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

Automation Anywhere vs Microsoft Power Automate comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Automation Anywhere
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
3rd
Ranking in Process Mining
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
526
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Power Automate
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
2nd
Ranking in Process Mining
2nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category, the mindshare of Automation Anywhere is 11.7%, down from 15.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Power Automate is 21.2%, down from 21.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
 

Featured Reviews

Nelson F. Guerrero - PeerSpot reviewer
Saved us half a million dollars and 10,000 hours in the first year
There have been numerous improvements in the organization. We have saved hours and time and hard dollars. In the first year, we saved over half a million dollars. That was about six months of time. After that, we have done at least three million year over year, and we have increased that very much. As far as time saved, it is well over 10,000 hours in the first year alone, and we continue to grow. This year, we are projecting 30,000 manual hours saved. Prior to the implementation of Automation Anywhere, we had lots and lots of manual work. People would go into Excel and copy data from one master sheet to many sheets. They would compile data. They would take lots of time to do these things. Today, they can go in, press a button, and launch it. They can download hundreds and thousands of invoices, whereas previously, they used to do it manually. One of our use cases saved two people four days a week of time, which is 32 hours each. We now do that automatically in six hours. The learning curve is initially a little daunting, but after you are in there and you understand how it works, it is very seamless. It is very easy to pick up and very intuitive, and then from there, it is pretty much you go and get your hands dirty. The tools that we integrate with Automation Anywhere so far have been Python scripts and PowerShell. We have got Power Automate and Power Flows from Microsoft. We are starting to do some cognitive RPA. We are implementing OpenAI through Azure. We have got a lot of that going right now. The integration with all of the documents and APIs is very seamless. There are packages available in the store if you do not have the integration built-in out of the box. They are available to everyone. Everything that we have been able to use has been just drag and drop. We can just pop in our credentials and be done. Automation Anywhere has affected us in a positive way in terms of employee capacity and compliance. We have not had to backfill roles. We have not necessarily replaced people, and that is by intent. We did not want to replace people, but we also did not want to have to backfill people. We wanted people to focus on things that they value and be more productive instead of doing mind-numbing things that get no value, but they just have to do it. Our time and cost savings have been immense since the beginning. In our first year, after we started launching the bots in June or July of 2019, we saved half a million dollars and 10,000 man-hours. Since then, we have grown more than 70% year over year. This year, we are on track to go up to about 40,000 man-hours saved and more than three million hard dollars saved. They have been able to provide automation at scale pretty well. We fired up and started off with only three production machines. We are now up at five. Officially, we were going up to seven as of next week. We have heard about people here at the Imagine conference who, for example, have hundreds, so the point is proven, and the facts are there. They can scale up very quickly. The main Automation Anywhere Program offering we use is Pathfinder. We have not utilized our partner services or anything like that, but Pathfinder has been great. Their user groups have been great. To be able to focus and see the product launches beforehand has always been advantageous. The ability to see that has been good.
Gowtham J - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides valuable integration with other Microsoft tools
The initial setup process involves three trigger points. One is a manual trigger, where users interact with a button or interface element to start the flow. The second is the recurrence trigger, which allows users to schedule automated maintenance at a specific time. Third is a data-driven trigger, where the flow is initiated based on an event in a database, such as creating a new line item in SharePoint database. Once triggered, the flow continues to execute, performing the configured actions and providing the results.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This solution is easy to use and understand, even for a non-technical person."
"We have been able to reduce our number of FTEs."
"Its ease of deployment is the most valuable feature. We have found with many customers that it's quite easy to deploy."
"MetaBots are useful when connecting to websites or to forms with objects that need to be captured."
"The most valuable feature is its Excel integration."
"An easy to deploy and learn automation tool that can save resources, effort and money."
"Our onboarding process was pretty good. We got access to all software that we needed to learn and utilize. The Automation Anywhere University is really good. In our business, the person who was onboarding us helped us to understand how to create a center of excellence and what verticals we needed to improve. So, the support was there. We are gradually becoming a center of excellence ourselves."
"I utilize all the commands provided by Automation Anywhere, such as all the recorders. I use these commands to develop my processes and bots."
"We have talked to Microsoft. We're a large company and we're talking to Microsoft on a regular basis. We have a partner we talk to when it comes to Automate. We are absolutely satisfied with technical support."
"There is an exhaustive amount of templates that users have access to."
"WinAutomation is very handy to use, and it has the power to interact with multiple systems, such as SAP, Oracle, or .NET systems."
"The product is very stable."
"From my personal experience of using Microsoft Power Automate, I think that the automatic document processing feature is helpful for many organizations in streamlining administrative processes. It is a very good feature. It has helped many enterprises to process documents without spending much time on them."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Power Automate are user-friendliness and low coding functionality."
"The initial setup was easy. It was very easy for people to pick up. The deployment took a few hours."
"I have found the scheduling and email notifications features to very good compared to other RPA tools I have used."
 

