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IBM Datacap vs Microsoft Power Automate comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

IBM Datacap
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (6th)
Microsoft Power Automate
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
133
Ranking in other categories
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (3rd), Process Mining (4th), Agentic Automation (3rd), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (4th)
 

Featured Reviews

Bhasker ReddyPIdintla - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Delivery Head at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Has improved document scanning accuracy with advanced OCR capabilities
IBM needs to improve on scanning and reading accuracy for unstructured documents. Additionally, an important missing feature is the ability to merge documents and present data across different UI screens. This is especially beneficial for customer onboarding where documents are scanned not all at once but periodically. Incorporating automation could also aid in this area.
Ayobami Shobaloju - PeerSpot reviewer
Customer Solution Provider at Wema Bank
Automating processes has saved time and improved communication
Something frustrates me concerning Microsoft Power Automate, and that is about the integration with Microsoft Forms and Excel. The issue now is that I don't get my responses synchronized automatically, and that frustrates me a lot. If the team could take this as feedback, the synchronization of the feedback responses from the forms and the Excel sheets should be seamless. This synchronization issue happens frequently, and it causes a lot of delays in the sense that the mails that ought to go out to the agents fail at some point. I have to reload these responses so that the agents can get their responses as when submitted. What I notice is that the responses don't go out without proper synchronization, so I reload the field responses, and this works afterwards. I would say probably a seamless walkthrough process for new users would be beneficial. For those using it for the first time, a seamless walkthrough process would be fine.

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 of IBM Datacap is the capturing and recognizing of pages, documents as well as the scanner and barcodes."
"It reduces human error and saves time."
"The most valuable feature is its ability to capture data, which changes all the time into different formats."
"The big thing these days is really the Insight Edition component and being able to build annotators to extract from literally unstructured content: paragraphs and information where there's no start anchor point to define where that data is located. There could be a number of entities in that which you have to draw information from. Being able to extract from them is really the differentiator today between that product and many of the other products..."
"The OCR extractions are very good, almost 100% accurate now."
"There's something that's very unique about IBM DataCap. It provides me with a good solution for extracting, reading the QR codes, and scanning them. In this stage, we are working in a UIT phase before implementing this protocol in all our branches. From my initial observation, IBM DataCap is good, it is not working too fast, but in a good manner for us."
"It is highly extensible, which we found to be most valuable. It is a very extensible solution because it is based on configurable rule sets. We were able to amend and adjust the solution and very easily add custom code and custom components. It does require some programming experience, but we found that not to be an issue. We liked its extensibility."
"I can have all scanners accessible from my end."
"The solution offers a lot of documentation and tutorials for users to learn about various aspects and features."
"I find WinAutomation's linear approach to the code and function calling valuable."
"It is easy to migrate from other tools to Power Automate."
"Power Automate is not complex and is very easy-to-use in deploying most development projects."
"Its usability is very valuable because it has a quite simple flow. It is very user-friendly. It provides you templates. I started learning with the help of Teams templates, and then I started providing them. It is always good to start with a template so that you understand how it works. Its branches are quite user-friendly. You can put expressions in it. It allows you to link and test the flow so that you can check whether everything is running properly. From a business standpoint, Power Automate is quite good for a non-tech person. It is not like Java, HTML, or C++, which are very developer-driven. Power Automate is a more business-oriented kind of tool."
"Technical support is available regionally and it's quite good."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Power Automate is the ability to automate tedious tasks."
"The integrations that are built into Power Automate for those different Microsoft functions are good."
 

