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Appian RPA vs VisualCron comparison

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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

Fortra's Automate
Sponsored
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Appian RPA
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
19th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (24th)
VisualCron
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
20th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Managed File Transfer (MFT) (15th), Workload Automation (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category, the mindshare of Fortra's Automate is 1.3%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Appian RPA is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VisualCron is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
 

Featured Reviews

Anabel Marco - PeerSpot reviewer
Automates processes efficiently with cost-effective scaling and robust customer support
Web scraping is quite good since it offers a lot of possibilities. Another important feature for me is its compatibility with MBI, the Power that is ISEQUADO Centers. I appreciate the ability to scale and increase the number of bots or studios without additional expense. Automate's non-reliance on additional orchestrators makes it quite cost-effective.
MikahSellers - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient automation with substantial ROI and innovative UI enhancements
We were automating customer experience workflows for the contact center, including systems like CRM, service desk solutions, CCaaS solutions, and pulling data from ERPs It allowed us to reduce the level of effort to complete contact processes from one hundred fifty seconds to ninety seconds,…
Sourav-Dutta - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"I find the ease of use from a programming perspective very valuable."
"Fortra's Automate has effectively replaced the workload of an entire employee, saving us significant time and money."
"The ability to connect to websites and pull data is the solution's most valuable feature."
"I would rate the technical support as a nine out of ten because it is quite fast and courteous."
"The most valuable feature is the drag-and-drop interface, which is very Windows-like."
"We have found the pricing to be very reasonable."
"We have tried other RPA solutions like UiPath or Automation Anywhere. They are fantastic products but complex, and it's hard to understand everything. It would be best if you had a skilled developer or several. Automate is easy to implement, administer, and use. It's appropriate for us because our cases are simple and easy to automate. We don't need complicated tools with many features; We prefer to get a significant ROI quickly."
"This product is quite easy to install, learn, and use, with our new employees being able to start using it in projects for clients after only two weeks of internal training."
"Appian RPA is super easy to use, offering low code, no code capabilities."
"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."
"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."
"What I like about VisualCron is that like its name, it's a very visual tool. In my previous company, there were a lot of scripts for all kinds of services, and through VisualCron, you get to group all flows and get a nice visual overview. VisualCron also has an alerting feature, so you receive alerts from it. VisualCron makes everything clearer and easier to maintain. Every other solution that I was looking for almost always needed a programmer, but with VisualCron, you can do what you need to do without programming skills, so this is another valuable feature of the tool."
"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."
"We don't have to do any coding. We just plug and play and it works."
"'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."
"It helped us reduce manual steps."
"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."
 

Cons

"They do not encrypt passwords, so this is an issue with HIPAA compliance."
"I find that most important features are strong, however, there is a lack of good development for artificial intelligence, such as machine learning."
"Fortra's Automate is not as reliable as I would like it to be."
"It would be an improvement if Automate had better stability tools, whether by recommending a certain amount of memory because it can be a memory hog at times."
"Error messages should be better. For error status, there should be better documentation because a lot of times, error messages that you get are quite vague. For example, you get a message saying that the workflow has run into an unknown status, which is vague. It just tells you that it failed, but you don't know how or why it failed. It makes debugging difficult."
"I would like the updates to be easier to deploy. Integration with Amazon S3 is somewhat lacking."
"The workflow for variables could be better. The input and output of task-level variables could be made a little clearer in terms of passing those around from one task to another upon success, etc. Things like that could be a little easier potentially."
"It's possible that they could use a stronger community for seeking guidance and help."
"There are not any areas that need improvement off the top of my head."
"The documentation is a bit weak."
"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."
"Our suggestion to make it better and more manageable in terms of GDPR: Implement it in a very partnership way."
"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."
"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 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 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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"From a distributor's perspective, one of the biggest selling points of Automate is its price point."
"The cost is a bit high for a small business like ours, but we manage with Fortra's Automate."
"From a distributor's side, one of the biggest selling points is its price point. Without going into any numbers, compared to UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and Blue Prism, we're significantly cheaper. The main difference is that other competitors usually charge you per process. However, in Automate's case, it's priced per bot. So, a bot can run multiple processes at the same time, but you are only priced for a single bot."
"I'm only involved in running the product and maintaining the systems, so I can't speak to the cost."
"I like the way this solution is priced because you can buy a license, or you can buy the software outright."
"While solutions like UiPath and Blue Prism cost around $11,000-$12,000 for each license, this product costs around $7,000 and you can keep it forever."
"It has gone up in price. The price of Fortra's Automate has increased since we first started using it. It does a lot but also costs a lot. It was a lot more affordable before Fortra owned the software."
"It comes with a package that costs approximately $20,000 USD per year."
Information not available
"ROI is one month."
"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 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
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Healthcare Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
No data available
Computer Software Company
28%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Insurance Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about HelpSystems AutoMate?
We use it for specific cases, mainly secure file transfers, which are vital for us. And it works for us.
What is your primary use case for HelpSystems AutoMate?
I am a consultant and I am making a lot of processes in human resources, payroll, certifications, trainings, web scra...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortra Automate?
The pricing is quite good compared to its competitors. Competitors are often more expensive than Automate. I would ra...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Appian RPA?
I didn't handle payments or costs. We recommended infrastructure stacks to our clients, who implemented them, and we ...
What needs improvement with Appian RPA?
There are not any areas that need improvement off the top of my head. It has been 18 months since I worked with the e...
What is your primary use case for Appian RPA?
We were automating customer experience workflows for the contact center, including systems like CRM, service desk sol...
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

HelpSystems Automate, Automate
Jidoka RPA
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Aldergrove Financial Group, Preferred Health Professionals, Mindbeam Technologies, First Credit Union in British Columbia, Vestcom International, Prime Liberty Benefits, University of Tampa, CNLBancshares, World Precision Instruments, BJ's Restaurants, Globe Pequot Press, Accudata Technologies, Norton Healthcare, Pacific Toxicology Laboratories
empark, talan, liverpool, ayesa, aeromexico, teknei
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 UiPath, Microsoft, Automation Anywhere and others in Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Updated: February 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.