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Automation Anywhere vs Broadcom Service Virtualization 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

Automate
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (5th)
Automation Anywhere
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
591
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (2nd), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (2nd), Process Mining (2nd), Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (3rd), Agentic Automation (1st)
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.
DM
Can be used for the virtualization of TCP/IP protocols for third-party terminal insurance
We use it for the virtualization of third-party APIs for performance testing. Our second use case is related to the virtualization of TCP/IP protocols for third-party terminal insurance, which is used for insurance clients In the case of the virtualization of TCP/IP protocols for third-party…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The interface is simple, user-friendly, and very intuitive."
"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."
"Fortra's Automate performs the job effectively and has the capability to alert us of any issues."
"I like the interface; it makes managing automation easy. We can set different schedules and templates for each task."
"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."
"The ability to connect to websites and pull data is the solution's most valuable feature."
"The product effectively handles all the tasks we require."
"It gives us a central place to schedule tasks and run them distributed."
"The most valuable feature is the back-end process automation."
"The way templates can be configured is quite simple - it's a matter of drag and drop."
"In terms of development for our developers, it is very easy and quick to learn because Automation Anywhere has provided an online academy where developers can easily learn the features. It is very easy. If someone does not have a coding background, they can also learn from it very easily because it is just drag and drop and very interactive."
"We have a bot running on a computer that is doing manual tasks that we used to do."
"The benefit of using Automation Anywhere is the efficiency of operations and speed."
"Automation Anywhere receives high marks for its ease of use."
"The robust and flexible nature of the product gives it the capability to automate almost all rule-based processes in each and every ERP application that is currently available in the market."
"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."
"You can have a lot of different people with different technologies use the tool, without any programming experience at all, all the way up to people who can program. And then, the more technical that you are, the more programming you have, the more you're able to customize the tool."
"The most valuable features include the capability to use other program languages such as PLSQR, JAVA, .NET."
"Easy to understand ways of creating stubs."
"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."
"Unit testing or early life testing did not have to be stopped or delayed because those services were not available."
"Scalability has actually worked well and we are able to bring it to multiple environments."
"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."
"In the case of the virtualization of TCP/IP protocols for third-party terminal insurance, there was a device terminal, which was interacting with the application via the TCP/IP protocol. Most of the tools don't support that, but we were able to achieve it using Broadcom Service Virtualization."
 

Cons

"I would like to see some better web automation, a wizard like the one in the product WinAutomation would be very nice."
"The product also has a limited use case in some respects."
"We really need a free development environment for customers. Building and testing automation on production isn't ideal."
"The solution has a very weak knowledge base."
"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."
"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 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 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."
"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."
"The IQ Bots need more out-of-the-box models to lessen the time required for model training. Their competitors provide more built-in models, which enhance capabilities in document processing."
"There can be some options to connect to the database directly where we should be able to add some data."
"The error handling command on this solution still needs improvement, especially when compared to other platforms that are doing very well."
"We noticed slowness in a few of the commands like Object Cloning, Web Recorders, etc. on which Automation Anywhere can work to make it more robust. There are improvements required in the WLM solution provided by AA, which can make it a more robust queuing system and the system should retry by itself in case of failure due to system error."
"There is room for improvement in terms of costs and procurement considerations."
"There is limited scope for complex decision-making. For instance, a bot can extract invoice details, but it cannot determine if an invoice is fraudulent without AI integration."
"I would rate the tech support a nine out of ten. They need more knowledge about the connectivity to DevOps orchestration."
"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."
"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."
"CA actually releases a new version every year. We had issues with the upgrade prior to the latest one."
"UI should be more user friendly: better usability, more testing oriented."
"I'd like to see more of the newer technologies included in there, looking mainly from a mobile perspective, possibly, so you can virtualize some of the aspects that we're going to be doing for mobile testing."
"​From a reporting perspective I think we would like to have a more user-friendly approach."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"From a distributor's perspective, one of the biggest selling points of Automate is its price point."
"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."
"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."
"Once you buy the software, you just pay for the support for backend help."
"Compared to other products, the pricing model for this solution is much more convenient, flexible, and adaptable to the Portuguese reality."
"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."
"It comes with a package that costs approximately $20,000 USD per year."
"The solution itself is free unless we want to add the support option but we have to pay for the bots we use."
"It is the most economically friendly and it provides you with a lot of functions."
"We are restricted to use one license on one PC. However, if my license is not working, I want to be able to use it somewhere else. This would be a nice improvement to the licensing, as other competitors in the market have better licensing terms."
"If you are looking into Automation Anywhere, get the Community Edition and play with it."
"Automation Anywhere is expensive, making it suitable only for enterprise organizations."
"The pricing model can be a bit more flexible."
"The cloud-based version comes at an increased cost, although our clients are happy with the new features and have not complained about the pricing."
"It is expensive. I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten in terms of pricing."
"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."
"There are additional fees for advanced-level technical support."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
5%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
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?
The main purpose is for automation. That has been the purpose why I have been using it so far.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortra Automate?
Regarding pricing, it is very friendly. I would not say that it is really cheap or very expensive, but it fits within...
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: June 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.