Automation Anywhere vs IBM Datacap comparison

Automation Anywhere and IBM are both solutions in the Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) category. Automation Anywhere is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.3, while IBM is ranked #7 with an average rating of 7.8. Additionally, 95% of Automation Anywhere users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of IBM users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Automation Anywhere and IBM Datacap based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Automation Anywhere vs. IBM Datacap Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Automation Anywhere vs. IBM Datacap

March 2025

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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

Featured Reviews

Anabel Marco

Account Director at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

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.

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Vatsal Mehta

Co-Founder & CEO at HEDEHI Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

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.

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DeekshithShetty

Software Development Senior Specialist at NTT Data

High-accuracy document processing with easy integration and good image enhancement

The OCR extractions are very good, almost 100% accurate now. The integration with other tools is very easy, with inbuilt actions to configure and directly export to multiple depositories. It is also good at image enhancement, including the removal of lines, which is helpful in processing and automation and ensures very little user intervention, thus saving time.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability to connect to websites and pull data is the solution's most valuable feature."

"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."

"Web scraping is quite good since it offers a lot of possibilities."

"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."

"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 would rate the technical support as a nine out of ten because it is quite fast and courteous."

"The licensing of the product is very good. You only need to license it once and then you have it forever."

"It gives us a central place to schedule tasks and run them distributed."

More Automate pros

"The core functionality, the ability to automate these tasks and to interact, both with our own in-house software solutions as well as with our customers' and vendors' solutions and portals, has been incredibly valuable for us."

"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 control room is the best part as everything can be seen and controlled from there, scheduling storing of credentials, and much more. I have used PDF extraction and other tools where data needs to be extracted and it works great at that part. I highly recommended this tool for automation."

"The ease of use is its most valuable feature."

"We're finding time savings as a benefit. One example would be a customer service rep who might get a question about an order, and it's usually through email. It can take a good three to seven business days to answer a customer's question about their order. When we automate it, it takes hours, if not minutes."

"It an easy, simple, and user-friendly tool that can be accessed through the mobile application as well."

"This solution is valuable because it can automate tasks which would otherwise be left for us to process manually."

"it helps to save time when doing processes. E.g., when you do a manual process for eight hours, that time is saved because the bot will do that task for you. The process owners will be able to do the analysis part. The repetitive/manual part will be done by the robot."

More Automation Anywhere pros

"The most valuable feature is its ability to capture data, which changes all the time into different formats."

"The standout feature of this intelligent product is its remarkable capability."

"Datacap is good at processing unstructured data. You can build up some nice data flows, and it is simple to configure. The tool adopts a low-code approach, but you can do a lot of coding if you want to customize and automate your flows. Datacap also has the flexibility to integrate."

"I work for an insurance company, and we use Datacap for document processing."

"The big thing these days is really the Insight Edition component and being able to build annotators to extract from literally unstructured content: paragraphs and information where there's no start anchor point to define where that data is located. There could be a number of entities in that which you have to draw information from. Being able to extract from them is really the differentiator today between that product and many of the other products..."

"It is the best solution for scanning purposes."

"At the forefront of my thoughts, the standout feature of this intelligent product is its remarkable capability. This project we're currently engaged in revolves around streamlining workflows within both our company and the customer's company. It entails handling information from various documents with diverse formats and types, even when they contain the same data. The ability to connect this information with the appropriate database and recognize it irrespective of the format or source is an extremely valuable feature. Moreover, leveraging machine learning is crucial since our customer deals with an extensive archive of over five million documents. Machine learning can significantly alleviate the backlog by becoming well-versed in various scenarios they might encounter during their work once we've completed our application."

"There's something that's very unique about IBM DataCap. It provides me with a good solution for extracting, reading the QR codes, and scanning them. In this stage, we are working in a UIT phase before implementing this protocol in all our branches. From my initial observation, IBM DataCap is good, it is not working too fast, but in a good manner for us."

More IBM Datacap pros

Cons

"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."

"I find that most important features are strong, however, there is a lack of good development for artificial intelligence, such as machine learning."

"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."

"They do not encrypt passwords, so this is an issue with HIPAA compliance."

"The OCR for Hebrew text needs to be improved."

"It would be an improvement if Automate had better stability tools, whether by recommending a certain amount of memory because it can be a memory hog at times."

"I would prefer not having to log in to update a ticket; being able to respond via email would be beneficial."

"Fortra's Automate is not as reliable as I would like it to be."

More Automate cons

"The GUI needs to be improved."

"Automation Anywhere is easy to use, even if you lack technical skills. People without deep technical expertise can easily develop scenarios."

"On the document automation side, the document learning features are not as robust as one would expect them to be. When I am doing document automation and a document fails due to low confidence in populating a field, it requires manual correction."

