Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Automation Anywhere vs Broadcom Service Virtualization comparison

Sponsored
 

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
556
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

"I would rate the technical support as a nine out of ten because it is quite fast and courteous."
"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."
"The product effectively handles all the tasks we require."
"The best feature of Automate is its ease of use, which is a major selling point."
"I like the interface; it makes managing automation easy. We can set different schedules and templates for each task."
"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."
"A great feature that you seldom see in these kind of systems is the ability to use a database as trigger to launch a task. This is something I asked for a few years ago and that was added."
"It saves time. It has saved 4,000 to 5,000 hours for one large complex process."
"Automation Anywhere (AA) is really fast on the development side. It's an efficient and intelligent RPA tool, with a good engine and good connectors."
"The technical support has been good in my experience. However, you need to use the latest version to get the right level of support. If it is an end-of-life version, you might not get support from Automation Anywhere."
"Automation Anywhere's most valuable features include generative AI, similar to Copilot, which will significantly benefit developers; low-code or no-code technology; and document automation capable of extracting data from structured and unstructured PDF formats, presenting it clearly and easy to follow."
"The document management processes that IQ Bot gives has very good functionality of how you can actually take unstructured data and make sense out of it, connecting inferences, then making the data available to the user. So, IQ Bot is one of the best tools that I can think of in that aspect. This solves the problem of various document structures, document formats, etc."
"AA allows you to create processes using 3 types of robots: Task Bot, Meta Bot, and IQ Bot. Instead of rewriting redundant code for processes, a meta bot can be used instead. This type of robot is best used for complex scalable processes. IQ Bot: The most powerful of the 3 types of robots is the IQ Bot."
"Most clients prefer Automation Anywhere because it is easy to implement. You don't need to know rocket science to learn this solution. If you know logic, that is sufficient. Automation Anywhere is more user-friendly."
"The company continues with research and development to expand the capabilities of the product to meet market needs."
"It's got probably the greatest amount of features, in terms of different technologies that you can automate and virtualize, out of any of the solutions out there."
"The ability to create virtual services and deploy them as Docker containers, and include them in our Jenkins build pipelines, is a valuable feature."
"The innovation is amazing. CA has continued to add to services that it supports, the transports that it supports, and has built all of the enterprise capabilities into the product as well."
"It is easy to use, has a faster time to market, and provides flexibility."
"I think the pricing is quite fair because this solution provides a lot of functionalities, and is quite stable."
"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."
"There are several areas that are easily configurable."
"CA Service Virtualization has helped us advance the development cycle when third-party interfaces are not available to us."
 

Cons

"The vendor is currently working on a solution that allows us to automatically create a process that is based on a document that we receive via email."
"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."
"They do not encrypt passwords, so this is an issue with HIPAA compliance."
"The solution has a very weak knowledge base."
"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."
"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."
"Some companies have asked for voice integration. This is likely part of the roadmap."
"For improvement, I would like to see Automation Anywhere integrating with multiple other technologies. As of now, it is integrating with .NET. When it come to future technologies, I want Automation Anywhere to integrate with Python scripts, and make the execution easier. That will be very helpful, having our cognitive technologies interacting with Automation Anywhere."
"Blue Prism is more secure than Automation Anywhere. E.g., Blue Prism has a system that is difficult to penetrate. You can't simply go into their system and make any changes."
"Bringing a DevOps model for bot implementation integrated through private bot store might be a good idea to improve the tool."
"Their OCR is a bit expensive."
"While using IQ Bot we found that data extraction accuracy is a bit weaker in semi-structured documents compared with structured documents. We would like to see improvement in the data extraction part of Automation Anywhere IQ Bot."
"The capability of understanding and extracting documents is not very good."
"I would like for AA to add an inbuilt debug log that has functionalities to view the values of variables during run time in order to have a point-to-point debugging in case of an error."
"The GUI can be improved by making it more user-friendly."
"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."
"We had to implement an external service catalog. We put it in ServiceNow. I would like to see an integrated service catalog."
"They can always work on usability and making simple things simple to do. This is true of every product that deals with complexity."
"The workstation component has a very out-dated UI and is in dire need of a facelift."
"I would like to have more flexibility towards the mainframe virtualization and also in JDBC virtualization."
"The cost is an area that needs improvement. There are a couple of other tools which provide support for performance testing with the base version itself, but Broadcom needs a separate component to support virtualization for performance testing. This is a costly component."
"It is not a stable solution."
"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 comes with a package that costs approximately $20,000 USD per year."
"I like the way this solution is priced because you can buy a license, or you can buy the software outright."
"From a distributor's perspective, one of the biggest selling points of Automate is its price point."
"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."
"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."
"Compared to other products, the pricing model for this solution is much more convenient, flexible, and adaptable to the Portuguese reality."
"We are interested in saving manual engineer man-hours. So far, we have saved $100,000."
"When I started working on it, it was difficult to obtain a trial version (barrier to entry). Now, they have a Community Edition, which may make it easy to get started."
"This is a value for the money product."
"Despite being less expensive than UiPath, Automation Anywhere remains cost-prohibitive for many small and medium-sized businesses."
"Currently, it stands as one of the more expensive RPA tools available."
"I advise others that even as of right now, the setup cost and licensing cost to automate bots on Automation Anywhere is steep but it is worth the investment!"
"In terms of monetary savings, we automated a bot in three days that has saved us $30,000 in costs."
"We were required to purchase licenses and bot runners, which determined the permissible run times for the bots."
"I think the pricing is quite fair because this solution provides a lot of functionalities, and is quite stable."
"There is a yearly licensing cost, and I would give it a four out of five."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solutions are best for your needs.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
39%
Computer Software Company
16%
Retailer
8%
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.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

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: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.