Blue Prism vs VisualCron comparison

SS&C Blue Prism and NetCart AB are both solutions in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category. SS&C Blue Prism is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.1, while NetCart AB is ranked #20 with an average rating of 8.5. SS&C Blue Prism holds a 10.9% mindshare in RPA, compared to NetCart AB’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of SS&C Blue Prism users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NetCart AB users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 4, 2024

Blue Prism and VisualCron are competing solutions in the field of process automation and scheduling tools. Blue Prism appears to have an advantage in automation capabilities with robust work queues, whereas VisualCron stands out in job scheduling efficiencies.

Features: Blue Prism provides advanced automation options with reusable processes, a robust work queue, and easy integration with existing systems. VisualCron specializes in job scheduling, job dependencies, and seamless connections with varied databases.

Room for Improvement: Blue Prism needs enhanced AI capabilities, wider integration options, and improved customer support. Its interface, especially in attended automation and OCR, could be modernized. VisualCron could benefit from a more streamlined user interface, better technical documentation, and faster customer support, possibly through a community forum.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Blue Prism offers multiple deployment options but faces criticism for slow customer support, impacting users' experience. VisualCron, available on similar platforms, is noted for straightforward licensing but relies heavily on community interactions for customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Blue Prism is often criticized for high costs, though some justify this with significant ROI. VisualCron provides a more competitive and simple licensing model, enhancing cost-efficiency for simpler job scheduling needs.

To learn more, read our detailed Blue Prism vs. VisualCron Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Blue Prism vs. VisualCron

January 2025

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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

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category, the mindshare of Fortra's Automate is 1.3%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Blue Prism is 10.9%, down from 11.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VisualCron is 0.8%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Featured Reviews

Anabel Marco

Account Director at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

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.

Read full review

Mohamed Salah Baccouche

Robotic Process Automation Consultant at Ernst & Young

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.

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Sourav-Dutta

Technical Lead - Database Administrator at SMART ENERGY SYSTEMS LLC

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…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I find the ease of use from a programming perspective very valuable."

"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."

"We are still in the process of rolling it to production and tweaking it (our AD groups are a mess), but the improvements are priceless. Having users ID's created the same way every time without human error is the best part. We don't need to worry about why groups were not added, user rights not set to folders or missing a private folder being created, typos or just even knowing when things are done and logged."

"The most valuable features of Fortra's Automate include its FTP functionality and file manipulation capabilities."

"The solution is continuously adding more integrations to help with workflows and bot and task creation."

"It gives us a central place to schedule tasks and run them distributed."

"The best feature of Automate is its ease of use, which is a major selling point."

"The most valuable feature is the drag-and-drop interface, which is very Windows-like."

More Fortra's Automate pros

"The only good thing about Blue Prism is the execution speed."

"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."

"I like the error handling, it's very good."

"The object design way of implementing things actually brings a lot of reusability for us because you can design your objects once and leverage them in multiple automations."

"It has a centrally managed infrastructure, and it is secure. Our client was using it because of its ease of use. They had already identified some workflows that were trained on Blue Prism RPAs. It was much more convenient for them to preselect Blue Prism as compared to other vendors."

"The tool is very technically sound."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to do surface automation, allowing interaction with legacy systems where terminal emulation is still in use."

"The main automation feature of Blue Prism is the most valuable."

More Blue Prism pros

"'ve only had a few cases where I've had to request support in the past 12 years of use, but the support response time and resolution were was extremely quick."

"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."

"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."

"The ability to clone jobs to shorten the time it takes to implement a process has been invaluable, but its flexibility also gives us the ability to create a job that can handle a multifaceted process with a complex workflow."

"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."

"The most valuable feature of VisualCron is its ability to schedule interactive jobs so that you can have interdependencies within the job and interdependencies of a job on another job, and so on."

"It helped us reduce manual steps."

"The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%."

