HCL Workload Automation vs Webcron
HCL Workload Automation
hcl-software.comWebcron
webcron.orgSide by side
| Figure | HCL Workload Automation | Webcron |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 6 |
| Spec score · Job Scheduler Software | 8.6 (#4) | 7.7 (#13) |
| Monitoring | The product includes graphical views, embedded analytics, and customizable dashboards for managing and monitoring jobs and job streams. | The monitoring service checks servers, websites, and routers and sends alerts when they are unreachable from more than one location. |
| Scheduling | It schedules jobs across a network, groups them into job streams, and supports dependencies, time constraints, and automatic recovery procedures. | Cron jobs can run as often as every minute and have timeouts up to one hour. |
| Support | HCL’s product documentation page links to HCLSoftware Support, a knowledge base, a community, and a product ideas portal. | Support options include documentation, a contact form, and Skype chat or calls using the name webcron. |
Plans
Webcron
- Cron time-out 180 secondsFree
- Cron time-out 600 seconds€0.01, paid once
- Notification by email€0.01, paid once
- Cron time-out 1800 seconds€0.13, paid once
- Notification by SMS€0.15, paid once
- Cron time-out 3600 seconds€0.25, paid once
In their own words
HCL Workload Automation
HCL Workload Automation is software for defining, scheduling, managing, and monitoring critical batch processes. It groups scheduled jobs into job streams and supports dependencies, time constraints, and automatic recovery procedures. Graphical views, embedded analytics, and customizable dashboards help teams follow jobs and streams. Event rules can trigger jobs, respond to prompts, notify users of anomalies, or invoke an external product when conditions occur. Documented integrations include Jira, ServiceNow, RESTful APIs, JSONata, and IBM Robotic Process Automation; HCL says Automation Hub provides over 100 plugins at no additional cost. Tasks can run through local agents, without agents, or through APIs, and the product supports container and hybrid deployments, including Docker, Red Hat OpenShift, and a cloud-native service in a customer-chosen cloud. Pricing is available on request, and HCL advertises a 90-day free trial. From version 10.2, customers need their own WebSphere Application Server Liberty and Db2 licenses to keep using them.
Webcron
Webcron is a cloud service for scheduling web-accessible scripts and monitoring servers, websites, and routers. Jobs can run once or on a schedule as often as every minute, with timeouts up to one hour. Users can choose notifications for successful or failed jobs. Monitoring checks whether targets can be reached from more than one location, using HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, or ping at intervals from 1 to 60 minutes. Monitors can compare page content, look for a specified string, and add custom request headers.
The API communicates directly with the Webcron engine, and its documented methods cover cron jobs and monitors. A PHP class is available for API connections and is stated to support PHP 5.0 and later. The maker lists monitoring stations in the United States, Japan, Singapore, Ireland, Brazil, Germany, France, South Korea, and Australia. Webcron has no free plan and offers a 14-day trial; monitoring can be tried free for one week or until credits are used up. Listed per-launch prices include free for a 180-second timeout, €0.01, paid once for 600 seconds, €0.13, paid once for 1800 seconds, and €0.25, paid once for 3600 seconds. Email alerts cost €0.01 and SMS alerts cost €0.15.