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Automation Anywhere vs Broadcom Service Virtualization comparison

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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

Automate
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (5th)
Automation Anywhere
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
553
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (3rd), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (2nd), Process Mining (1st), Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (3rd), Agentic Automation (2nd)
Broadcom Service Virtualiza...
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
Service Virtualization (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
Service Virtualization
 

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.
Vatsal Mehta - PeerSpot reviewer
Accommodates diverse use cases and effectively meets customer requirements
AI agents need further improvements. AI agent technology in agentic process automation is still evolving. We have only scratched the surface, and there are many potential use cases yet to be explored. As technology advances, I believe it will enable us to implement more comprehensive automation solutions. Document Automation has issues related to speed. When I compare Document Automation with IQ Bot, IQ Bot is faster than Document Automation. My understanding is that they are still evolving Document Automation, and this issue of slowness will be resolved in the upcoming .35 version, so we are good with that. They are working on signature identification and validations for handwritten documents. Currently, we are able to extract data out of scanned but digital images, but there is still scope for improvement for handwritten documents.
reviewer956754 - PeerSpot reviewer
Scalable with good recording and creating of virtual services, but it's not stable and there is no support for previous versions
The learning curve is an area that needs improvement, as well as stability and performance. Stability has to be improved. It is not a stable solution. Especially, when you create custom solutions there are issues with memory accumulation. I would prefer that they stop adding features, which is what they do. Instead, focus on stabilizing it and make it work. What's the point of adding new features? It just increases the cost. I'll give you an example; CA and I have continuous applications, and insight is one of the service activation components. It has never worked in any project, just for the namesake and for showing they have this one. Support needs improvement, they don't support the migration from an older version to the current version. The price can be reduced. This portal, after one week, if it is enterprise-assigned, will stop working. Now we have a policy that every week, we have a scheduled restart of everything, and maintain it. The stability is so poor that this is what is required. Broadcom acquired it recently, approximately a year ago. Broadcom was not involved with the software before. They were known for having a history with the hardware, physical devices, and appliances. Now, they are focusing on both. Much of their technical expertise, have gone. There is no expertise.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The pricing is excellent. I would give them perfect marks in that regard."
"I find it very user-friendly. Our IT department and other departments can seamlessly collaborate without requiring extensive training. As a business department, we particularly value this aspect, as our team doesn't consist of many IT users. However, we couldn't solely rely on a drag-and-drop approach to implement and utilize the solution within our departments."
"It's very easy to use. That's a big selling point for it. It has got a drag-and-drop interface, so you can quickly deploy bots."
"The product effectively handles all the tasks we require."
"The ability to connect to websites and pull data is the solution's most valuable feature."
"The most valuable features of Fortra's Automate include its FTP functionality and file manipulation capabilities."
"I actually quite liked the no-coding functionality."
"The interface is simple, user-friendly, and very intuitive."
"There are ready plugins and connectors to integrate with APIs for common systems like Oracle or Microsoft."
"Automation Anywhere has improved our company a lot. The SLA of some tasks that we need to deliver to some clients has improved greatly."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its scalability, security using the credential vault, and ease of use for business."
"Our onboarding process was pretty good. We got access to all software that we needed to learn and utilize. The Automation Anywhere University is really good. In our business, the person who was onboarding us helped us to understand how to create a center of excellence and what verticals we needed to improve. So, the support was there. We are gradually becoming a center of excellence ourselves."
"MetaBots are useful when connecting to websites or to forms with objects that need to be captured."
"We were working on a system called AS 400. Automation Anywhere performed well on that old system. It handled complicated processes. I had to review different menus and screens and give resources, storage, and databases. That's complicated."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use."
"It has helped us relieve the workload on our human workforce and thus ensures that they remain productive and motivated at all times thus work efficiently."
"Easy to understand ways of creating stubs."
"We had a number of back-end services that were not available during testing times. What this had allowed us to do is get our early life testing done while those services are not available."
"The ability to do parallel development and testing reduces our costs for duplicating environments, improving the productivity of our developers, and bringing products faster to market."
"I think the pricing is quite fair because this solution provides a lot of functionalities, and is quite stable."
"We have had developers produce code later than we wanted to, but we've had some other stuff that was dependent on that. So what we were able to do was virtualize these assets and then go forward with our developer and not have to wait for these additional services to be available."
"The most valuable features are the recording and creating of virtual services."
"You can create virtual services from a live recording or convert raw traffic into request/response pairs."
"Helps us to remove barriers that we have with dependencies on services that we don't own, or services that don't even exist yet."
 