Cons

"There are a lot of issues in the tool. There are a lot of breakdowns."
"They can further improve the AI. It is already at a certain level, but it can be improved."
"If you want to use Chrome then there are three or four additional steps that need to be completed."
"I would like to have the ability to schedule bots by whichever one is available."
"They have done a fairly good job on the RPA space, but more and more, the whole cognitive AI space and machine learning are where I see the industry actually going. I'm sure Automation Anywhere is also focused on that topic, but we would like to see more coming down the pipe, as early as possible."
"Replacing the list of search options with voice commands for each item would be great."
"Instead of depending on other open-source BPM products, AA should provide their own BPM for attended automations."
"The stability of this solution depends on the processes, but I think that there is room for improvement in this regard."
"The tool must be more stable."
"In an upcoming release, the exception handling mechanism could improve. The issue that we are facing is whenever there is a failure in any of the middle execution and if you wanted to navigate it to the end of the last line of execution, we do not have this feature available. If we had this feature it would make it even more stable."
"On the governance side, there isn't enough documentation on how to govern Power Automate. People just build bespoke automation, which then becomes a problem point for different companies."
"Enhancing Power Automate to work synchronously instead of asynchronously would eliminate the need for additional coding, saving time in project implementation."
"The integration of our system into Power Automate was a bit tricky. We had to put a data lake in place before automating anything because we were not very structured in terms of data. Our major issue was cleaning up the data."
"There is an RPA feature gap between this solution and other more mature products."
"There should be a comprehensive or enterprise level of application to provide the cognitive AI, and there should be orchestration so that I can control all the robots on one station. The other tools are currently providing these features."
"The tasks that can be automated are limited to Microsoft applications only."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product starts at $10,000 and then it's up to you regarding how much you can consume."
"The licensing cost is approximately $4,000 USD, which is a seed license."
"If we talk about the automation RPA. it definitely has worked very well for us. I'm talking about giving good savings, about more than 180 FTE savings, after implementing more than 200 plus bots. It has worked well. As an organization, it has supported us very well, and also for our customers."
"The solution is quite expensive. Not every organization can consider this option."
"It is the most economically friendly and it provides you with a lot of functions."
"Our annual licensing costs are around $100,000 a year."
"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."
"Automation Anywhere is thought to be quite expensive, especially for smaller organizations."
"I believe one of the advantages of this device is its low cost."
"This solution is bundled with our Office 365, so there is no additional licensing fee."
"Due to the pricing model, the solution is more convenient than any other tools."
"Power Automate is a much less expensive product than the competition."
"It is free with Office 365 subscription."
"We have it on our system. I don't really know if we need a separate license."
"Good price-quality relationship. Its features for its price were the best fit for our company."
"The licensing price should be more cost-effective."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solutions are best for your needs.
824,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Insurance Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 very good in certain situations but lacks in others. For me, it's more the team tha...
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 applications that AA has limitations for, such as the Oracle. For web-based applicatio...
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.
RPA that Bots can run without centralized control?
Yes, Attended Bots which can run without centralized control Module. RPA Tools like Automation Anywhere, uiPath ,Power Automation they do support this.
How do I choose between UiPath and Microsoft Power Automate?
Microsoft‌ ‌Power‌ ‌Automate‌ ‌is‌ ‌intuitive‌ ‌and‌ ‌easy‌ ‌to‌ ‌integrate‌ ‌and‌ ‌use.‌ ‌I‌ ‌like‌ ‌that‌ ‌there‌ ‌is‌ ‌no‌ ‌coding‌ ‌experience‌ ‌necessary,‌ ‌and‌ ‌appreciate‌ ‌the‌ ‌automated‌...
How is Automation Anywhere compared to Microsoft Power Automate?
‌Neither‌ ‌solution‌ ‌requires‌ ‌any‌ ‌coding‌ ‌experience,‌ ‌and‌ ‌both‌ ‌are‌ ‌easy‌ ‌to‌ ‌use‌ ‌and‌ ‌have‌ ‌great‌ ‌drag-and‌ ‌drop‌ ‌functionality.‌ ‌The‌ ‌training‌ ‌and‌ ‌resources‌ ‌for‌ ‌A...
 

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise
Power Automate, Microsoft Flow, MS Power Automate, WinAutomation by Softomotive, ProcessRobot by Softomotive, Minit
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
1. Coca-Cola 2. General Electric 3. Siemens 4. Accenture 5. Deloitte 6. Johnson & Johnson 7. Ford 8. Nestle 9. Procter & Gamble 10. IBM 11. Amazon 12. Google 13. Microsoft 14. Adobe 15. Cisco 16. Oracle 17. SAP 18. Intel 19. HP 20. Dell 21. Verizon 22. AT&T 23. T-Mobile 24. Walmart 25. Target 26. Home Depot 27. McDonald's 28. Starbucks 29. Nike 30. Apple 31. Facebook 32. Twitter
Find out what your peers are saying about Automation Anywhere vs. Microsoft Power Automate and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.