Microsoft Power Automate vs VisualCron comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Power Automate
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
2nd
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
123
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VisualCron
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
13th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Managed File Transfer (MFT) (10th), Workload Automation (13th)
 

Market share comparison

As of June 2024, in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category, the market share of Microsoft Power Automate is 24.8% and it increased by 19.0% compared to the previous year. The market share of VisualCron is 0.4% and it increased by 5.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
Unique Categories:
No other categories found
Managed File Transfer (MFT)
1.2%
Workload Automation
0.9%
 

Featured Reviews

Nilesh Gosavi - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 28, 2023
Straightforward setup, stable, and scalable
Microsoft Power Automate is used to automate tasks and schedule workflows Microsoft Power Automate has helped us automate tasks that have reduced human error and increased efficiency. Microsoft Power Automate offers over 200 connectors that enhance the user experience. Microsoft Power Automate…
MT
May 10, 2024
Integrates easily into the existing systems and reduces operational costs
We use the solution mainly for reporting purposes The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%. A lot of manual processes have been automated. The product runs smoothly within Windows. It is easy to integrate VisualCron into our existing systems. The documentation is a bit weak. The tool…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Good core applications."
"It makes work easier."
"I have found the scheduling and email notifications features to very good compared to other RPA tools I have used."
"Instead of manually triggering payments through the website, everything was done through robotic process automation (RPA), saving us a lot of time."
"Its integration with the Office 365 ecosystem is most valuable. We use a lot of ready-to-use templates."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Power Automate are user-friendliness and low coding functionality."
"It works best to build cloud flows."
"Power Automate is a better and more cost-effective solution compared to Automation tools."
"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."
"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."
"We don't have to do any coding. We just plug and play and it works."
"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%."
"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."
"It helped us reduce manual steps."
 

Cons

"I think the language Microsoft Power Automate uses when you do expressions could be better. What they use is not a popular programming language. It would be better for Microsoft to find a more popular programming language, such as Python. It would take away the whole no-code aspect of the solution but you don't need to write that many lines of code to improve something in a process. Instead of no-code, they could be a low-code environment."
"AI-enabled voice recognition features could be included in the product."
"During their merger, some key functions were eliminated which no longer allows it to run independently from the cloud as a standalone for other companies. For example, options to schedule and trigger have been removed. It would be nice to have these capabilities back. The flow and the connectivity between databases and so on is a bit complex as well."
"The debugging tools require improvement as well as the monitoring which goes along with it."
"All the services on the Microsoft platform are great. If we want to try something like with SharePoint or Azure or the 365 CRM, then we can't with the everyday community edition of the Microsoft Power Automate. It would be a good thing if there was some sort of trial period. Let's say you have 14 days. That way, can log into the loading screen with Power Automate, and get to utilize services like SharePoint, OneDrive, 365 CRM or etc. to see if they like them. It would be a good way for Microsoft to cross-sell or up-sell."
"It would be great if it was able to integrate more with various other platforms. It would make development easier."
"Technical support needs to be able to respond quickly to queries. Right now, they are much too slow."
"Sometimes there are issues with security policies within the company. Some parts get blacked. There are some drawbacks when we use it connected to the cloud. We need to convince clients to open some parts. This is often an issue that originates from the company itself, not Power Automate."
"Our suggestion to make it better and more manageable in terms of GDPR: Implement it in a very partnership way."
"I would like for VisualCron to expand audit log to show who changed job variables that are initialized per job run."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"VisualCron's command console is a little bit difficult to understand and needs to improve."
"An area for improvement in VisualCron is its cluttered interface. It isn't always easy to find all functionalities, so what VisualCron needs is a user interface expert who can improve the interface. There's a learning curve in terms of finding what you need from the interface of VisualCron. The technical support for VisualCron also needs improvement in terms of response time. Currently, there's no live support or hotline you can call to get quick answers, so this is what I'd like to see in the next version of VisualCron. A less cluttered and more streamlined interface, where you don't need to hunt for some of the features, is also what I'd like to see in the next VisualCron update."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is reasonable and the western license is fantastic."
"The solution is $150 per month for the unattended add-on, and the normal Power Automate comes with an E3 license."
"It's more fragmented licensing, where every little thing that you add, you get an extra license cost."
"Licensing is on an annual basis."
"There should be increased transparency about which features attend the pricing."
"There are many different ways to license it."
"You can have two types of licenses, one is user-based, and the other is app-based in the Power Platform."
"This is a cost-effective RPA solution."
"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."
"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 one month."
"ROI is 95 percent."
"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."
"The price is a bit high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Healthcare Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

RPA that Bots can run without centralized control?
Yes, Attended Bots which can run without centralized control Module. RPA Tools like Automation Anywhere, uiPath ,Power Automation they do support this.
How do I choose between UiPath and Microsoft Power Automate?
Microsoft‌ ‌Power‌ ‌Automate‌ ‌is‌ ‌intuitive‌ ‌and‌ ‌easy‌ ‌to‌ ‌integrate‌ ‌and‌ ‌use.‌ ‌I‌ ‌like‌ ‌that‌ ‌there‌ ‌is‌ ‌no‌ ‌coding‌ ‌experience‌ ‌necessary,‌ ‌and‌ ‌appreciate‌ ‌the‌ ‌automated‌...
How is Automation Anywhere compared to Microsoft Power Automate?
‌Neither‌ ‌solution‌ ‌requires‌ ‌any‌ ‌coding‌ ‌experience,‌ ‌and‌ ‌both‌ ‌are‌ ‌easy‌ ‌to‌ ‌use‌ ‌and‌ ‌have‌ ‌great‌ ‌drag-and‌ ‌drop‌ ‌functionality.‌ ‌The‌ ‌training‌ ‌and‌ ‌resources‌ ‌for‌ ‌A...
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.
 

Also Known As

Power Automate, Microsoft Flow, MS Power Automate, WinAutomation by Softomotive, ProcessRobot by Softomotive
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Coca-Cola 2. General Electric 3. Siemens 4. Accenture 5. Deloitte 6. Johnson & Johnson 7. Ford 8. Nestle 9. Procter & Gamble 10. IBM 11. Amazon 12. Google 13. Microsoft 14. Adobe 15. Cisco 16. Oracle 17. SAP 18. Intel 19. HP 20. Dell 21. Verizon 22. AT&T 23. T-Mobile 24. Walmart 25. Target 26. Home Depot 27. McDonald's 28. Starbucks 29. Nike 30. Apple 31. Facebook 32. Twitter
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 Microsoft Power Automate vs. VisualCron and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
787,061 professionals have used our research since 2012.