"It would be great if they provide installation documents that are easier to understand, place more focus on capturing the fields, and most importantly, concentrate more on the OCR capability."

"They want to get more accuracy in handwritten forms, which might take some time."

"I would like to see integration better integration with Excel and SAP."

"The product should improve on Voice Recognition and IoT pretty soon, as this is the next big thing in and I would like to see this upgraded in the next release."

"Logging into Automation Anywhere takes some time. I use it frequently, and each login currently takes some time. A reduction in this time would be helpful."

More Automation Anywhere cons

"We have page requirements where some values must be copied on each page. For example, say I need to scan a bunch of documents, and the name will be a field on every page. We don't have a default functionality in Datacap to copy the field value on the first page to all the pages. That feature would make the documents easy to prepare."

"Datacap has performance issues when processing large volumes of documents. We're doing 18,000 pages daily. Scanning takes almost 20-30 minutes, but it normally takes one or two minutes. We informed IBM and opened a ticket for that. They forwarded the issue to developers but didn't give a specific timeline for it to be resolved. Version 8.1 is already at the end of support."

"Its weaknesses are primarily tied to the lack of available resources and expertise in the market to effectively support and provide solutions and services to each customer for seamless implementation. Expertise in this specific product is rare throughout the market. One key reason is the product's limited downloads. Additionally, archiving solutions are often perceived as complex and challenging, dissuading many companies from venturing into this domain. Consequently, partners who specialize in archiving solutions are always seeking straightforward, uncomplicated options that are easy to manage and meet customer expectations."

"The interface can be more intuitive."

"The reading efficiency of the solution needs to be improved."

"I've faced some bugs or issues. They should do deeper testing of the product before releasing it because some of the bugs that I found were a bit simple. I understand that it is a massive product, and some of the functionalities can get overlooked."

"When I scan a document in Datacap that has a watermark or the document is a little distorted, the image output is poor. It either becomes completely black, or there is so much distortion that we cannot read the numbers or the addresses mentioned in the POD. When we scan a document, we expect the output to be at least 95 percent accurate."

More IBM Datacap cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"From a distributor's perspective, one of the biggest selling points of Automate is its price point."

"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."

"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."

"I like the way this solution is priced because you can buy a license, or you can buy the software outright."

"Once you buy the software, you just pay for the support for backend help."

"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."

"It comes with a package that costs approximately $20,000 USD per year."

More Automate pricing and cost advice

"It is not too expensive, but there are many tools available in the market that can provide the same functionality at a cheaper price."

"It is affordable for us."

"I am not responsible for the pricing part, but I know the pricing is competitive compared to other tools."

"We are currently negotiating a contract. Depending upon that, we will definitely look at increasing usage."

"Time-wise: We have saved hundreds of thousands of hours."

"The pricing of AA is similar to UiPath."

"On a yearly basis, our licensing costs are about $80,000. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."

"Subscription for Automation Anywhere (AA) is paid yearly."

More Automation Anywhere pricing and cost advice

"Pricing depends on how much we use it. We pay per bulk quantity. We pay as you go. Therefore, it sort of depends on our usage of it."

"We were using the User Value Unit licensing, which means we get charged per active user of the system, and if I'm not mistaken, we also had it for the rule runner service. They had a PVU license model, which is a processor value unit. For each process that we have in our system, we pay a certain amount of money. We found the pricing to be quite steep. It was really an expensive solution in comparison to Kofax, which had a different licensing model and was actually cheaper overall because they charge per page and not per user and per process."

"IBM could offer more competitive pricing. This would allow them to attain more users. Some of our clients are considering moving to a different solution called Encapture which is similar but offers more competitive pricing."

"Pricing needs to stay competitive."

"This solution is the most expensive in the market."

"If you want IBM Datacap on cloud, which is a service run by IBM, the price can be quite expensive, but if you want to just purchase the licenses and own those yourself, then the price is very competitive."

"This solution offers seamless integration with other enterprise products, which is my area of responsibility, focusing on government sector projects. Larger enterprise projects don't pose problems. It might be suitable for small businesses as well."

More IBM Datacap pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

18%

Government

14%

Computer Software Company

14%

Insurance Company

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.

See all answers

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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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.

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM Datacap?

The installation of the solution is very simple.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Datacap?

This solution is the most expensive in the market.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Datacap?

