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
6.8
Number of Reviews
522
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
8.9
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category, the mindshare of Automation Anywhere is 11.9%, down from 15.5% 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

"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 graphical user interface (GUI) is very useful, since I don't know any coding languages. I have been able to be a developer with Automation Anywhere without knowing the technical background. I am a business user, and not needing the technical knowledge to use the system has been useful for me."
"I'm impressed with the scalability. We are able to do changes. We are able to scale from different environments now with the Control Room in version 10 and 11. The scalability is pretty good. It is up to the mark of the other market competitors."
"We are able to sell it very easily compared to its competitors. Another piece is the stability part. The third piece is something which is the customer experience: The ease to work with it. The Automation Anywhere, as a partner, is very easy to work with. They are there when you need them, whether you are in the initial journey of automation, you are figuring out what is the right opportunity, or whether you are in the journey of deploying the bot or support. They are there with you at each of those stages."
"The integration is helpful. We have quite a few use cases where we've integrated with Microsoft tools and local record systems, such as SAP and Vertex AI."
"Our first automation removed manual work from employees, so they are now able to more quickly product quality work."
"The drag-and-drop feature is valuable."
"A cloud deployment typically takes no more than one business day."
"Its ease of use is most valuable. A lot of the bulk functionality is done either through standalone or custom connectors and standard API processes."
"The whole platform seamlessly integrates well."
"Technical support is available regionally and it's quite good."
"The development time for ProcessRobot is very good compared to other solutions."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the automation interface and the RPA automation."
"To me, what's most useful in WinAutomation by Softomotive is that it's quite intuitive, especially because most of the capabilities of the older WinAutomation remain. You also don't need to do or know hard coding, and this is another useful feature of the solution. I also like that WinAutomation by Softomotive integrates very well with Microsoft products, especially Microsoft Office, and this is great news because most companies use Microsoft Office. Having a very good integration with the Microsoft Office suite covers a lot of bases, and is one of the advantages of WinAutomation by Softomotive."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it easily integrates with Azure DevOps."
"It comes as a part of the Microsoft suite, which makes it an easy sell."
 

Cons

"I would like the support to be faster. Their response time is one to two days. Their customer care could be faster."
"With Citrix, we need a dedicated server to work with it. This has become complicated, as it is not easy to pull all the systems together into one place. It would be better if the Automation Anywhere team could make this easy and simple."
"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."
"When a bot is in production, sometimes the keystrokes will not work. I am not sure why, and we have tried to contact technical support. They said that they don't have an answer for this. It happens in the the remote environment when we are deploying a bot into AWS machines. So, technical support said this happens in AWS machines sometimes: If the bot is running and the machine is locked, then at that time, the key strokes will not work. They have provided that solution, but we are trying to avoid keystrokes now."
"With any new upgrades, we have to make changes in the codes. To us, this means that the tool is not stable. We have been told by Automation Anywhere that this will be fixed in future releases."
"Automation Anywhere can improve process mining."
"Although, IQ Bot has data being extracted from it. It can improve with more features, like handwritten copies that are readable."
"Though IQ Bot is the most powerful and effective cognitive OCR platform for data extraction in the market, still, there is a lot of scope for improvement as there are a lot of non-standard documents which do not give a high straight-through processing rate and accuracy."
"The product should improve its RPA capabilities."
"There are two versions of the automation suite. You've got your cloud functionality, and you have got your on-premises functionality for legacy systems. There are a lot of functionalities between the two systems that don't cross-correlate with each other. A lot of the functionality in the cloud system is not there on the production side in the on-prem system. If they could implement some of the similar functionalities and streamline them for integration, it would be a lot easier. There should be seamless integration between the two systems."
"They need to come up with a little more on AI and precision discovery path to be able to record the processes."
"It would be great if it was able to integrate more with various other platforms. It would make development easier."
"We are looking to see more features implemented there are already available in UiPath or Automation Anywhere."
"They can provide a deeper level of feedback about running processes. When I compare it to Blue Prism, the control room has slightly less information about the running processes and possible errors. I'm not a pro, so I am not entirely sure if this is a core feature of the product or if it is because of the way our partners have developed it or set it up."
"AI-enabled voice recognition features could be included in the product."
"I've had issues with reordering columns. When I tried to do it, it seemed to take a long time, and then, later, it gave me some kind of error."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have reduced our headcount, approximately 200 to 300 employees, by eliminating manual, repetitive work. It provides profit to the business."
"The major reason that we selected Automation Anywhere was the licensing model."
"I believe it is $10,000 for Bot Creator."
"I've seen the price vary by whether the client is going to scale and adopt a tool."
"Pricing is a bit high when compared to other available tools; however, the tool is worth the cost."
"Initially, they charged a premium, but now the rest of the vendors have increased their overall pricing and Automation Anywhere is not that high at this time. It's pretty viable."
"Despite being less expensive than UiPath, Automation Anywhere remains cost-prohibitive for many small and medium-sized businesses."
"There are a lot of savings in terms of effort and time as well as costs. Automation Anywhere automates a lot of processes. It allows an organization to save the efforts of a lot people. It saves a lot of time because people can't work a whole day (24/7), but Automation Anywhere bots can."
"Good price-quality relationship. Its features for its price were the best fit for our company."
"This is the cheapest option among competitors. You can choose to have the RPA with attendance at $40/month with add-on's totaling about $190. There are standalone options that require someone to run the process and there are fully automated options that are integrated within the cloud."
"I believe one of the advantages of this device is its low cost."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being expensive because there are charges for additional plug-ins."
"We are just using the free products at the moment. We are using the ones that come with the license that we have got."
"When we purchase the Microsoft Dynamics license, the Power Automate license is often free, albeit with some limitations, such as a certain number of transactions per user."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing two to three out of ten."
"The price is right. If you have Office 365 It's included."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solutions are best for your needs.
816,562 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
 

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: October 2024.
816,562 professionals have used our research since 2012.