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Microsoft Power Automate vs OpenText Robotic Process Automation comparison

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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

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
Microsoft Power Automate
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
2nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
126
Ranking in other categories
Process Mining (2nd)
OpenText Robotic Process Au...
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
36th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category, the mindshare of Automate is 1.3%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Power Automate is 20.9%, down from 21.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenText Robotic Process Automation is 0.3%, up from 0.3% 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.
Nilesh Pundkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Good for email routing and management features but additional costs for plug-ins
Power Automate has fewer features and more limitations in general. It's not as mature a product as some of the others, like UiPath or Automate Anywhere. One of the main issues I've found is that Power Automate struggles with accessing Excel or other Office documents on servers. Even though it's a Microsoft product, we often have to log in through remote systems, and syncing can be problematic due to the way we use servers. At the very least, they should provide access to Office 365 directly, without requiring additional logins on servers. Most people utilizing Power Automate are already working within the Office 365 environment. Any proof of concepts (POCs) using Power Automate would naturally be built on top of Office 365.
Hugo Almeida - PeerSpot reviewer
It lets us automate almost anything and is very easy to work with
It currently supports only on-premises deployments. They can include support for cloud deployments. It should provide us the ability to choose a robot for executing a workflow. We want to control which robot executes a certain workflow. Right now, it automatically chooses the robot that is going to execute our workflow. It should also provide the ability to get filters on the outputs of the steps. We have each workflow as a step, and each step has some output. We would like to have the functionality to execute some script or some logic on these outputs to format the tests directly on the variables.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We have tried other RPA solutions like UiPath or Automation Anywhere. They are fantastic products but complex, and it's hard to understand everything. It would be best if you had a skilled developer or several. Automate is easy to implement, administer, and use. It's appropriate for us because our cases are simple and easy to automate. We don't need complicated tools with many features; We prefer to get a significant ROI quickly."
"I would rate the technical support as a nine out of ten because it is quite fast and courteous."
"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."
"Web scraping is quite good since it offers a lot of possibilities."
"The pricing is excellent. I would give them perfect marks in that regard."
"We use it for specific cases, mainly secure file transfers, which are vital for us. And it works for us."
"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."
"This product is a really easy-to-use solution for quickly developing prototypes."
"The solution is pretty customizable. Even big automation tasks are done rather simply."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Power Automate are user-friendliness and low coding functionality."
"The ease of use and the integration with some of the existing products that we have would be its main takeouts."
"The initial setup is pretty easy."
"Microsoft Power Automate is very easy to use."
"Microsoft Power Automate is a no-code platform which is very easy to learn, allowing businesses to build their own small automations."
"The initial setup is very simple."
"It lets us automate almost anything, even with the legacy tools. It is very easy for us now to automate with legacy tools, which used to be difficult earlier. We work with a lot of other automation tools from Micro Focus, such as Operation Orchestration, but these tools can only connect to the API. So, there was a gap when we wanted to automate older and legacy tools that didn't have any API to connect to. We can now also automate without any changes in the customer environment. We don't need to change anything in the way that the customer environment works."
 

Cons

"Error messages should be better. For error status, there should be better documentation because a lot of times, error messages that you get are quite vague. For example, you get a message saying that the workflow has run into an unknown status, which is vague. It just tells you that it failed, but you don't know how or why it failed. It makes debugging difficult."
"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."
"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 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."
"Some companies have asked for voice integration. This is likely part of the roadmap."
"Sometimes when we communicate with the ERP system and there is an issue, we are not always aware of the specifics of Automate and the source of the problem."
"They do not encrypt passwords, so this is an issue with HIPAA compliance."
"If someone was just about to start using it, it would be better if it was a bit more user-friendly in terms of understanding function references. I come from a bit of development background. To me, it all makes quite a lot of sense, but someone using it for the first time would probably battle understanding how the functions work. This might be something they could improve on. It would be really useful if it could publish data to Power BI. We like to use Power BI for our reporting, but we can't directly integrate the data across. If there was a way to automate the collection of the data and push it straight into the Power BI platform, it would be quite useful."
"They can build more templates and more connectivity with other platforms. They can provide a more user-friendly way to connect with other platforms. They have their own in-built plugins for certain third-party vendors, but there are still a lot of third-party vendors that are not there."
"Its licensing model should be improved. The pricing should be more visible and transparent. When you consume services, there are too many criteria to figure out how much it is going to cost you to use the product to its full extent. It should also support visual process editing, which is a standard feature for BPMN 2.0 compliance. They should improve the visual designer."
"The OCR functionality needs to be improved."
"From an improvement perspective, Microsoft just needs to make sure that they have a real enterprise RPA tool. PowerApps and Power Automate are still not at the level of UiPath and Automation Anywhere. It could be because Automation Anywhere and UiPath have been in the market for quite some time. It's just about Microsoft increasing their focus in terms of product reviews and development and making them competitive products that one can consider at an enterprise level. Right now, their use cases are limited as compared to what one would consider doing with UiPath and Automation Anywhere."
"It should be faster and more user-friendly."
"When it comes to cloud computing, there are many limitations when dealing with large amounts of data."
"There are frequent version updates and that impacts different algorithms so we have to adjust our code."
"It currently supports only on-premises deployments. They can include support for cloud deployments. It should provide us the ability to choose a robot for executing a workflow. We want to control which robot executes a certain workflow. Right now, it automatically chooses the robot that is going to execute our workflow. It should also provide the ability to get filters on the outputs of the steps. We have each workflow as a step, and each step has some output. We would like to have the functionality to execute some script or some logic on these outputs to format the tests directly on the variables."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 cost is a bit high for a small business like ours, but we manage with Fortra's Automate."
"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 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."
"From a distributor's perspective, one of the biggest selling points of Automate is its price point."
"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."
"Once you buy the software, you just pay for the support for backend help."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing two to three out of ten."
"There is a per-user licensing model for individual users."
"We are using the free version of Power Automate."
"This is a cost-effective product and now that it has been acquired by Microsoft, we don't expect the cost to increase with the next release."
"The licensing cost for us at this time is between $8 and $20 per user, per month."
"This solution is bundled with our Office 365, so there is no additional licensing fee."
"It is free for us. It is embedded directly in the Office package."
"This solution is reasonably priced and offers a free trial period."
"The pricing model is very straightforward. You can have a one-year or three-year subscription. You pay for each robot that you want to use simultaneously. If you want, you can install 50 robots and get 50 licenses. If you want to use only one robot at a time, you just need one license. For each license, you pay around 10% or 15% to support. You pay for the license, and you pay a small percentage of the cost of the license for support. This is their licensing model, which is very easy to understand."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Insurance Company
5%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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...
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...
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 ‌...
How is Automation Anywhere compared to Microsoft Power Automate?
‌Neither‌ ‌solution‌ ‌requires‌ ‌any‌ ‌coding‌ ‌experience,‌ ‌and‌ ‌both‌ ‌are‌ ‌easy‌ ‌to‌ ‌use‌ ‌and‌ ‌have‌ ‌great...
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Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate
Power Automate, Microsoft Flow, MS Power Automate, WinAutomation by Softomotive, ProcessRobot by Softomotive, Minit
Micro Focus Robotic Process Automation, Micro Focus RPA
 

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
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
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