IBM Datacap vs Microsoft Power Automate comparison

IBM and Microsoft are both solutions in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category. Additionally, 89% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Datacap and Microsoft Power Automate based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Datacap vs. Microsoft Power Automate Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Datacap vs. Microsoft Power Automate

December 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

Featured Reviews

Jane Rachma Kiniti

IT Project Manager at Labo des histoires

Automate has streamlined workflows and increased efficiency with powerful automation

The best features of the solution are the flexible automation features, it is rich with beautiful connectors, and it is easy to use with little to no coding knowledge required to get started, so anybody can use the tool. The intuitive interface of Automate has an intuitive design, which makes it easy to learn and use even without a strong technical background, and it has a drag-and-drop interface, which makes everything so easy and straightforward. The error handling capabilities in complex automation tasks are powerful, as it handles all types of tasks, whether complex or simple. I've never faced any problems even when dealing with complex tasks, so everything is super smooth and highly reliable, even when dealing with big tasks, as it has never slowed down. Automate's compatibility with existing IT infrastructure has impacted our business operations positively by providing smooth integration with other software that we use, such as Gmail, Jira, and Microsoft 365 apps, which gives us a unified platform instead of having to keep switching from one software to another, saving a lot of time and streamlining the whole workflows. The automated analytics have helped improve our business processes since it has increased our efficiency by automating our everyday tasks, freeing up time for us to focus more on strategic activities such as analyzing data and developing new business strategies. It is also cost-saving. By minimizing manual labor, it decreases human errors that can lead to costly mistakes. By automating the tasks, it helps to save costs, and it also improves our accuracy by reducing these errors to ensure that tasks are done almost perfectly.

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Bhasker ReddyPIdintla

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.

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Ayobami Shobaloju

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.

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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 feature I prefer most about Fortra's Automate is that it offers no-code or low-code automation, which is essential for me as a cybersecurity analyst because we do not have time to code and automate everything."

"The automated analytics have helped improve our business processes since it has increased our efficiency by automating our everyday tasks, freeing up time for us to focus more on strategic activities such as analyzing data and developing new business strategies."

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

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

"We have done the setup in the last eight months, my team of approximately ten to twelve team members were doing manual jobs, and Fortra's Automate is doing that with three or four bots we have set up, doing this job without any errors and really reducing my manual work and the human errors which were done by my team so I don't need to re-verify data or invest time in this."

"I actually quite liked the no-coding functionality."

"It's very easy to use. That's a big selling point for it. It has got a drag-and-drop interface, so you can quickly deploy bots."

"Fortra's Automate has a user-friendly interface that is quite easy to understand for new use cases."

More Fortra's Automate pros

"The installation of the solution is very simple."

"It is very easy to develop this software. It is low code, and if you can't find the things you need on it, you can develop custom actions with more complex code underneath. They sync well, which is very useful for automating a lot of processes. It is a really valuable feature for the clients because we can ingest information and automate plenty of processes for them. The operators don't have to waste that much time on tasks. With Datacap, they can be automated."

"Datacap is good at processing unstructured data. You can build up some nice data flows, and it is simple to configure. The tool adopts a low-code approach, but you can do a lot of coding if you want to customize and automate your flows. Datacap also has the flexibility to integrate."

"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."

"At the forefront of my thoughts, the standout feature of this intelligent product is its remarkable capability. This project we're currently engaged in revolves around streamlining workflows within both our company and the customer's company. It entails handling information from various documents with diverse formats and types, even when they contain the same data. The ability to connect this information with the appropriate database and recognize it irrespective of the format or source is an extremely valuable feature. Moreover, leveraging machine learning is crucial since our customer deals with an extensive archive of over five million documents. Machine learning can significantly alleviate the backlog by becoming well-versed in various scenarios they might encounter during their work once we've completed our application."

"I work for an insurance company, and we use Datacap for document processing."

"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."

"The standout feature of this intelligent product is its remarkable capability."

More IBM Datacap pros

"AI Builder is a good add-on."

"The solution integrates more easily and with more tools than Automation Anywhere."

"The initial setup is pretty easy."

"For people who already use Office 365, Power Automate is very easy to integrate and use."

"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."

"The engineers on-site can generate an automated report that takes approximately 10 minutes, while before it took them two days."

"The initial setup isn't too difficult."