Cons

"The documentation for errors needs improvement as many of the error messages we receive are very vague."
"Sometimes when we communicate with the ERP system and there is an issue, we are not always aware of the specifics of Automate and the source of the problem."
"It's possible that they could use a stronger community for seeking guidance and help."
"I would like the updates to be easier to deploy. Integration with Amazon S3 is somewhat lacking."
"They do not encrypt passwords, so this is an issue with HIPAA compliance."
"I currently have three bugs open with them that I don't know if they are addressed in the new release."
"The technical support could be better. We suffer from language barriers, as we are in Argentina."
"I would like to see some better web automation, a wizard like the one in the product WinAutomation would be very nice."
"Automation Anywhere has a persistent click-related issue that can make automation difficult, particularly in unattended environments."
"I would like to see them expand the service catalog with RCA add-ons to the current RPA package."
"One of the important drawbacks of Automation Anywhere is that it needs to be able to show the automated process as a single flowchart."
"Business processes are more complex and require experts to be brought in to automate."
"We do not have a precise area that needs improvement, but sometimes while running bots that traverse through different websites, the screen hangs or takes time to fully load."
"I feel A2019 is still not completely ready and the discontinuing of version 11 is a negative impact for all of the users and clients."
"The learning curve for Automation Anywhere is steep, especially for advanced features like IQ Bot and API automation, which require technical expertise."
"Companies need to better justify the ROI before usage - otherwise, they might spend money on things unnecessarily."
"The workstation component has a very out-dated UI and is in dire need of a facelift."
"DevTest is pretty massive. It's hard to tell what different parts of it can be used to do different things. They should modulize it more."
"I would like to have more flexibility towards the mainframe virtualization and also in JDBC virtualization."
"We had to implement an external service catalog. We put it in ServiceNow. I would like to see an integrated service catalog."
"CA actually releases a new version every year. We had issues with the upgrade prior to the latest one."
"I really want to see more of the "express" kind of model, where you get a little bit for free. I'd love to be able to see you be able to edit and author tests without having to be connected to a licensed server. And then, if you want to go and execute tests, then you go and connect to the server... I think it would unblock people to be able to do a lot more work from home or from remote places, where they can't really connect to the server."
"They can always work on usability and making simple things simple to do. This is true of every product that deals with complexity."
"It is not a stable solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"From a distributor's perspective, one of the biggest selling points of Automate is its price point."
"Compared to other products, the pricing model for this solution is much more convenient, flexible, and adaptable to the Portuguese reality."
"Once you buy the software, you just pay for the support for backend help."
"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."
"The cost is a bit high for a small business like ours, but we manage with Fortra's Automate."
"The pricing is quite reasonable. We can run the process with one bot. The limitation is at the server level because they have some resources, and sometimes that is enough. It isn't too expensive, so you can get a good return off of one, and you can also have a pack of five bots that is quite competitive."
"I'm only involved in running the product and maintaining the systems, so I can't speak to the cost."
"I would rate the cost an eight out of ten, with ten being the highest cost."
"The pricing is reasonable and one can achieve ROI faster when compared to other tools."
"I think it's $5,500 per license."
"In terms of monetary savings, we automated a bot in three days that has saved us $30,000 in costs."
"Automation Anywhere falls within a mid-range price point when compared to other RPA tools on the market."
"We have seen ROI in terms of cost and time with a couple of our projects."
"My understanding is that the license cost of Automation Anywhere is more reasonable than UiPath and Blue Prism."
"The pricing is fair. My company is part of a big organization, so the pricing is very advantageous."
"I don't have the exact dollar amount, but we have spent close to $1,000,000 for a three-year agreement, for an enterprise level."
"There are additional fees for advanced-level technical support."
"There is a yearly licensing cost, and I would give it a four out of five."
"I think the pricing is quite fair because this solution provides a lot of functionalities, and is quite stable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
39%
Computer Software Company
15%
Retailer
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It depends on your use case. Is it simply to automate a couple of processes? Is it to augment a human team? AA is ver...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
From my experience using AA tool, it depends on the applications that you want to automate, because there some applic...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It is a highly preferred RPA tool. You can check my Automation Anywhere Review to know more.
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Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate
Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise
ITKO LISA, CA LISA, CA Service Virtualization
 

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
Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
Union Bank, Swisscom, Autotrader, KPN, ING Bank, Best Buy, American Family Insurance, TESCO, Telefonica, Molina Healthcare, California DMV, Aktia, City Index, Con-way, DirecTV, GRU Airport, Liquidnet, NAB, Nordstrom, T-Mobile, TIM Brasil, 
Find out what your peers are saying about UiPath, Automation Anywhere, Microsoft and others in Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Updated: March 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.