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Microsoft Power Automate vs Redwood Software - Finance Automation Edition 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
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)
Redwood Software - Finance ...
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
18th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Financial Close Software (10th)
 

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 Microsoft Power Automate is 20.7%, down from 21.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Redwood Software - Finance Automation Edition is 0.4%, 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.
Amarjeet Kamble - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly and enables automation in finance, HR, and SDM
There is room for improvement, considering no tools having everything inside it is right. So the room for balancing improvement lies in automation enhancement with respect to the feature areas, considering dealing directly with Excel and reviewing it to do some additional stuff for it in the end system so that reading the right thing, picking up the values, and everything. Right now, you can do it with a little bit of custom scripting in addition to eight. But rather than custom scripting, if we can have a direct feature integrated inside this tool, it will be a major achievement. So, it already has that capability, as you can do custom scripting, and you can go ahead with creating your own. But the direct functions are not available. That's where we are lagging behind. However, importing the values or importing the service can be achieved. So, that is where I can see the room for improvement. In this particular area, the entire system can be improved.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"A great feature that you seldom see in these kind of systems is the ability to use a database as trigger to launch a task. This is something I asked for a few years ago and that was added."
"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."
"The licensing of the product is very good. You only need to license it once and then you have it forever."
"The interface is simple, user-friendly, and very intuitive."
"The pricing is excellent. I would give them perfect marks in that regard."
"We have found the pricing to be very reasonable."
"We are still in the process of rolling it to production and tweaking it (our AD groups are a mess), but the improvements are priceless. Having users ID's created the same way every time without human error is the best part. We don't need to worry about why groups were not added, user rights not set to folders or missing a private folder being created, typos or just even knowing when things are done and logged."
"Web scraping is quite good since it offers a lot of possibilities."
"It comes as a part of the Microsoft suite, which makes it an easy sell."
"The solution helps automate manual tasks and interacts with multiple applications."
"This product has an easy-to-use interface with nice detail in the features."
"Its ease of use is most valuable. A lot of the bulk functionality is done either through standalone or custom connectors and standard API processes."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Power Automate is the many functionalities, and ease of use. We had summer interns from college in their second year of engineering and they were able to start the building process quickly within a day."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the cost and ease of use, it's very simple."
"The most valuable feature is that it is pretty low-code, so you don't need much coding expertise to use it."
"I believe document reading has been beneficial when dealing with Microsoft."
"So the best thing is ease of use."
"Redwood has a great feature where it logs every transaction. So, at any point, we can see every step taken for each transaction. It creates an audit trail of the entire process execution. It is a really good feature. This eliminates the need for extra coding or report generation. The audit report is readily available within the tool itself."
"The out-of-the-box finance modules within the Redwood Finance framework help to speed up the process, versus designing and writing generic BOT code."
 

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."
"The technical support could be better. We suffer from language barriers, as we are in Argentina."
"The product also has a limited use case in some respects."
"I would prefer not having to log in to update a ticket; being able to respond via email would be beneficial."
"I would like to see some better web automation, a wizard like the one in the product WinAutomation would be very nice."
"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."
"Fortra's Automate is not as reliable as I would like it to be."
"The solution has a very weak knowledge base."
"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 would be good to have some kind of on-premises solution for BPMN users, but I don't think Microsoft will ever go back to the on-premises solution. They all train their clients to use their online services. It is easy, but it doesn't follow the industry-wide standards. I can only use the processes that Microsoft gives us. I can't map a business process by using other standards or notations, such as Business Process Management (BPM). I have to use whatever Microsoft gives us. I would like to have support for some standards because if we decide to use another BPM tomorrow, we will have to remap everything in notation to transfer from this solution. This is the only block or obstacle that I see in using this solution. It is closed in its infrastructure."
"I would recommend removing the AI Builder feature from the automatic document processing functionality. The tool can serve even better with free automatic document processing features, it shouldn’t only be available in the trial version."
"When we scale up, we switch to another application."
"The issue lies more in how you learn the solution. The information is very generalized. It could be extremely useful to have more specific information about how to use various features within the platform."
"Not suitable for connecting other applications like browsers and third party applications."
"It lacks a lot of functionality that other tools have. There should be queue management, and there should also be the capability to deal with a little bit more complex automation. If it had queue support and if it was capable of doing more complex automation, it would be a much better tool."
"Sometimes there are issues with security policies within the company. Some parts get blacked. There are some drawbacks when we use it connected to the cloud. We need to convince clients to open some parts. This is often an issue that originates from the company itself, not Power Automate."
"Mapping the process steps to an existing R2R process quickly would be a definite step forward."
"The room for balancing improvement lies in automation enhancement with respect to the feature areas, considering dealing directly with Excel and reviewing it to do some additional stuff for it in the end system so that reading the right thing, picking up the values, and everything."
"would like to see AI integration for automation in future releases. Post-automation, I envision a generative AI model. If I could ask the bot questions like the number of invoices or their current status, it should be able to provide answers directly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Compared to other products, the pricing model for this solution is much more convenient, flexible, and adaptable to the Portuguese reality."
"It comes with a package that costs approximately $20,000 USD per year."
"The cost is a bit high for a small business like ours, but we manage with Fortra's Automate."
"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."
"From a distributor's perspective, one of the biggest selling points of Automate is its price point."
"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."
"The free version is quite good."
"The solution is $150 per month for the unattended add-on, and the normal Power Automate comes with an E3 license."
"I give the cost a three out of ten."
"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."
"There is zero licensing cost. It comes with our Microsoft Office subscription."
"The licensing model is flexible in that you can pay per automation or per user. My client receives a discount because of the large number of users and pays approximately $15 for each one."
"With our Microsoft Office 365 license, we are able to use Microsoft Power Automate."
"Currently, we are using the free license for testing. After everything is done, we'll buy the license."
"The licensing was purely based on the number of transactions being processed in production."
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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
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
 

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...
What do you like most about Redwood Business Process Automation - Finance Edition?
Redwood has a great feature where it logs every transaction. So, at any point, we can see every step taken for each t...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Redwood Business Process Automation - Finance Edition?
The pricing is very client-specific. It's not a one-size-fits-all price. They don't have a single price for everyone....
What needs improvement with Redwood Business Process Automation - Finance Edition?
Everything seems to be working well. However, I see value in integrating AI for automation. So, I would like to see A...
 

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate
Power Automate, Microsoft Flow, MS Power Automate, WinAutomation by Softomotive, ProcessRobot by Softomotive, Minit
Redwood Business Process Automation - Finance Edition, Redwood Robotics, Redwood Finance Automation
 

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
ArcelorMittal, Alliant Energy, Allianz, Arla, Bacardi, CPS Energy, DSM, Faurecia, Genetech, Jabil, Jumbo,
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Power Automate vs. Redwood Software - Finance Automation Edition and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.