"It makes work easier."

More Microsoft Power Automate pros

Cons

"Regarding customer support, I face challenges sometimes. They're not always available, and you may need to wait for assistance, but overall their support is acceptable."

"The user interface could be slightly enhanced to make it more modern."

"Some companies have asked for voice integration. This is likely part of the roadmap."

"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."

"There are newer AWS services such as Lambda or Security Hub that security analysts use to detect malicious traffic or alerts, but the integration is not available for these, so we still rely on custom scripting because there are no options for drag-and-drop with these newer services."

"I currently have three bugs open with them that I don't know if they are addressed in the new release."

"The licensing cost is high, as per my perspective, in the automation with Fortra's Automate."

"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."

More Fortra's Automate cons

"Third-party integration could be improved; it's very slow."

"I would like to see the product have the ability to process more documents in parallel. Right now, it is a single queue. Therefore, if you want to really test the load and stress test it, having multiple instances and the ability to scale it up would be great."

"The user interfaces for exception processing can be tweaked. I commonly find that we try to tweak and customize some of those components to more of what the industry standard is. The product is still trying to play catch-up a little bit in those areas."

"Recognition between certain numbers and letters could be improved. Sometimes this solution misreads five with an "S" for Singapore."

"Its weaknesses are primarily tied to the lack of available resources and expertise in the market to effectively support and provide solutions and services to each customer for seamless implementation."

"We have page requirements where some values must be copied on each page. For example, say I need to scan a bunch of documents, and the name will be a field on every page. We don't have a default functionality in Datacap to copy the field value on the first page to all the pages. That feature would make the documents easy to prepare."

"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."

"What could be improved in IBM Datacap from a technical perspective is having everything together all in one place, rather than having several different interfaces. The addition of cloud-based OCR technology would also make this solution better. There's also room for improvement for their technical support."

More IBM Datacap cons

"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."

"I would like to see better data integration with different sources."

"When compared to other workflow automation tools out there, it's just not as mature."

"Their OCR capabilities are not as evolved as the other tools."

"The UI of the solution is not so good."

"These products have some limitations, such as the need to build some custom controls in PCF or use the JSON format."

"How long it takes to deploy will depend on how confident you are with your development. The development itself is not easy."

"Microsoft Power Automate could improve by offering recurring execution on the desktop."

More Microsoft Power Automate cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I'm only involved in running the product and maintaining the systems, so I can't speak to the cost."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

More Fortra's Automate pricing and cost advice

"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."

"It is an expensive solution."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"IBM could offer more competitive pricing. This would allow them to attain more users. Some of our clients are considering moving to a different solution called Encapture which is similar but offers more competitive pricing."

"Pricing depends on how much we use it. We pay per bulk quantity. We pay as you go. Therefore, it sort of depends on our usage of it."

More IBM Datacap pricing and cost advice

"Currently, we are using the free license for testing. After everything is done, we'll buy the license."

"Power Automate is comparatively less costly than UiPath."

"Due to the pricing model, the solution is more convenient than any other tools."

"I am not aware of the recent pricing model, but during the time that I was using this solution is was reasonable."

"This solution is reasonably priced and offers a free trial period."

"It comes with the Microsoft suite. I'd rate it an eight out of ten in terms of pricing."

"When we purchase the Microsoft Dynamics license, the Power Automate license is often free, albeit with some limitations, such as a certain number of transactions per user."

"There should be increased transparency about which features attend the pricing."

More Microsoft Power Automate pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Performing Arts

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

10%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	25
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	9

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	12
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	50
Midsize Enterprise	17
Large Enterprise	66

Questions from the Community

What is your primary use case for HelpSystems AutoMate?

I have used it mainly for internal process automation, including file transfer, data extraction, and scheduling jobs.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortra Automate?

Regarding the pricing of Fortra's Automate, I think it is neither expensive nor inexpensive. From what I have seen, i...

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What needs improvement with Fortra Automate?

One aspect I dislike about Fortra's Automate is that debugging slows me down. When the workflow fails, tracing the ex...

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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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Datacap?

IBM needs to improve on scanning and reading accuracy for unstructured documents. Additionally, an important missing ...

See all answers

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. Speci...

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RPA that Bots can run without centralized control?

Yes, Attended Bots which can run without centralized control Module. RPA Tools like Automation Anywhere, uiPath ,Pow...

