty cheap because we have a state solution. So, we pay only $1,000 a year."
"The licensing model for JAMS is straightforward and based on the number of agents, not the number of jobs you run. It's cheap and fairly simple."
"Fortra's JAMS pricing structure has deteriorated significantly since its acquisition by Fortra."
"There are no additional costs other than the license for Fortra's JAMS which is affordable."
"JAMS is priced competitively compared to similar solutions and offers flexible licensing options to cater to user needs."
"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 95 percent."
"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."
"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."
"ROI is one month."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Workload Automation solutions are best for your needs.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
5%
Computer Software Company
28%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Insurance Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise18
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about JAMS?
I find the historical tracking feature of JAMS invaluable for reviewing past events.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JAMS?
They recently switched to subscription-based pricing, which increased. The price is fair considering the functionalit...
What needs improvement with JAMS?
As far as we are using JAMS version 6, it looks good and there is nothing major to add about it. Everything is functi...
What do you like most about VisualCron?
The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%.
What needs improvement with VisualCron?
The documentation is a bit weak. The tool must provide a better set of documentation.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator?
Currently, I find the pricing to be on the expensive side. After the Broadcom acquisition, the licenses skyrocketed i...
What needs improvement with VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator?
In terms of Orchestrator as a tool there is a lot of room for improvement, specifically in being more developer-frien...
What is your primary use case for VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator?
My use case for VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator or now known as VCF Operations Orchestrator which is part of VCF ...
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
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)
1. VMware 2. Dell Technologies 3. Cisco Systems 4. IBM 5. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 6. Microsoft 7. Oracle 8. Amazon Web Services 9. Google Cloud 10. Intel 11. Accenture 12. Fujitsu 13. Hitachi Vantara 14. NetApp 15. Red Hat 16. SAP 17. Siemens 18. T-Systems 19. Verizon 20. AT&T 21. Vodafone 22. Orange 23. BT Group 24. Deutsche Telekom 25. Ericsson 26. Nokia 27. Samsung 28. Sony 29. Toshiba 30. Panasonic 31. LG Electronics 32. Philips
Find out what your peers are saying about VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator vs. VisualCron and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.