More VisualCron pros

Cons

"The workflow for variables could be better. The input and output of task-level variables could be made a little clearer in terms of passing those around from one task to another upon success, etc. Things like that could be a little easier potentially."

"The solution has a very weak knowledge base."

"We really need a free development environment for customers. Building and testing automation on production isn't ideal."

"I would like the updates to be easier to deploy. Integration with Amazon S3 is somewhat lacking."

"The product also has a limited use case in some respects."

"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."

"The interface could be more user-friendly and easier to navigate."

"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."

More Fortra's Automate cons

"The scalability has to do with the latency of what you're connecting to. And so if you're connecting to something that isn't particularly scalable, it doesn't matter how many robots you scale out. You're constrained by the latency and the size of the application or solution or service that the robot is using."

"I would like to see bespoke dashboards allow the front-end to display what is required."

"Blue Prism needs to provide better customer support because there are some bugs in the product that make implementation tricky. Blue Prism is designed more for operational than transactional processes. If Blue Prism incorporated a lot of IQ bots and cognitive processing, then it might be of better value at a lower cost. The issue of the cost of the tool needs to be addressed. To become a Blue Prism partner, it's costly. I think that this is one of the negative aspects of using Blue Prism."

"I have found that community support is lacking for this solution compared to competitors."

"The reporting system, specifically the system admin reporting could be improved."

"In Nigeria, I don't know what their marketing is like. However, they're losing market shares to other solutions. Most customers know UiPath more than Blue Prism."

"Blue Prism could improve by having better integration with Computer Vision."

"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."

More Blue Prism cons

"VisualCron is software, and you will experience performance degradation when you scale up. VisualCron takes too much memory or CPU power. We have to increase the hardware resources of a specific server or system."

"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."

"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."

"An area for improvement in VisualCron is its cluttered interface. It isn't always easy to find all functionalities, so what VisualCron needs is a user interface expert who can improve the interface. There's a learning curve in terms of finding what you need from the interface of VisualCron. The technical support for VisualCron also needs improvement in terms of response time. Currently, there's no live support or hotline you can call to get quick answers, so this is what I'd like to see in the next version of VisualCron. A less cluttered and more streamlined interface, where you don't need to hunt for some of the features, is also what I'd like to see in the next VisualCron update."

"VisualCron's command console is a little bit difficult to understand and needs to improve."

"I would like for VisualCron to expand audit log to show who changed job variables that are initialized per job run."

"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."

"The documentation is a bit weak."

More VisualCron cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Once you buy the software, you just pay for the support for backend help."

"The cost is a bit high for a small business like ours, but we manage with Fortra's Automate."

"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."

"Compared to other products, the pricing model for this solution is much more convenient, flexible, and adaptable to the Portuguese reality."

"It comes with a package that costs approximately $20,000 USD per year."

"From a distributor's perspective, one of the biggest selling points of Automate is its price point."

"From a distributor's side, one of the biggest selling points is its price point. Without going into any numbers, compared to UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and Blue Prism, we're significantly cheaper. The main difference is that other competitors usually charge you per process. However, in Automate's case, it's priced per bot. So, a bot can run multiple processes at the same time, but you are only priced for a single bot."

"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."

More Fortra's Automate pricing and cost advice

"The solution is expensive."

"Blue Prism is an expensive solution, especially in Southeast Asia, while in Europe and the UK, it can be considered moderate in terms of cost."

"My clients tend to feel that the overall implementation cost is a little high."

"Blue Prism has a higher cost with respect to RPA enablement, particularly if you are trying to start with RPA."

"Its pricing is okay. Its price is pretty similar to the price of other tools."

"I don't recall what it was. Initially, we had our licensing through the consultant, and when we stopped using them, we renegotiated licensing. Blue Prism gave us temporary licenses during the negotiation. When all things were said and done, it came out to a decent price even without the vendor. So, our management has been happy with that."

"The solution is not that expensive and a five-year license costs about 20k euros."

