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Blue Prism vs IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) 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

Fortra's Automate
Sponsored
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
23
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
IBM Robotic Process Automat...
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category, the mindshare of Fortra's Automate is 1.4%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Blue Prism is 12.4%, up from 11.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is 1.9%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
 

Featured Reviews

Anabel Marco - PeerSpot reviewer
Can automate several processes with only one bot and is easy to implement, administer, and use
We have tried other RPA solutions like UiPath or Automation Anywhere. They are fantastic products but complex, and it's hard to understand everything. It would be best if you had a skilled developer or several. Automate is easy to implement, administer, and use. It's appropriate for us because our cases are simple and easy to automate. We don't need complicated tools with many features; We prefer to get a significant ROI quickly. We can automate several processes with only one bot, so it's much cheaper than other products where you need to buy additional licenses. We need a good value for our automation. The other solutions might be more robust, but Automate is perfect for us because we're not a large enterprise.
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.
Karinne Carnevalli De Almeida - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly interface and good stability
I would recommend using IBM RPA. I would advise you to learn about your main processes to automate inside your company. So you can apply it in big and small processes depending on the investment for your company. That is an advantage or not. Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. It has some difficulty in the tool, but it's a very stable and useful tool for automating processes.

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 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."
"The product effectively handles all the tasks we require."
"The solution is continuously adding more integrations to help with workflows and bot and task creation."
"This product is quite easy to install, learn, and use, with our new employees being able to start using it in projects for clients after only two weeks of internal training."
"It gives us a central place to schedule tasks and run them distributed."
"For one, it's easy to set up, and once it gets running it can handle multiple processes in an efficient manner. It's a very robust system."
"Blue Prism is a mature, stable product with lots of built-in features."
"The technical support is very good."
"This is a scalable product."
"The most valuable feature is the work queue. This helps the user to create a workflow, and it is a very powerful tool for generating management reports."
"A feature I like about Blue Prism is the Control Room and how easy it is to find exceptions, to find common issues, and to troubleshoot your exceptions. Your Control Room person, without any development skills, can easily pick up what the problem is, with the exceptions, especially when there are a lot of exceptions related to one use case or process."
"The solution has cross-application features where it can be setup with SAP, email, or SharePoint."
"It is a stable solution."
"It's user-friendly; even non-technical people can program bots using drag-and-drop functionalities."
"The solution’s performance is good."
"It is a good tool for automation."
"IBM Robotic Process Automation has greatly improved the organization by improving the speed of performance, as the speed of the robot is estimated to be 20 times faster than the human being."
"IBM Robotic Process Automation is very easy to use."
"The quality is great! It's very strong and has a very strong platform."
"I think simplicity is key. One of the things that we've noticed is how our developers have been able to quickly adopt the platform; but not only the developers or the techy people, also the business."
"It's not inclusive, in terms of automation, you can just do it standalone, in its own silo. It's not going to force your existing system or teams, your admin teams, to create new IDs for you or even force them to create new services or APIs for you or expose something from there. They can just keep the way they are doing it right now, but you still automate it."
 

Cons

"It's possible that they could use a stronger community for seeking guidance and help."
"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."
"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."
"Fortra's Automate is not as reliable as I would like it to be."
"There is room for improvement regarding cloud functionality; there are a few missing features, and the logging could be better, especially air logging. We can go into logging events and create our own task, but it would be nice if this were more detailed."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Blue Prism can improve on the ease of use of its graphic user interface(GUI)."
"It's not very easy to use. There is some learning curve that you need to manage as an individual."
"We would like to see some desktop automation, although we have been told that the product is not going to be taken in that direction."
"The assisted automation functionality needs improvement."
"The reporting system, specifically the system admin reporting could be improved."
"They should add more OCR engines to it."
"The OCR capability, along with the connectivity with some of the legacy tools, needs to be improved."
"We can use its inbuilt activities, and it's a complete package, but just like ElectroNeek, a limitation is that we have to depend on its inbuilt activities. We can't include our own activities or we can't introduce other activities."
"One of the things I would definitely like to see is more of the machine-learning and cognitive capabilities. For example, now that we're starting to automate more and more tasks, there are some things that still require us to go back and modify the robots when we need to. But if we had more of the machine-learning integrated into it, I believe it would be easier to maintain, so that we wouldn't have to go back and adjust every time."
"I would like to have more flexibility in connecting the platform with third-party systems."
"This RPA should be under the umbrella of BPM. This is what the future should be."
"The product must be promoted more."
"We would like more focus on understanding AI and how it can be used to manage exception handling."
"We are looking to see how it can connect with various interfaces seamlessly, through APIs."
"The scalability of the solution can be challenging."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"I like the way this solution is priced because you can buy a license, or you can buy the software outright."
"The cost is a bit high for a small business like ours, but we manage with Fortra's Automate."
"Once you buy the software, you just pay for the support for backend help."
"I'm only involved in running the product and maintaining the systems, so I can't speak to the cost."
"From a distributor's perspective, one of the biggest selling points of Automate is its price point."
"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."
"Compared to other products, the pricing model for this solution is much more convenient, flexible, and adaptable to the Portuguese reality."
"Blue Prism has a higher cost with respect to RPA enablement, particularly if you are trying to start with RPA."
"Our customers pay for an annual license."
"Its price is sometimes higher."
"Blue Prism is a bit higher priced compared to other payment-related or investment-related solutions. At the same time, it also provides more security than those solutions, specifically for the banking and insurance sectors."
"My clients tend to feel that the overall implementation cost is a little high."
"They work on a big partnership kind of program with our organization, and they also give us a lot of discounts. Its price is pretty much comparable to the other solutions like UiPath and Automation Anywhere."
"The tool is expensive."
"The licensing fees are low compared to other tools."
"IBM licensing is annual and based on Virtual Processor Cores (VPC). This provides flexibility as part of the containerization environment."
"The license is paid annually."
"The product is reasonably priced compared to other tools."
"The pricing is reasonable for this solution."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"IBM RPA is cheaper than other tools."
"I rate the pricing ten out of ten. So, the pricing is very good for me."
"There is a free trial for one month, so you can use it to run your payloads or proof of concept. After that, you can pay for the license on a monthly or annual basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
15%
Healthcare Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Educational Organization
10%
Government
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?
We used the platform primarily for task automation, including transmitting EDR files. Additionally, we've utilized it...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortra Automate?
The starter pack was all we needed and was reasonable. Others were either more expensive or didn't do all that I want...
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 imp...
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 an...
What do you like most about IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
Integrating the tool with SAP, EBS, or other ERPs is easy.
What needs improvement with IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
The product must be promoted more. There are no promotions.
What is your primary use case for IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
We're working with different clients from the manufacturing environment. We have implemented end-to-end solutions. We...
 

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate
No data available
IBM RPA
 

Learn More

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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
The Hanover Insurance Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Blue Prism vs. IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.