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Automate vs Blue Prism comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

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
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
Blue Prism
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 Blue Prism is 10.5%, down from 12.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
 

Q&A Highlights

reviewer1373997 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 29, 2021
 

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.
Mohamed Salah Baccouche - PeerSpot reviewer
Way more efficient for debugging than other tools but the UI is complicated
The UI is more complicated than other tools. In Power Automate, it doesn't even feel like you are working because the tool does the job for you. But in the solution, there are studio, process, and object interfaces and you have to decode your own objects. The free objects that are predefined are not good compared to other tools. There is still a lot of work to do on the solution's intelligent automation part.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features for my client are timing and scheduling."
"Fortra's Automate performs the job effectively and has the capability to alert us of any issues."
"I actually quite liked the no-coding functionality."
"The most valuable feature is the drag-and-drop interface, which is very Windows-like."
"The pricing is excellent. I would give them perfect marks in that regard."
"Compared to other vendors, it's the scheduling tool because a lot of vendors want to charge you extra for their enterprise-level license to have a scheduling tool built in to give you the ability to set up regular schedules to run and do certain data checks."
"The interface is simple, user-friendly, and very intuitive."
"The ability to connect to websites and pull data is the solution's most valuable feature."
"We've automated web applications in the banking domain using Blue Prism. This involved automating long and complex banking processes. Every action we automate with the tool generates an audit log, which is safe within the LogRhythm environment. I do find the Decipher feature very useful when it comes to document automation."
"The integration has improved a lot in terms of SAP, and other screens."
"The new features that have come out have been great."
"The most valuable improvement in utilizing process automation is the cost savings, but we have also had cases where the customer experience is enhanced."
"We find many of Blue Prism's features valuable. One recent one we're using is Decipher IDP. We're also looking at a couple of other tools and working on proofs of concept. Decipher IDP helps us create templates to extract data from images and PDF files, which is especially useful for processing invoices accurately and feeding that information into our systems."
"We've started to use some of the new features such as translation, cognitive, and we are finding them useful. We are also finding API integrations very useful."
"RPA processes are helpful when we need interaction with different applications and close the technical gaps between them. In one of the use cases that we evaluated, there was a single Excel template from a vendor. The Excel file has 7,000 objects, and it included information about the part numbers, prices, and some of the details about each object of the aircraft. This file had to be input to SAP, so a human had to enter these 7,000 objects one by one, which is a pretty mechanical and uninteresting task. The RPA bot was easily able to import this file. Without RPA, this import had to be done by a person who had to do the same task 7,000 times just to import one contract."
"The solution has cross-application features where it can be setup with SAP, email, or SharePoint."
 

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."
"We really need a free development environment for customers. Building and testing automation on production isn't ideal."
"The OCR for Hebrew text needs to be improved."
"Sometimes when we communicate with the ERP system and there is an issue, we are not always aware of the specifics of Automate and the source of the problem."
"I believe we need to test various OCR tools that assist in evaluating, let's say, six different customer resyncs. We analyze their spending patterns and documentations, but current OCR support has limitations, requiring highly standardized documents, which isn't always the case. With a more advanced OCR system, we could improve processes related to credit risk management and legal matters. We're exploring how to integrate Fortra's Automate with our CRM platform, taking cues from instances where Salesforce seamlessly merged with Automate. However, we use a different CRM, Insight for New Enterprise, and we're seeking ways to connect the automation process within our CRM. We aim for the automation to continue smoothly, even in instances where traditional automation methods might face hurdles."
"The intelligent automation feature could be improved. It's interesting because it's simple, but the automation quality isn't always good. It's easy to use, but sometimes you need to make a slight improvement to the automation, and that's not so easy."
"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 like the updates to be easier to deploy. Integration with Amazon S3 is somewhat lacking."
"There are some security issues in Blue Prism. The German vendor Servicetrace is way better. This is also reflected in the Gartner report where Servicetrace is mentioned as the tool of choice in high-security environments. So, security, particularly in terms of administration, needs to be improved. We must have the possibility to prevent the administration from taking a look at the ongoing process. When we have restricted data flow, the operations team should not be able to take a look at the data that is processed."
"The solution is pretty high priced. The tool's support also needs to be better."
"From a monitoring perspective, the way the screens are set up, or the reporting within Blue Prism, is not really user-friendly. You need a technical person to basically put that up. It's not necessarily easily viewable."
"Blue Prism could improve by having better integration with Computer Vision."
"Blue Prism can improve on the ease of use of its graphic user interface(GUI)."
"We didn't find it much useful for unstructured data. It is not easy to do the automation with Blue Prism if you have unstructured data. It should have better automation processes or connectors for unstructured data such as PDFs or pictures. It has a connector for different applications, such as SAP, but we use a few other applications for which it doesn't have a connector. It should have a more comprehensive dashboard that we can use to see the processes that are running and control the parameters."
"The control room is its worst feature. It can be laggy, and it is not as user-friendly. We're with staying Blue Prism, but we're moving it from on-premises to Microsoft cloud for cost savings. We looked into Blue Prism cloud. It has a lot of features, but it comes with a lot of costs. Right now, we have six spots, and we're only at 13% utilization. The cost didn't really weigh out for us for moving to Blue Prism cloud, but on-premises, it is working for what we need."
"The initial setup and deployment could be simplified."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Once you buy the software, you just pay for the support for backend help."
"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."
"It comes with a package that costs approximately $20,000 USD per year."
"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."
"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."
"I'm only involved in running the product and maintaining the systems, so I can't speak to the cost."
"Compared to other products, the pricing model for this solution is much more convenient, flexible, and adaptable to the Portuguese reality."
"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."
"The solution is enterprise software so we will try to maximize our usage during the available slots. We will get ROI with the high price since there will be some value added with automation. I think that after doing a cost-benefit analysis, we are on the positive side."
"Its price should be lower."
"Other than your infrastructure, in terms of servers that you have to set up, I don't think that there are any costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"Its price is sometimes higher."
"Its pricing is okay. Its price is pretty similar to the price of other tools."
"The tool is expensive."
"The license for Blue Prism is very straightforward, we only need one license."
"We have a three-year contract that is paid on a yearly basis."
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Answers from the Community

