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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
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 actually quite liked the no-coding functionality."
"Fortra's Automate performs the job effectively and has the capability to alert us of any issues."
"I find the ease of use from a programming perspective very valuable."
"We use it for specific cases, mainly secure file transfers, which are vital for us. And it works for us."
"The interface is simple, user-friendly, and very intuitive."
"Fortra's Automate has effectively replaced the workload of an entire employee, saving us significant time and money."
"We have found the pricing to be very reasonable."
"Overall, the whole product is really nice and provides significant benefits."
"By implementing processes using Automation Anywhere, we can save up to 3,000 euros within two weeks of development."
"This solution is easy to use and understand, even for a non-technical person."
"It's very easy for business users to learn Automation Anywhere."
"UI and document automation are two features I like. Document automation is helpful because it simplifies extracting and putting data into different ERP systems. I have three or four use cases for document automation. I also like the recorder objects feature, which was called object learning in the previous version, and screen scraping."
"The data capture feature is very valuable. I know there are also some elements where you have to be able to incorporate AI, but I haven't gotten to that level yet."
"The interface is a lot better than a lot of other tools which are out there."
"Automation Anywhere's OCR functionality stands out as the most valuable feature for us, as it allows us to swiftly extract data for repetitive tasks, significantly boosting our efficiency."
"One of the most valuable features is the different possibilities it gives you to manipulate the interface screens that you're working with."
"Ability to vary the responses very easily (randomize, pick-lists, etc.)."
"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."
"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."
"You can create virtual services from a live recording or convert raw traffic into request/response pairs."
"Scalability has actually worked well and we are able to bring it to multiple environments."
"We are able to quickly scale our requests. We have tested across thousands of requests. We have had no problems so far."
"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."
 

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."
"The interface could be more user-friendly and easier to navigate."
"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."
"The technical support could be better. We suffer from language barriers, as we are in Argentina."
"I would like the updates to be easier to deploy. Integration with Amazon S3 is somewhat lacking."
"It's possible that they could use a stronger community for seeking guidance and help."
"The OCR for Hebrew text needs to be improved."
"Fortra's Automate is not as reliable as I would like it to be."
"I don't use the technical support a lot. It feels like a lot of time that they will ask us to check the user manual."
"The overall product in Automation Anywhere is good, but they need to improve a little bit on the overall architecture side."
"They should do more on the cognitive side. If they can keep adding more features, that would be their greatest advantage."
"Copilot is an area with a lot of scope for improvement."
"There are a number of current tools which can be improved because they have many limitations. Like some better controls in emails, and better support for features in Excel and PDF."
"The initial setup was not that great. The road was very up and down. We struggled. A lot of the features were not compatible with applications which we are using. That was the reason. This was the initial days, we are talking about 2016 to 2017. The buzz was not as much as we are having now."
"The debugger is also a weakness of the tool, forcing the developer to use error handling or message box to map errors. Few applications take more time for loading when integrated."
"The IQ Bot could use improvement."
"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."
"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."
"The workstation component has a very out-dated UI and is in dire need of a facelift."
"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."
"UI should be more user friendly: better usability, more testing oriented."
"It is not a stable solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"The cost is a bit high for a small business like ours, but we manage with Fortra's Automate."
"I like the way this solution is priced because you can buy a license, or you can buy the software outright."
"We have established a CoE and we take our bot opportunities based on their ROIs. The best ROI opportunity goes to development first. Our ROI opportunities are compliance, profitable growth, productivity enhancements, productivity gains, number of hours the productivity saved, and resources not available that the work can be done by the bot. However, the single most important criteria that we use to measure ROI is how much time does the bot cut down from an analyst's work, as this has the best ROI. E.g., if an analyst is spending a 100 hours of work that a bot can do in one hour, we calculate the 99 hours saved as ROI."
"We paid separately for the Runner and Creater components. The final cost depends on the structure of your environment."
"It is affordable for us."
"Automation Anywhere is somewhat expensive. The prices are slightly higher, but if you need something, you must pay for it."
"We're paying a monthly subscription fee for the bot and for services. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee."
"One of the things that will be good for the community will be to get the free version to download, which came out just a month ago called Community Edition. So, you can actually download it and try it for yourself."
"It depends. For example, for my group, we are centralizing the infrastructure in Paris. Our contract is signed with Automation Anywhere in France. The currency and the pricing of Automation Anywhere in France can appear beneficial and interesting for Germany and Scandinavian countries, but when we share our infra and are internally charging other countries such as Poland, Brazil, or some other country with a lower currency value as compared to Euro, it becomes less beneficial. They would prefer to sign the contract directly with Automation Anywhere because they will benefit from a price that is as per their local market."
"On a scale of one to ten with ten being the most expensive, I rate the price of Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten."
"I think the pricing is quite fair because this solution provides a lot of functionalities, and is quite stable."
"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."
"There are additional fees for advanced-level technical support."
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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.
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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: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.