BotFarm vs VisualCron comparison

Automation Anywhere and NetCart AB are both solutions in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category. Automation Anywhere is ranked #20 with an average rating of 8.0, while NetCart AB is ranked #19 with an average rating of 8.5. Automation Anywhere holds a 0.3% mindshare in RPA, compared to NetCart AB’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of Automation Anywhere users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NetCart AB users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 4, 2024

BotFarm and VisualCron are competitive automation solutions in the realm of streamlining operations. BotFarm is seen as having an advantage in pricing and support, while VisualCron is considered superior due to its advanced features.

Features: BotFarm offers scalable RPA capabilities, extensive bot management tools, and portability across tasks, making it ideal for diverse enterprise needs. VisualCron excels in task scheduling, workflow automation, and database integration, providing a comprehensive and customizable solution adaptable to various systems.

Room for Improvement: BotFarm could enhance its user interface and expand features beyond basic automation to improve overall functionality. It may also benefit from better integration capabilities with third-party tools and improved reporting features. VisualCron could strengthen its alerting system, offer better documentation, and expand its range of plugins to increase versatility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: BotFarm is recognized for its straightforward deployment process and efficient onboarding, supported by responsive customer service. VisualCron provides a flexible deployment model complemented by comprehensive support solutions, catering to businesses requiring personalized setup and detailed guidance.

Pricing and ROI: BotFarm offers a cost-effective structure with a rapid ROI, appealing to budget-conscious businesses. In contrast, VisualCron, with higher initial costs, justifies its investment through enhanced productivity and long-term gains, offering a compelling ROI for companies seeking feature depth over initial spend.

To learn more, read our detailed BotFarm vs. VisualCron Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

BotFarm vs. VisualCron

March 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

Automate

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 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

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.

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Ganesh-Subramanian

Digital Transformation Lead at Expleogroup

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.

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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

"The pricing is excellent. I would give them perfect marks in that regard."

"The ability to connect to websites and pull data is the solution's most valuable feature."

"We use it for specific cases, mainly secure file transfers, which are vital for us. And it works for us."

"We have found the pricing to be very reasonable."

"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 like the interface; it makes managing automation easy. We can set different schedules and templates for each task."

"The interface is simple, user-friendly, and very intuitive."

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

More Automate pros

"The ability to drag and drop various components and the customizability are good features."

"BotFarm is an easy solution to use and the interface is better than older versions."

"The most valuable features I have found to be the screen scraping and the integration with third-party solutions."

"One of the most valuable features is the solution's simple automation regarding object cloning and strings variables."

"The most important feature of BotFarm is web automation."

"The solution reduces manual data errors and improves data accuracy"

"The most valuable feature is the rapid deployment of multiple bots."

"There are not many challenges when setting up this solution, and there is a good amount of documentation to go with it."

More BotFarm pros

"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."

"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."

"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."

"'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."

"It helped us reduce manual steps."

"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."

"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."

More VisualCron pros

Cons

"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."

"Fortra's Automate is not as reliable as I would like it to be."

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

"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."

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

"I find that most important features are strong, however, there is a lack of good development for artificial intelligence, such as machine learning."

"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."

"They do not encrypt passwords, so this is an issue with HIPAA compliance."

More Automate cons

"I would like to see more process mining features to give us insight into them before we develop automation."

"There should be more support for developing in environments such as Citrix and Linux."

"An area for improvement in BotFarm is that the communication between the Control Room and the Bot Client Missions isn't utilized well. There's also the issue with PCI DSS compliance or certain regulations that require a set of configurations that are not fully supported by BotFarm. The product should be certified or designed according to the required regulations in the finance industry to make it better."

"The new version is not very stable. Sometimes I can't use the recording sound."

"The OCR command needs to improve. This feature is used to convert the extracted data from an image file. While converting this file I was facing a lot of issues with the data because it was getting lost and some of the data which was extracted was mismatched. The data loss was rated as a nine and the data accuracy was a massive decrease and was up to 80%."

"BotFarm newer version has been difficult to install, we have been in contact with the support on this matter."

"We do have some troubles with the internal software commands, but we have been troubleshooting this bug to fix it."

"Sometimes I feel like it doesn't work properly and we are not able to provide the dexterity needed."

More BotFarm cons

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The documentation is a bit weak."

"Our suggestion to make it better and more manageable in terms of GDPR: Implement it in a very partnership way."

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

"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."

"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."

More VisualCron cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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 like the way this solution is priced because you can buy a license, or you can buy the software outright."

More Automate pricing and cost advice

"The product is slightly expensive"

"Our licensing costs are approximately $3,000 USD annually."

"The license of this solution is on an annual basis. The price is fair. However, what we did initially was a POC, but now we are looking at moving from a POC to expanding it out further. I would appreciate some kind of discount."

"The pricing is fair."

"The starter price is free."

"Automation Anywhere is more reasonable than Blue Prism and UiPath in terms of cost."

"The pricing model could be simplified."

"There is a license for this solution and it is on an annual basis. I am satisfied with the price."

More BotFarm pricing and cost advice

"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."

"ROI is one month."