reviewer1373997 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 29, 2021
Jun 29, 2021
@reviewer1356150 @Nilesh Pawar @reviewer1390509 @Alex Yuan @Hayaa Kayasseh you've all recently written reviews for one of these products. Do you have any insight to share with @reviewer1373997 about governance and business continuity requirements for these products?
See 2 answers
Rony_Sklar - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 20, 2020
@reviewer1356150 @Nilesh Pawar @reviewer1390509 @Alex Yuan @Hayaa Kayasseh you've all recently written reviews for one of these products. Do you have any insight to share with @reviewer1373997 about governance and business continuity requirements for these products?
Mohammed Tafazal - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 29, 2021
For any RPA tool it required have a generic /universal governance model where  1. sponsor or Head of RPA implementation 2. Business analysts 3.Architects(solution/technical) 4.Developers ( Full stack - Build, Test and SIT) 5.Scrum master or Sprints head or Project manager 6. QA ( Test automation) - optional Above generic governance model/structure roles for handling any kind of RPA process. One proven way to implement centralized automation management is via a CoE. The best practices of Robotic Process Automation states that the use of bots doesn’t increase negative risks for the organization in the development of reusable solutions. The responsibilities of a Centre of Excellence will depend on the exact governance model used. The most common activities include the following: Drive RPA in the business, training teams, and increasing awareness of RPA in those. Calculate the criticality and quality of the developed solutions, ensuring the application of best practices. Monitor the operation of bots and guarantee that execution SLAs (service-level agreement) are met. Follow and report the main development stages. Guarantee the execution of established governance processes. Guarantee the continual improvement of processes and tools. Business Continuity Requirements: To have backup or disaster recovery machines for the critical RPA processes with load balancing using central orchestration in different clusters. For any of the RPA there is orchestration tool which handles all the initiation and processing from one location have it maintained well from risks and disasters with load balancing. This will helps in business continuity.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
5%
 

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 scraping, pre-reporting, and many processes that need to be automated on the web. My...
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 rate the pricing as an eight out of ten.
Should I choose Blue Prism or Microsoft Power Automate?
Hello Netanya, it depends on your needs and your expertise. In my humble opinion you can start a big RPA project implementation with Blue Prism which is stable and mature software, in order to ser...
I am evaluating Blue Prism and UiPath for RPA for my company. Which one do you recommend?
I'm very familiar with UiPath and the RPA industry: was hired by Daniel Dines in 2015 when there were 35 employees and left in 2019 when there were 3K+. I'm a big believer in the product, leadershi...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate
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
Coca-Cola, Walgreens, American Express, Royal Bank of Canada, Pfizer, Shop Direct, O2, Siemens, Ascension Healthcare, Jaguar Land Rover
Find out what your peers are saying about Automate vs. Blue Prism and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.