"Licensing is on a yearly basis."

More Blue Prism pricing and cost advice

"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."

"ROI is one month."

"ROI is 95 percent."

"The price is a bit high."

"The pricing is extremely fair, and because of that I recommend purchasing multiple instances to split out the processing load across multiple application servers."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Healthcare Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

28%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Insurance Company

Healthcare Company

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.

See all answers

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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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What do you like most about Blue Prism?

It is a stable solution.

See all answers

What do you like most about VisualCron?

The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VisualCron?

The price is a bit high. However, it is okay.

See all answers

What needs improvement with VisualCron?

The documentation is a bit weak. The tool must provide a better set of documentation.

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Power Automate vs Fortra's Automate

Compared 49% of the time

UiPath vs Fortra's Automate

Compared 38% of the time

Automation Anywhere vs Fortra's Automate

Compared 8% of the time

More Fortra's Automate Competitors

Microsoft Power Automate vs Blue Prism

Compared 37% of the time

UiPath vs Blue Prism

Compared 33% of the time

Automation Anywhere vs Blue Prism

Compared 12% of the time

Pega Robotic Process Automation vs Blue Prism

Compared 4% of the time

More Blue Prism Competitors

Microsoft Power Automate vs VisualCron

Compared 47% of the time

Control-M vs VisualCron

Compared 20% of the time

Stonebranch vs VisualCron

Compared 8% of the time

OpCon vs VisualCron

Compared 7% of the time

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs VisualCron

Compared 7% of the time

More VisualCron Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortra's Automate

March 2025

Download Fortra's Automate product report

Buyer's Guide

Blue Prism

March 2025

Download Blue Prism product report

Buyer's Guide

VisualCron

February 2025

Download VisualCron product report

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate

No data available

Overview

Fortra's Automate is predominantly used in HR and operational departments for automating reports, file manipulation, and data processing. Key uses include automating repetitive tasks, integrating PDFs and emails, running scripts, processing large data sets, transforming file formats, synchronizing databases, managing job schedules, and transferring files.

Users commend Fortra's Automate for its ease of implementation and user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, which requires minimal technical skills for efficient bot deployment. The software is appreciated for its effective scheduling tools, reliable integration capabilities, and a wide range of functions such as file interaction, secure file transfers, and extensive automation without the need for coding. Businesses achieve significant time savings and simplified processes, bolstered by continuous updates and robust customer support.

What are the key features?

Scheduling Tools: Enables precise control and timing for automation tasks
Integration Capabilities: Seamlessly connects with various systems and software
File Interaction: Comprehensive functions for file manipulation and transfer
Secure Transfers: Ensures data safety during file transfers
User-Friendly: Minimal technical skills needed for deployment and use

What benefits should you look for in reviews?

Ease of Implementation: Fast and simple setup process
Time Savings: Reduces time spent on repetitive tasks
Process Simplification: Streamlines complex workflows
Customer Support: Access to continuous support and updates

In various industries such as healthcare, transportation, and payroll, Fortra's Automate automates workflows like invoice generation, data retrieval, data uploading, and insurance eligibility checks, enhancing efficiency and accuracy for HR and operational tasks.

Fortra

Blue Prism is an intelligent, business-developed, no-code automation platform for SaaS deployments as well as for on-premises, public cloud, multi-cloud, and hybrid environments. Unlike other automation technology, Blue Prism combines robotic process automation with expanded artificial intelligence and cognitive capabilities. Blue Prism gives users instant access to the tools you need for building and delegating automations, as well as a digital workforce that is already AI-equipped.

With Blue Prism’s code-free RPA, deployed through use of their Robotic Operating Model, your business can scale efficiently, improve customer satisfaction, reduce costs, and augment its talent to take on new responsibilities. Blue Prism helps to accelerate operational agility and efficiency by making it easy to automate the most important processes. Allocating everyday tasks to your Digital Workforce gives you immediate increased capacity and allows your teams to focus on their strategic goals. In addition, it delivers a return on investment, increases efficiency gains, and can even introduce new revenue streams.