When a client's requirement is not available in Datacap, out-of-the-box actions should be simpler to implement and no...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Power Automate vs Automate

Compared 41% of the time

UiPath vs Automate

Compared 38% of the time

Blue Prism vs Automate

Compared 7% of the time

VisualCron vs Automate

Compared 6% of the time

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Microsoft Power Automate vs Automation Anywhere

Compared 30% of the time

UiPath vs Automation Anywhere

Compared 22% of the time

Blue Prism vs Automation Anywhere

Compared 10% of the time

Python RPA vs Automation Anywhere

Compared 6% of the time

Tricentis Tosca vs Automation Anywhere

Compared 4% of the time

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ABBYY Vantage vs IBM Datacap

Compared 33% of the time

Amazon Textract vs IBM Datacap

Compared 18% of the time

Microsoft Power Automate vs IBM Datacap

Compared 15% of the time

Tungsten TotalAgility vs IBM Datacap

Compared 12% of the time

HyperScience vs IBM Datacap

Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Automate

April 2025

Download Automate product report

Buyer's Guide

Automation Anywhere

April 2025

Download Automation Anywhere product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Datacap

April 2025

Download IBM Datacap product report

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise

Datacap

Overview

Automate offers a user-friendly solution with a drag-and-drop interface for efficient task automation and integration with major platforms like SAP and Azure, making it ideal for quick deployment with minimal coding and training.

Automate provides powerful features for businesses seeking efficient automation, offering compatibility with databases, email integration, and cloud platforms. Its simple interface supports both beginners and experienced users, simplifying tasks like invoice processing, HR automation, and data transformation. Cost-effective pricing and flexible licensing enhance its appeal while integration capabilities and scheduling tools ensure smooth workflow automation.

What are Automate's Key Features?

Drag-and-Drop Interface: Simplifies automation with intuitive design.
Integration Capabilities: Connects with platforms like SAP and Azure for seamless data flow.
Database and FTP Triggers: Enhances automation potential through direct data interaction.
Efficient Scheduling: Automates tasks with precise timing and control.
Web Scraping: Automates data extraction for quick analysis and reporting.

What Benefits and ROI Should Users Expect?

Rapid Deployment: Minimizes coding efforts for quick implementation.
Cost-Effectiveness: Offers flexible pricing models to suit budget constraints.
Operational Efficiency: Reduces manual workloads and enhances productivity.
Comprehensive Integration: Facilitates improved data management across systems.
Scalability: Adapts to growing business needs with ease.

In industries such as healthcare, banking, and logistics, Automate is used for tasks like invoice payment automation, data transformation, and task automation. This leads to streamlined processes and reduced manual workload, illustrating its value in enhancing operational efficiency through diversified workflows.

Fortra

Automation Anywhere offers a robust automation platform known for its user-friendly interface, flexible scalability, and advanced automation capabilities. It's designed to streamline operations across industries by automating manual and repetitive tasks.

Automation Anywhere empowers organizations with its easy-to-use platform that simplifies automation processes through its drag-and-drop functionality. With features like MetaBot and IQ Bot, it provides advanced automation solutions. The platform seamlessly integrates with business applications, ensuring efficient operation and data protection through security features like the credential vault. Despite its strengths, there is room for improvement in integration with source control systems and third-party applications. Enhancing UI friendliness, IDE capabilities, and licensing flexibility, along with improved support in the Citrix environment, are needed. Better OCR accuracy, AI functionalities, and Excel integration would enhance user experiences.

What are Automation Anywhere's key features?

Ease of Use: Offers a user-friendly platform that allows straightforward automation of processes for non-technical users.
Advanced Bots: Includes MetaBot and IQ Bot for complex automation tasks.
Integration: Seamlessly integrates with business applications for smooth operations.
Security: Features like credential vault ensure robust data protection.
Scalability: Provides flexibility and scalability for expanding automation needs.

What benefits and ROI should users look for?

Efficiency: Automates repetitive tasks, enhancing process efficiency.
Accuracy: Improves accuracy in operations like finance and HR.
Scalability: Offers scalable solutions for growing enterprises.
Cost Reduction: Reduces operational costs by streamlining processes.
Flexibility: Adapts to various industry requirements allowing broad implementation.

In the finance sector, Automation Anywhere is used for tasks like accounts payable, accounts receivable, and invoice processing. In HR, it's implemented for onboarding, payroll, and attendance verification. Its deployment also extends to supply chain, compliance, and customer service, providing streamlined operations by automating complex business processes.

Automation Anywhere

IBM Datacap helps you streamline the capture, recognition and classification of business documents and extract important information. Datacap supports multiple-channel capture by processing paper documents on scanners, mobile devices, multi-function peripherals and fax. It uses natural language processing, text analytics and machine learning technologies, like those in IBM Watson, to automatically identify, classify and extract content from unstructured or variable documents. The software can reduce labor and paper costs, deliver meaningful information and support faster decision making.

IBM

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

Turkcell, PowerSouth Energy Cooperative, Central Nacional Unimed, Conqord Oil

Buyer's Guide

Automation Anywhere vs. IBM Datacap

March 2025

Free Report: Automation Anywhere vs. IBM Datacap

Find out what your peers are saying about Automation Anywhere vs. IBM Datacap and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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