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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 ‌...

See all answers

How is Automation Anywhere compared to Microsoft Power Automate?

‌Neither‌ ‌solution‌ ‌requires‌ ‌any‌ ‌coding‌ ‌experience,‌ ‌and‌ ‌both‌ ‌are‌ ‌easy‌ ‌to‌ ‌use‌ ‌and‌ ‌have‌ ‌great...

See all answers

Comparisons

UiPath Platform vs Fortra's Automate

Compared 13% of the time

Nintex RPA vs Fortra's Automate

Compared 11% of the time

Automation Anywhere vs Fortra's Automate

Compared 8% of the time

Redwood Software - Finance Automation Edition vs Fortra's Automate

Compared 6% of the time

Blue Prism vs Fortra's Automate

Compared 5% of the time

More Fortra's Automate Competitors

ABBYY Vantage vs IBM Datacap

Compared 27% of the time

OpenText Capture vs IBM Datacap

Compared 18% of the time

Amazon Textract vs IBM Datacap

Compared 16% of the time

Tungsten TotalAgility vs IBM Datacap

Compared 15% of the time

More IBM Datacap Competitors

UiPath Platform vs Microsoft Power Automate

Compared 16% of the time

Automation Anywhere vs Microsoft Power Automate

Compared 15% of the time

IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) vs Microsoft Power Automate

Compared 13% of the time

Blue Prism vs Microsoft Power Automate

Compared 12% of the time

VisualCron vs Microsoft Power Automate

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Power Automate Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortra's Automate

January 2026

Download Fortra's Automate product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Datacap

January 2026

Download IBM Datacap product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power Automate

December 2025

Download Microsoft Power Automate product report

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate

Datacap

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

Overview

Fortra's Automate offers a user-friendly platform for task automation, featuring a drag-and-drop interface that aids in scheduling, file management, and integrating with services like Azure and AWS.

Fortra's Automate provides substantial ease in automating complex tasks through its intuitive design. It offers seamless integration capabilities, especially with Azure and AWS, and comes equipped with strong error handling. Cost-effective and requiring minimal coding, it supports a broad range of industries by effectively automating tasks such as HR operations, invoice management, and data processing across servers.

What features stand out in Fortra's Automate?

Drag-and-Drop Interface: Simplifies task setup and automation without deep coding expertise.
Scheduling and File Management: Ensures efficient, automated handling of tasks and file transfers.
Integration Capabilities: Works with platforms like Azure and AWS for enhanced performance.
Error Handling: Offers solid solutions to manage and resolve task execution errors.
Minimal Coding: Facilitates automation with limited coding requirements, broadening accessibility.

What benefits should users consider in reviews?

Cost-Effectiveness: Provides affordable licensing options for diverse businesses.
Operational Efficiency: Enhances productivity by automating repetitive tasks, reducing manual errors.
Versatility: Adapts well across sectors like banking, healthcare, and transportation.
Robust Support: Offers extensive assistance with automation features.
IT Compatibility: Easily integrates into existing IT infrastructures.

In industries such as healthcare and transportation, Fortra's Automate facilitates the automation of client management, HR operations, and data processing, boosting efficiency. Banks utilize it for managing extensive invoice workflows, while distribution sectors rely on its capabilities for insurance checks and system support. Its applicability across servers makes it a valuable tool for any sector seeking to reduce manual workload and improve task accuracy.

Fortra

IBM Datacap helps you streamline the capture, recognition and classification of business documents and extract important information. Datacap supports multiple-channel capture by processing paper documents on scanners, mobile devices, multi-function peripherals and fax. It uses natural language processing, text analytics and machine learning technologies, like those in IBM Watson, to automatically identify, classify and extract content from unstructured or variable documents. The software can reduce labor and paper costs, deliver meaningful information and support faster decision making.

IBM

Microsoft Power Automate is a powerful tool that streamlines and automates tasks within an organization.

It is used for workflow automation, data integration, and creating automated notifications and approvals.

Power Automate connects different applications and services, such as SharePoint, Excel, and Outlook, to automate data transfer and synchronization.

Microsoft

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

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM Datacap vs. Microsoft Power Automate

December 2025

Free Report: IBM Datacap vs. Microsoft Power Automate

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Datacap vs. Microsoft Power Automate and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

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