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AutomationEdge vs VisualCron comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 4, 2024

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
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
AutomationEdge
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VisualCron
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
19th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Managed File Transfer (MFT) (15th), Workload Automation (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category, the mindshare of Automate is 1.5%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AutomationEdge is 1.0%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VisualCron is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
 

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.
BhargavJotva - PeerSpot reviewer
An RPA tool to automate functions, tasks, and processes that also allows users to do coding from the scratch
The initial setup of AutomationEdge was satisfactory for our company. For deployment for a large process, it will take around two months to develop the process. Else, it can be done in fifteen days. My organization gets to automate the banking processes using the solution. There are different requirements for different departments. Finance departments need something to automate their processes, and the requirements may vary for the information management department. There is a different type of automation requirement if there are some secretive documents that we have to keep on triggering mail.
Sourav-Dutta - PeerSpot reviewer
It's user-friendly, and I didn't need long to understand the process
We use VisualCron for all our automation needs, like connecting to FileZilla, calling APIs, generating PGP keys, creating encryption files with the PGP key login to Azure, etc. It can automatically log in to SQL Server and execute SQL script jobs in bulk. We had 2,000-3,000 users at my previous…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the interface; it makes managing automation easy. We can set different schedules and templates for each task."
"The ability to connect to websites and pull data is the solution's most valuable feature."
"It gives us a central place to schedule tasks and run them distributed."
"The most valuable features for my client are timing and scheduling."
"I actually quite liked the no-coding functionality."
"I find the ease of use from a programming perspective very valuable."
"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."
"I would rate the technical support as a nine out of ten because it is quite fast and courteous."
"The chatbot that they have is most valuable. It is one of the best features because they own it, and they don't need to integrate with other parties to have a chatbot. This is one of the main features. The rest of the features are common to all RPA tools or vendors available in the market."
"The initial setup was easy and straightforward."
"The studio design is fine compared to other similar products. There is nothing extraordinary about it, but at the same time, there are not any negatives."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...I rate the technical support of the solution a nine out of ten."
"We can quickly adapt to our end users."
"It is a valuable tool for developing efficient solutions, especially in finance and banking."
"It helps us with cost optimization and easy implementation."
"If we want to change your processes, we can code it from scratch, making it a beneficial feature of the product."
"The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%."
"VisualCron is a very powerful program to automate different steps in your business processes. We use it to automate replacing files and inform departments about the replacement."
"What I like about VisualCron is that like its name, it's a very visual tool. In my previous company, there were a lot of scripts for all kinds of services, and through VisualCron, you get to group all flows and get a nice visual overview. VisualCron also has an alerting feature, so you receive alerts from it. VisualCron makes everything clearer and easier to maintain. Every other solution that I was looking for almost always needed a programmer, but with VisualCron, you can do what you need to do without programming skills, so this is another valuable feature of the tool."
"We don't have to do any coding. We just plug and play and it works."
"It helped us reduce manual steps."
"I love VisualCron because we previously spent a lot of time writing Power switches to connect to SQL Server. VisualCron makes it easier to execute services or connect to FileZilla by only adding the credentials to the master credentials stored in the solution."
"What I found most beneficial from VisualCron is that you can directly connect it with different databases, user accounts, and credentials. You can run queries from one machine to another using the credentials, unlike PowerShell, that's run by the machine itself. With VisualCron, you can directly ask other machines and run requests through user credentials. Suppose you have an AWS or Azure environment. In that case, you can maintain the connection between on-premises and cloud-based machines, which is the type of setup in the organization I'm working for. You can directly call some of the services via VisualCron on your local on-premises machine, and I found that an excellent feature of the tool."
"It has improved our organization with more automation within the business departments and less administration and development in the IT department. Usually, as the IT department, we are the bottleneck for many requirements within the business. With this tool, the business departments are able to perform many task themselves."
 

