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BotFarm 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

Fortra's 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
BotFarm
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
22nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VisualCron
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
20th
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 February 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 BotFarm is 0.3%, down from 0.3% 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.
Ganesh-Subramanian - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers enhancement in data accuracy with low-code requirements and easy onboarding
It's a scalable product. In our organization, we sometimes write a script once and reuse it several times, which improves workflow efficiency. Our team inputs the datasets one by one or in a batch mode into BotFarm and schedules them or calls individually as needed. For instance, if one individual has 15 or 20 forms that need to be scanned and logged immediately, it's possible to implement with BotFarm and its scheduling operations. The solution is ideal for small and medium-sized enterprises and can fit in for large enterprises as well, depending upon the use case. For instance, if 100 agents are working across different locations through a mobile app, all the data from the agents can be stored in a common repository and scheduled. BotFarm can be configured based on the architecture and business operations.
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."
"Web scraping is quite good since it offers a lot of possibilities."
"I actually quite liked the no-coding functionality."
"It gives us a central place to schedule tasks and run them distributed."
"Overall, the whole product is really nice and provides significant benefits."
"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."
"The best feature of Automate is its ease of use, which is a major selling point."
"The pricing is excellent. I would give them perfect marks in that regard."
"Automation Anywhere has good document extraction features where it can learn patterns."
"One of the most valuable features is the solution's simple automation regarding object cloning and strings variables."
"The most valuable features are the portals for extracting data from PDF files, appending data to SAP, automating the SAP, downloading reports, and mapping and creating the reports accordingly to your requirements."
"The product has increased efficiency and reduced the time spent on tasks."
"There are not many challenges when setting up this solution, and there is a good amount of documentation to go with it."
"The solution seems to offer high stability. We haven't seen any bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the Excel automation and support for SharePoint."
"The most valuable features are PDF extraction and emailing."
"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."
"The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%."
"It helped us reduce manual steps."
"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."
"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."
"'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."
"We don't have to do any coding. We just plug and play and it works."
"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."
 

Cons

"There is a lack of good development for artificial intelligence, such as machine learning."
"The technical support could be better. We suffer from language barriers, as we are in Argentina."
"It's possible that they could use a stronger community for seeking guidance and help."
"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."
"I would like to see some better web automation, a wizard like the one in the product WinAutomation would be very nice."
"The interface could be more user-friendly and easier to navigate."
"I would like the updates to be easier to deploy. Integration with Amazon S3 is somewhat lacking."
"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 user experience could be made a little better with this solution. I find it difficult to find qualified people to be able to use the solution."
"I would definitely be wanting to see OCR features for improving the solution."
"We do have some troubles with the internal software commands, but we have been troubleshooting this bug to fix it."
"The image processing capabilities definitely need to be improved."
"The solution doesn't have support like they used to. They need support. We have personnel of our own, but sometimes we need assistance beyond our own team."
"The deployment could be simplified."
"The CL command poses an issue during the process of data conversion, accuracy, data loss and the assessment of certain data as false."
"One aspect that can be improved is the accessibility of reusable components for developers. It relates to role-based access and accessibility."
"Our suggestion to make it better and more manageable in terms of GDPR: Implement it in a very partnership way."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The error timeout and info could be better. When making web request calls, it will time out sometimes and we won't get any useful info out of the error response."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 cost is a bit high for a small business like ours, but we manage with Fortra's Automate."
"I like the way this solution is priced because you can buy a license, or you can buy the software outright."
"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."
"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 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 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 is too expensive and not worth the price."
"The licensing is on a monthly basis."
"The starter price is free."
"The pricing model could be simplified."
"I think payment can vary but it's a re-occurring fee that needs to be paid every year."
"Pricing for this solution can be better."
"An unattended bot license costs around $5,000, whereas an attended bot license costs roughly $1,500."
"The pricing is fair."
"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."
"The pricing is extremely fair, and because of that I recommend purchasing multiple instances to split out the processing load across multiple application servers."
"ROI is one month."
"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 95 percent."
"The price is a bit high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Healthcare Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
27%
Real Estate/Law Firm
9%
University
5%
Computer Software Company
28%
Financial Services Firm
16%
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 BotFarm?
The product has increased efficiency and reduced the time spent on tasks.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BotFarm?
The product is slightly expensive. In comparison to competitor tools like UiPath, BotFarm's cost is greater. Our orga...
What needs improvement with BotFarm?
The solution can improve the accuracy of hand-written data reading. In some situations, the data needs to be hand-wri...
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.
 

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
Cisco, CocaCola Bottlers Japan, Macy's, Whirlpool, Unilever
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 BotFarm vs. VisualCron and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.