“Workforce of the Future”

Blue Prism’s all-in-one intelligent automation platform consists of:

Design Studio with drag-and-drop process automation building, reusable “objects” across your business, and updates to objects and processes saved throughout the process library.
Control Room where you can assign processes to digital workers, scale digital worker and task volume ondemand, and gain real-time transparency of process proficiencies.
Digital Workforce of autonomous software robots that can learn and mimic business processes like humans and are equipped with six intelligent automation skills:
1. Knowledge and Insight - The ability to harvest, understand, and deliver insights from multiple disparate data sources.
2. Visual Perception - The ability to read, understand, and contextualize visual information.
3. Learning - The ability to derive contextual meaning and adapt to evolving process patterns.
4. Planning and Sequencing - The ability to optimize workloads and identify opportunities for better outcomes.
5. Problem-solving - The ability to autonomously solve system, logic, and business problems.
6. Collaboration - The ability to seamlessly work with both people and systems.

Reviews from Real Users

Blue Prism stands out for its enterprise-level functionality, which is why many companies choose it over its competitors. PeerSpot users note that the solution is easy to use, stable, and robust scalability-wise. The security is also top-notch. One user pointed out that "One of the most powerful features in Blue Prism is exception handling. It's one of the features that really differentiates it from other platforms." Blue Prism helps businesses with everything from compliance to quality control and error-avoidance.

SS&C Blue Prism

VisualCron automates tasks like file encryption, scheduling SQL jobs, system integration, data workflow management, and application triggering, making it ideal for handling nightly syncs, FTP server file replacements, job scheduling, and invoice processing.

VisualCron provides an efficient automation solution with features like error and status reporting, API connections, PGP key generation, encryption file creation, and bulk SQL script execution. It simplifies task automation through its mail and event triggers, job variables, conditional execution, and logging with error alerts. Users benefit from its integration capabilities, scheduling flexibility, visual interface, and support for databases and credential management without extensive coding.

What are the most important features?

Simplicity: Easy-to-use interface for seamless automation.
Mail and Event Triggers: Automate tasks based on specific events.
Job Variables: Customize tasks using various input variables.
Conditional Execution: Execute tasks based on predefined conditions.
Error Alerts: Logging and error reporting to ensure task reliability.
Integration Capabilities: Easily connect and integrate with systems and APIs.
Scheduling Flexibility: Create complex schedules with ease.
Visual Interface: User-friendly GUI for efficient management.
Database Support: Manage and automate database tasks efficiently.
Credential Management: Securely handle credentials for various tasks.
PowerShell Commands: Execute PowerShell commands directly.

What are the benefits or ROI users should look for in the reviews?

Efficiency: Streamline and automate repetitive tasks to save time.
Cost Savings: Reduce manual labor and associated costs.
Reliability: Ensure consistency and accuracy in task execution.
Integration: Enhance workflows by integrating with different systems.
Flexibility: Adjust quickly to changes and handle complex scheduling needs.
Support: Benefit from extensive post-sales support and configuration options.
Innovation: Foster innovation by eliminating the need for coding.

Industries like finance, healthcare, and logistics implement VisualCron to automate data workflows, secure file transfers, and schedule critical tasks. It is used to streamline invoice processing, manage large-scale data operations, and ensure compliance through encryption and error reporting. VisualCron enhances operational efficiency, scalability, and security in various sectors, making it essential for businesses requiring robust automation capabilities.

NetCart AB

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

7 Eleven, ABB Sécheron SA, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Amazon Europe Core, Apple, Assa Abloy, Aston Martin, Banco Santander, BMW (Australia)

Buyer's Guide

Blue Prism vs. VisualCron

January 2025

Free Report: Blue Prism vs. VisualCron

Find out what your peers are saying about Blue Prism vs. VisualCron and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

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