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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
554
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

"It gives us a central place to schedule tasks and run them distributed."
"This tool has machine learning and voice recognition and computer vision, which are both quite useful aspects. These aren't available in other tools. It's a good addition to this tool and it gives the solution an edge on the market."
"I find the ease of use from a programming perspective very valuable."
"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."
"I like the interface; it makes managing automation easy. We can set different schedules and templates for each task."
"Fortra's Automate has effectively replaced the workload of an entire employee, saving us significant time and money."
"The best feature of Automate is its ease of use, which is a major selling point."
"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."
"It is very self-explanatory, making it easy for non-technical users to develop."
"Overall, I would rate Automation Anywhere a nine out of ten."
"The bot creation process is simple and useful. Whatever you need to do, it is there. If there is something else, there are the MetaBot functions."
"AA improves process consistency and reduces human error."
"Movement on cloud architecture according to me provided by AA2019, will be most beneficial as it will be easy to use and will provide flexibility."
"I also very much like the integrating of this solution with other applications. We have some old web applications that we've been using, and we've been writing some of our own DLLs to integrate with it. It has worked really well."
"Very comprehensive with different platforms especially SAP and Oracle EBS."
"The bot creation process is relatively simple."
"CA Service Virtualization has helped us advance the development cycle when third-party interfaces are not available to us."
"Scalability has actually worked well and we are able to bring it to multiple environments."
"It is easy to use, has a faster time to market, and provides flexibility."
"The most valuable features are the recording and creating of virtual services."
"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."
"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 feature is that it supports so many protocols. We, being a large bank, have almost all the protocols, and it supports all of them, so that's one good thing."
"The ability to create virtual services and deploy them as Docker containers, and include them in our Jenkins build pipelines, is a valuable feature."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement regarding cloud functionality; there are a few missing features, and the logging could be better, especially air logging. We can go into logging events and create our own task, but it would be nice if this were more detailed."
"The documentation for errors needs improvement as many of the error messages we receive are very vague."
"I currently have three bugs open with them that I don't know if they are addressed in the new release."
"I would like the updates to be easier to deploy. Integration with Amazon S3 is somewhat lacking."
"The intelligent automation feature could be improved. It's interesting because it's simple, but the automation quality isn't always good. It's easy to use, but sometimes you need to make a slight improvement to the automation, and that's not so easy."
"While this solution is continually improving, as it is now, the user interface could use improvement when I compare it to a product like UiPath."
"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."
"I would like to have the ability to work on a remote desktop connection, run the recording on it and use all commands."
"There is a limitation with Automation Anywhere where if you want to build your own packages and deploy them, it is very difficult."
"If I build a bot today and don't use it, however, in several months, someone tries to use it, there's a 30-40% change the bot will fail in one or two areas."
"The product's technical support could use improvement."
"The solution could improve the integration with some web applications. It was difficult to manage them."
"An additional feature we would like to see is the inclusion of a particular kind of scripting in the development environment itself."
"For assisted automation, the AA bot needs the facility to be triggered through an application interface after collecting input from the user."
"I would like to have a bot as a service platform on AA Cloud. This would minimize the installation process, and we wouldn't need to have all the hardware to support the platform in-house."
"We had to implement an external service catalog. We put it in ServiceNow. I would like to see an integrated service catalog."
"I would rate the tech support a nine out of ten. They need more knowledge about the connectivity to DevOps orchestration."
"One major feature I would like to see is on the user administration part. Right now, anybody can access any of the folders and any of the projects."
"Needs some additional lightweight, portable elements."
"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."
"CA actually releases a new version every year. We had issues with the upgrade prior to the latest one."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"I like the way this solution is priced because you can buy a license, or you can buy the software outright."
"I'm only involved in running the product and maintaining the systems, so I can't speak to the cost."
"I believe the price falls within a reasonable range, which significantly influenced our decision regarding the product. This aspect is crucial for any technological solution, especially in our country where enterprises might be hesitant to invest heavily in something untested or uncertain about its practicality and potential returns."
"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."
"Compared to other products, the pricing model for this solution is much more convenient, flexible, and adaptable to the Portuguese reality."
"The cost is a bit high for a small business like ours, but we manage with Fortra's Automate."
"Our annual licensing costs for the entire company are $100,000."
"Although the initial implementation cost of Automation Anywhere is relatively high compared to other options, its annual subscription cost is lower than UiPath's, which has the opposite pricing structure."
"We have purchased licenses, but are trying to obtain more bot programmer licenses."
"Automation Anywhere is somewhat expensive. The prices are slightly higher, but if you need something, you must pay for it."
"The cost is at the highest end of the spectrum."
"Based on what I've heard, it's costly, but I don't know much about its pricing."
"As our team size increases, we may get some more licenses for the tool."
"The price of Automation Anywhere is a little higher than some of the competition, such as UiPath. However, depending on the use case and other factors we are able to receive some discounts."
"There are additional fees for advanced-level technical support."
"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 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
16%
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.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.