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

Blue Prism vs Redwood Software - Finance Automation Edition comparison

Sponsored
 

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
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
Redwood Software - Finance ...
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
15th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Financial Close Software (10th)
 

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. The mindshare of Redwood Software - Finance Automation Edition is 0.3%, up from 0.3% 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.
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.
Amarjeet Kamble - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly and enables automation in finance, HR, and SDM
There is room for improvement, considering no tools having everything inside it is right. So the room for balancing improvement lies in automation enhancement with respect to the feature areas, considering dealing directly with Excel and reviewing it to do some additional stuff for it in the end system so that reading the right thing, picking up the values, and everything. Right now, you can do it with a little bit of custom scripting in addition to eight. But rather than custom scripting, if we can have a direct feature integrated inside this tool, it will be a major achievement. So, it already has that capability, as you can do custom scripting, and you can go ahead with creating your own. But the direct functions are not available. That's where we are lagging behind. However, importing the values or importing the service can be achieved. So, that is where I can see the room for improvement. In this particular area, the entire system can be improved.

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 has effectively replaced the workload of an entire employee, saving us significant time and money."
"The most valuable feature is the drag-and-drop interface, which is very Windows-like."
"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 find it very user-friendly. Our IT department and other departments can seamlessly collaborate without requiring extensive training. As a business department, we particularly value this aspect, as our team doesn't consist of many IT users. However, we couldn't solely rely on a drag-and-drop approach to implement and utilize the solution within our departments."
"Web scraping is quite good since it offers a lot of possibilities."
"The solution is continuously adding more integrations to help with workflows and bot and task creation."
"We use it for specific cases, mainly secure file transfers, which are vital for us. And it works for us."
"One key feature is the workflow design is able to be customized according to the way that you want the automation to work."
"It is a stable solution."
"Mostly we use the Design Studio to develop the automation. It's great. We put them into deployment and have the automated process running. It's essentially the Design Studio for Blue Prism and the entire methodology of delivery that is the most useful or valuable to us."
"The multi-bot architecture is very flexible."
"It is a very stable tool that allows very complex automations."
"The automation on offer is great."
"The tool is very technically sound."
"The use cases range from document ingestion, process enablement, and data management, including financial records cleanup."
"Redwood has a great feature where it logs every transaction. So, at any point, we can see every step taken for each transaction. It creates an audit trail of the entire process execution. It is a really good feature. This eliminates the need for extra coding or report generation. The audit report is readily available within the tool itself."
"So the best thing is ease of use."
"The out-of-the-box finance modules within the Redwood Finance framework help to speed up the process, versus designing and writing generic BOT code."
 

Cons

"It's possible that they could use a stronger community for seeking guidance and help."
"There is a lack of good development for artificial intelligence, such as machine learning."
"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 interface could be more user-friendly and easier to navigate."
"The technical support could be better. We suffer from language barriers, as we are in Argentina."
"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."
"Fortra's Automate is not as reliable as I would like it to be."
"The documentation for errors needs improvement as many of the error messages we receive are very vague."
"They can add a reporting feature."
"Blue Prism is a little behind Automation Anywhere in the topics related to maintenance and report building."
"Blue Prism is not very flexible when it comes to integrations."
"We would like to have something, not particularly within the tool, that gives flexibility to the end-users to schedule the bots themselves. There should be some kind of control room flexibility so that they can go in. We don't have to always keep that centralized with us. We would also like to have inbuilt scheduling and resource pooling to distribute the bots on servers from within the platform. I should be able to distribute or orchestrate them internally so that if one bot takes a little longer than planned, it automatically shifts to another server. We would also like its price to be lower."
"In the next release of this solution, I would like to see support for attended robots."
"The UI is more complicated than other tools."
"Blue Prism could be more scalable."
"It isn't very easy or intuitive for our developers to program the bot to make intelligent decisions. A bot, for the lack of a better word, is stupid, and it can only do what we program it to do. It cannot make intelligent decisions. For example, if we are reviewing Uber charges, they could be posting their transactions under different corporation names, even though they are under the same parent company or group. A human can easily understand that it is the name of the same company, and it just has an asterisk or space, but a bot cannot do that. When a bot cannot complete the transaction, it sends out an exception rate, business exception, or system exception for a human to do a manual review. The exception rate has been high because the bots cannot make decisions that we think are very simple, which is understandable because that's how they were programmed. There is potential in utilizing the higher intelligence side of the tool, but it is not easy to code higher intelligent actions. It is a very lengthy process to get the provisioning to ensure that it is kind of doing what it needs to do. Provisioning involves multiple things, and it is quite complicated and not the best experience, but it is not just because of Blue Prism. Blue Prism is easy, but it takes a long time to onboard into our in-house system."
"would like to see AI integration for automation in future releases. Post-automation, I envision a generative AI model. If I could ask the bot questions like the number of invoices or their current status, it should be able to provide answers directly."
"The room for balancing improvement lies in automation enhancement with respect to the feature areas, considering dealing directly with Excel and reviewing it to do some additional stuff for it in the end system so that reading the right thing, picking up the values, and everything."
"Mapping the process steps to an existing R2R process quickly would be a definite step forward."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"From a distributor's perspective, one of the biggest selling points of Automate is its price point."
"Once you buy the software, you just pay for the support for backend help."
"It comes with a package that costs approximately $20,000 USD per year."
"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 like the way this solution is priced because you can buy a license, or you can buy the software outright."
"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."
"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."
"I'm only involved in running the product and maintaining the systems, so I can't speak to the cost."
"The licensing is approximately $1,100."
"Due to our financial structure, we need fixed costs. So, a license based on the usage would not be feasible. If we have a license model that is based on tasks per year or something else, it could create a very dynamic range of costs. Due to our public financial input, we have to know what it will cost. So, we have licenses per server. This helps us in planning, and we know exactly when we need additional servers. We can then request additional money for them."
"The tool’s licensing is on a monthly basis."
"It is a bit higher in cost as compared to Automation Anywhere and UiPath. The rate also differs from client to client. Margins are also important when it comes to costing and licensing. There are some additional costs involved besides the standard licensing costs. You have the development team cost, which includes the project manager, development team, analyst, and testers. You also need a team manager. You also have the tools cost, architecture cost, platform cost, and the licensing cost of each bot."
"The tool is expensive."
"The solution is not that expensive and a five-year license costs about 20k euros."
"This is a very expensive product and this is the reason that they're losing their market share."
"My clients tend to feel that the overall implementation cost is a little high."
"The licensing was purely based on the number of transactions being processed in production."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solutions are best for your needs.
845,712 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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...
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 Redwood Business Process Automation - Finance Edition?
Redwood has a great feature where it logs every transaction. So, at any point, we can see every step taken for each t...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Redwood Business Process Automation - Finance Edition?
The pricing is very client-specific. It's not a one-size-fits-all price. They don't have a single price for everyone....
What needs improvement with Redwood Business Process Automation - Finance Edition?
Everything seems to be working well. However, I see value in integrating AI for automation. So, I would like to see A...
 

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate
No data available
Redwood Business Process Automation - Finance Edition, Redwood Robotics, Redwood Finance Automation
 

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
ArcelorMittal, Alliant Energy, Allianz, Arla, Bacardi, CPS Energy, DSM, Faurecia, Genetech, Jabil, Jumbo,
Find out what your peers are saying about Blue Prism vs. Redwood Software - Finance Automation Edition and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,712 professionals have used our research since 2012.