Cons

"Fortra's Automate is not as reliable as I would like it to be."
"They do not encrypt passwords, so this is an issue with HIPAA compliance."
"I would like to see some better web automation, a wizard like the one in the product WinAutomation would be very nice."
"I would prefer not having to log in to update a ticket; being able to respond via email would be beneficial."
"We really need a free development environment for customers. Building and testing automation on production isn't ideal."
"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 would like the updates to be easier to deploy. Integration with Amazon S3 is somewhat lacking."
"The documentation for errors needs improvement as many of the error messages we receive are very vague."
"The ease of use is the main thing on which they really have to focus. If they want to go against the giants, it should be improved in ease of use, and it should be more user-friendly. It would be helpful because everyone should be empowered irrespective of whether they know how to code or not. They should enhance its user interface and make it more intuitive."
"We cannot use extra modules while working with AutomationEdge. It crashes if we have lots of data to process in Excel."
"With the solution, customizing software can be time-consuming."
"In the future, they should have a similar version for the cloud and on-premises, and the installation should be flawless within few minutes."
"The price of the solution could be improved."
"AutomationEdge's primary issue is its price point, especially compared to other products."
"With other automation solutions in the market, we can simulate the process in our notebooks where the solution creates the code for us, but with AutomationEdge we can't do this."
"The installation process could improve. It was difficult to complete."
"The only problem I face when I use the tool is that it doesn't contain much documentation or it doesn't have many video tutorials on its features."
"I would like for VisualCron to expand audit log to show who changed job variables that are initialized per job run."
"VisualCron's command console is a little bit difficult to understand and needs to improve."
"There are some conditions in the mail trigger, but you can only use them as an "AND" condition, not as an "OR" condition. This is an improvement that could be useful. For example, some people put "invoice" in the subject and others put "invoice" in the body. If I want to make a trigger for everybody whose sending invoices, I have to make two jobs for this now."
"I want to improve the UI in VisualCron, as it's not as user-friendly, particularly when setting up the task scheduler. If you're familiar with the tool, then no problem, but if not, you'll have a problem typing text because sometimes, the cursor points to other places, so there's an issue with text box alignment in VisualCron. That was painful for me when I was just a VisualCron novice, but when you become used to it, there won't be a problem."
"VisualCron seems to operate like an efficient machine when it comes to improvements and enhancements and new features. I always appreciate the quick response I get when bringing up an issue or coming up with suggestions. I've mentioned before that it would be great to see a move away from SQLCE and XML configuration files."
"The documentation is a bit weak."
"Our suggestion to make it better and more manageable in terms of GDPR: Implement it in a very partnership way."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Compared to other products, the pricing model for this solution is much more convenient, flexible, and adaptable to the Portuguese reality."
"Once you buy the software, you just pay for the support for backend help."
"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 perspective, one of the biggest selling points of Automate is its price point."
"It comes with a package that costs approximately $20,000 USD per year."
"The pricing is quite reasonable. We can run the process with one bot. The limitation is at the server level because they have some resources, and sometimes that is enough. It isn't too expensive, so you can get a good return off of one, and you can also have a pack of five bots that is quite competitive."
"The cost is a bit high for a small business like ours, but we manage with Fortra's Automate."
"The product is available at the lowest price."
"I give the price of the solution a nine out of ten."
"The licensing for this solution should have a more competitive pricing model. The price is in the top five of similar products."
"Pricing can be made better. Currently, I think the pricing is based on the market. The pricing also depends on the business partners that offer you the solution."
"If you are looking for a budget solution, you can consider AE. It has all the features. Scaling it is way easier because of the cost itself."
"It is expensive but its value can justify the cost."
"Price-wise, AutomationEdge is pretty affordable, making it not so expensive when you compare this with other tools in the market."
"We are fine with a rather cheap setup. Licensing with VisualCron is fair. You have a simple one-year licence in different sizes. There isn't a licensing jungle with hundreds of options and opt-ins."
"ROI is one month."
"ROI is 95 percent."
"VisualCron is correctly priced because it wasn't very cheap, and it wasn't overly expensive, so the price for it was set correctly. When my previous company bought VisualCron, it was €800 per server per year. On a scale of one to five, I would rate the pricing for VisualCron a five because it was just right. The tool was affordable, and it has one of the most competitive pricing in the market."
"The pricing is extremely fair, and because of that I recommend purchasing multiple instances to split out the processing load across multiple application servers."
"The price is a bit high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
15%
Real Estate/Law Firm
6%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
27%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Insurance Company
8%
Healthcare 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...
What do you like most about AutomationEdge?
It helps us with cost optimization and easy implementation.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AutomationEdge?
I rate AutomationEdge's pricing as a six to seven. It is expensive but its value can justify the cost.
What needs improvement with AutomationEdge?
AutomationEdge's primary issue is its price point, especially compared to products from companies like Microsoft that...
What do you like most about VisualCron?
The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%.
What needs improvement with VisualCron?
The documentation is a bit weak. The tool must provide a better set of documentation.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate
No data available
No data available
 

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
Smart Dubai Government (SDG)
7 Eleven, ABB Sécheron SA, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Amazon Europe Core, Apple, Assa Abloy, Aston Martin, Banco Santander, BMW (Australia)
Find out what your peers are saying about AutomationEdge vs. VisualCron and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,485 professionals have used our research since 2012.