Cons

"Currently, when you are entering invoices, you have to enter multiple rows. In Captiva the multiple rows will be dynamically added. This would be a beneficial feature for IBM to add."
"One of the things that we wished for was to have an easier way to carry out the customizations. Currently, if you want to customize data, you need to have a developer with C# knowledge. If IBM could implement a no-code or low-code platform for Datacap, it would be easier to adjust it without needing a developer, which was always the most difficult part."
"The reading efficiency of the solution needs to be improved."
"Speed of OCR is one issue. It's a challenge because we have customers that have millions and millions of pages that they want this solution to crank through. In order to do that you have to have a large infrastructure in place, and that directly impacts licensing based on the core count."
"They have to stop focusing on new development and stabilize the latest release. It is not stable."
"I've faced some bugs or issues. They should do deeper testing of the product before releasing it because some of the bugs that I found were a bit simple. I understand that it is a massive product, and some of the functionalities can get overlooked."
"Datacap has performance issues when processing large volumes of documents. We're doing 18,000 pages daily. Scanning takes almost 20-30 minutes, but it normally takes one or two minutes. We informed IBM and opened a ticket for that. They forwarded the issue to developers but didn't give a specific timeline for it to be resolved. Version 8.1 is already at the end of support."
"I would like better ease of use and more support options."
"While working with big data, when we have structured data like logs, we have to work with an ETL tool before manipulating the data and creating the workflows and the forms. This can be improved. Big data support is something that I'd like to be covered a lot."
"There could be more communication with third-party cloud tools."
"Microsoft Power Automate is limited if we want to create a complex flow because we have to split the log into two flows."
"More OCR and AI capabilities are needed to improve the solution. Other solutions have better features, such as Blue Prism and UiPath."
"There is an RPA feature gap between this solution and other more mature products."
"I would like more integration with other tools. It integrates well with Microsoft products, but there should be more integration with other platforms and tools, such as chatbots."
"We find the solution to be not that user-friendly, and might be using the older version, which really did not have a lot of features, so my review is mostly based on the older version."
"I was working on it for around three days and then took a break of about two days. When I went back to it, all of the Excel, and all the Excel functions, just disappeared. Completely vanished. When I looked up the help, it said that sometimes that happens when you're not connected to the internet."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution offers seamless integration with other enterprise products, which is my area of responsibility, focusing on government sector projects. Larger enterprise projects don't pose problems. It might be suitable for small businesses as well."
"It is an expensive solution."
"We were using the User Value Unit licensing, which means we get charged per active user of the system, and if I'm not mistaken, we also had it for the rule runner service. They had a PVU license model, which is a processor value unit. For each process that we have in our system, we pay a certain amount of money. We found the pricing to be quite steep. It was really an expensive solution in comparison to Kofax, which had a different licensing model and was actually cheaper overall because they charge per page and not per user and per process."
"Pricing needs to stay competitive."
"You save a lot of time and money, but the benefit is you have people who are able to run the systems, check to see if there are any errors at all, and there are a lot less errors than a human system."
"If you want IBM Datacap on cloud, which is a service run by IBM, the price can be quite expensive, but if you want to just purchase the licenses and own those yourself, then the price is very competitive."
"This solution is the most expensive in the market."
"It varies, and it depends on the client's requirements and negotiations. Nowadays, Datacap is also included in the IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation."
"Power Automate is a much less expensive product than the competition."
"Microsoft Power Automate is expensive. The full license is quite expensive."
"This solution can save money when used for simple tasks specifically using only Microsoft products."
"The price is right. If you have Office 365 It's included."
"Its licensing is flexible."
"The cost to use Microsoft Power Automate is approximately $15 per user per month, for the basic plan. However, the solution comes free with the Microsoft 365 Suite."
"We are using the free version of Power Automate."
"It costs us nothing because we use it on the built-in cost that is a part of our existing license for 365. To use it more extensively, there are different pricing models. Its licensing is complex. It is complex to evaluate the cost in advance. As a result, people don't use it because they don't know what overall cost they are going to incur. There are too many criteria to figure out how much it is going to cost you to use the product to its full extent. Its licensing model should be improved, and the pricing should be more visible and transparent."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Insurance Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise66
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Datacap?
Pricing is in the mid-range but could be more affordable, rated at four point five.
What needs improvement with IBM Datacap?
IBM needs to improve on scanning and reading accuracy for unstructured documents. Additionally, an important missing feature is the ability to merge documents and present data across different UI s...
What is your primary use case for IBM Datacap?
I primarily use IBM Datacap ( /products/ibm-datacap-reviews ) for data capture and scanning documents with OCR. Specifically, it's used for DocuSign ( /products/docusign-reviews ) as well.
RPA that Bots can run without centralized control?
Yes, Attended Bots which can run without centralized control Module. RPA Tools like Automation Anywhere, uiPath ,Power Automation they do support this.
How do I choose between UiPath and Microsoft Power Automate?
Microsoft‌ ‌Power‌ ‌Automate‌ ‌is‌ ‌intuitive‌ ‌and‌ ‌easy‌ ‌to‌ ‌integrate‌ ‌and‌ ‌use.‌ ‌I‌ ‌like‌ ‌that‌ ‌there‌ ‌is‌ ‌no‌ ‌coding‌ ‌experience‌ ‌necessary,‌ ‌and‌ ‌appreciate‌ ‌the‌ ‌automated‌...
How is Automation Anywhere compared to Microsoft Power Automate?
‌Neither‌ ‌solution‌ ‌requires‌ ‌any‌ ‌coding‌ ‌experience,‌ ‌and‌ ‌both‌ ‌are‌ ‌easy‌ ‌to‌ ‌use‌ ‌and‌ ‌have‌ ‌great‌ ‌drag-and‌ ‌drop‌ ‌functionality.‌ ‌The‌ ‌training‌ ‌and‌ ‌resources‌ ‌for‌ ‌A...
 

Also Known As

Datacap
Power Automate, Microsoft Flow, MS Power Automate, WinAutomation by Softomotive, ProcessRobot by Softomotive, Minit
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Turkcell, PowerSouth Energy Cooperative, Central Nacional Unimed, Conqord Oil
1. Coca-Cola 2. General Electric 3. Siemens 4. Accenture 5. Deloitte 6. Johnson & Johnson 7. Ford 8. Nestle 9. Procter & Gamble 10. IBM 11. Amazon 12. Google 13. Microsoft 14. Adobe 15. Cisco 16. Oracle 17. SAP 18. Intel 19. HP 20. Dell 21. Verizon 22. AT&T 23. T-Mobile 24. Walmart 25. Target 26. Home Depot 27. McDonald's 28. Starbucks 29. Nike 30. Apple 31. Facebook 32. Twitter
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Datacap vs. Microsoft Power Automate and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,227 professionals have used our research since 2012.