"The price is a bit high."

"ROI is 95 percent."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

29%

Computer Software Company

28%

Real Estate/Law Firm

University

Computer Software Company

27%

Financial Services Firm

15%

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about BotFarm?

The product has increased efficiency and reduced the time spent on tasks.

See all answers

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...

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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...

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 Automate

Compared 43% of the time

UiPath vs Automate

Compared 38% of the time

Automation Anywhere vs Automate

Compared 8% of the time

Blue Prism vs Automate

Compared 6% of the time

More Automate Competitors

No data available

Microsoft Power Automate vs VisualCron

Compared 43% of the time

Control-M vs VisualCron

Compared 20% of the time

OpCon vs VisualCron

Compared 7% of the time

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs VisualCron

Compared 7% of the time

GoAnywhere MFT vs VisualCron

Compared 4% of the time

More VisualCron Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Automate

March 2025

Download Automate product report

Buyer's Guide

BotFarm

March 2025

Download BotFarm product report

Buyer's Guide

VisualCron

March 2025

Download VisualCron product report

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate

No data available

Overview

Automate offers a user-friendly solution with a drag-and-drop interface for efficient task automation and integration with major platforms like SAP and Azure, making it ideal for quick deployment with minimal coding and training.

Automate provides powerful features for businesses seeking efficient automation, offering compatibility with databases, email integration, and cloud platforms. Its simple interface supports both beginners and experienced users, simplifying tasks like invoice processing, HR automation, and data transformation. Cost-effective pricing and flexible licensing enhance its appeal while integration capabilities and scheduling tools ensure smooth workflow automation.

What are Automate's Key Features?

Drag-and-Drop Interface: Simplifies automation with intuitive design.
Integration Capabilities: Connects with platforms like SAP and Azure for seamless data flow.
Database and FTP Triggers: Enhances automation potential through direct data interaction.
Efficient Scheduling: Automates tasks with precise timing and control.
Web Scraping: Automates data extraction for quick analysis and reporting.

What Benefits and ROI Should Users Expect?

Rapid Deployment: Minimizes coding efforts for quick implementation.
Cost-Effectiveness: Offers flexible pricing models to suit budget constraints.
Operational Efficiency: Reduces manual workloads and enhances productivity.
Comprehensive Integration: Facilitates improved data management across systems.
Scalability: Adapts to growing business needs with ease.

In industries such as healthcare, banking, and logistics, Automate is used for tasks like invoice payment automation, data transformation, and task automation. This leads to streamlined processes and reduced manual workload, illustrating its value in enhancing operational efficiency through diversified workflows.

Fortra

BotFarm is an enterprise-level robotic process automation (RPA) solution. What is unique about BotFarm is that users can buy RPA processes based on demand and not be confined to a license or a strict capacity structure. BotFarm, a robust product of Automation Anywhere, is the only RPA solution that allows users to buy only the products they need when they need them. BotFarm allows users to launch all the robots they need to get tasks completed sooner and more efficiently than many other products in the marketplace today. This consumption-based business model will result in significant savings and increase an organization's overall profitability.

BotFarm Benefits

Scalable: The flexible nature of the solution makes it very easy to scale when needed.
User-friendly: The UI is simple to use and understand. Users do not have to be tech-savvy to deploy bots.
Improves efficiency: BotFarm will increase process integrity by reducing human error and the need for continuous manual human effort or interaction.
Integration: BotFarm integrates well with many third-party solutions.

BotFarm Features

No code/low code solutions: Users can easily create and deploy bots to perform undesirable, mundane tasks, freeing IT staff to work on more productive, complicated tasks.
IQ Bots: Easily extrapolate data from any document, such as resumes, invoices, and legal documents, to ensure data is correctly correlated and grouped together and that overall data integrity is never compromised.
Fast: Deployed bots can complete tasks significantly faster than any human component, and with less error.
Cost-effective: Users only pay for the bots they actually need, and create as they go. This innovative process will save your organization time and money while increasing overall productivity and profitability. BotFarm has a very good ROI and is a stable, secure, and scalable solution.

Reviews from Real Users

Akshay P., Associate Systems Analyst at NSEiT Limited, relates, “It is very easy, simple. You're working on a notepad, and you don't need to know programming to work on this. The dashboards are quite good, especially on the latest versions.”

A Digital Strategy Manager at an energy/utilities company shares, “The scalability is the solution's most valuable aspect. The reason Bot Farm is used is to have only one license available whenever you have a spike in the transactions. That is a core feature. That is something which we are using to the maximum. It's working well due to the fact that the solution use case is quite structured.”

A Senior RPA Developer at a tech services company tells us, “The solution is great to automate any repetitive tasks, which you might do on a daily basis. For example, the organization may need to be generating invoices or extracting data from PDF files daily. It is very versatile in what you can automate. This has improved my organization by cutting down on repetitive tasks that now can be automated.”

Automation Anywhere

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

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)

Buyer's Guide

BotFarm vs. VisualCron

March 2025

Free Report: BotFarm vs. VisualCron

Find out what your peers are saying about BotFarm vs. VisualCron and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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