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Microsoft Power Automate vs UiPath comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 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
24
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
125
Ranking in other categories
Process Mining (2nd)
UiPath
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
817
Ranking in other categories
Agentic Automation (1st)
 

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 UiPath is 24.5%, down from 26.2% 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.
Navinkumar Sadasivam. - PeerSpot reviewer
Reduces the cost of digital transformation and helps our client reduce their on-premises footprint
Building automation using UiPath is easy and in most cases can be done with a single click. There is no need to write coding. We can insert and delete columns or remove duplicate frames easily. We have already implemented a couple of solutions, one of which is a maintenance automation database. The users of the database want to send emails with attached files and other artifacts, and previously this was done manually. Each day, up to 300-500 items were manually processed by 50-60 people who would navigate to a separate application, search for the file, upload it, and send the email. This was a tedious task and accuracy and reliability were questionable, requiring manual verification. This process was repeated monthly for around 10,000-12,000 items, taking around 25-30 days to complete. We automated this process and provided a high-level solution initially, which was later built, bought, and deployed. The bot we created is capable of processing 900-950 items per day, meaning that all 10,000 items can be processed within eight to ten days. This reduces the processing time by one-third and the cost from 100 to around 12 months, as we only need three to four rotational shifts to monitor the bot. Sometimes the bot may disconnect or encounter issues beyond our control, but we address these promptly to reinstate the process. This is the work we are doing in our organization. End-to-end automation is a crucial aspect of completing tasks within the specified time frame. Clients do not want to wait for extended periods, such as a month or two, and prefer to see progress at least one-third or one-fourth of the way through. This ensures that clients are not preoccupied with a single task and can focus on improving their business while also increasing accuracy. UiPath aims to provide clients with a high return on investment from both the software build and business development perspectives. This is achieved by delivering effective solutions that meet clients' needs. We are satisfied with UiPath's community. Occasionally, we encounter some queries or doubts, such as whether we should use a particular feature or MAC code, or whether we can use a certain file. While we cannot always rely on direct support for such minor issues, we found that the UiPath community can be a helpful resource. We search for similar issues that other users may have faced and posted about, and we often find solutions to our questions in a timely manner. Overall, we find the UiPath community to be effective and useful. UiPath has helped our client reduce their on-premises footprint. This decision is purely based on the client's interests and has nothing to do with our personal or company interests. Generally, clients prefer cloud integration as they want their systems to be up and running 99.9 percent of the time. However, sometimes they may opt for on-premises solutions based on the CDRT of a particular application, which refers to the sensitivity of the data involved. We have some limited automation that deals with sensitive information, such as credit-related automation, which the client cannot access. In such cases, clients may prefer an on-premises solution, but overall, cloud integration is becoming more important. With the implementation of AI, we can utilize UiPath for automation, which is more dependable. UiPath reduces the cost of digital transformation. Our clients are highly satisfied with the nearly 99 percent reduction in human error achieved through the use of UiPath. This includes both individual and team errors. However, during the development phase, some human input was necessary to create rules for the bot to follow. Any potential issues were identified and resolved during testing by our IT and testing teams. Overall, our clients are pleased with the system's reliability and performance.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Compared to other vendors, it's the scheduling tool because a lot of vendors want to charge you extra for their enterprise-level license to have a scheduling tool built in to give you the ability to set up regular schedules to run and do certain data checks."
"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."
"We have found the pricing to be very reasonable."
"I would rate the technical support as a nine out of ten because it is quite fast and courteous."
"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."
"Fortra's Automate performs the job effectively and has the capability to alert us of any issues."
"Web scraping is quite good since it offers a lot of possibilities."
"The most valuable features for my client are timing and scheduling."
"I believe document reading has been beneficial when dealing with Microsoft."
"There is an exhaustive amount of templates that users have access to."
"The solution is pretty customizable. Even big automation tasks are done rather simply."
"Its integration with SharePoint and Outlook is the most valuable. I found it very easy to use. I could do everything that I wanted very quickly, and I didn't have any complications at all. I never had a problem in using Microsoft Power Automate."
"Workflow management is what clients select the most. It is very intuitive and pretty much drag-and-drop, so we can create escalation, decision flows, and if-else conditions pretty much by dragging and dropping boxes. Even someone who is not technical can develop a workflow for the business."
"The product is very reliable and very easy to use."
"The best feature is that it doesn't require any other connectivity."
"Very reasonably priced."
"UiPath Academy courses are great."
"I can also implement end-to-end automation and that means that business owners can hand off these processes and focus on more high-value work. That gives them back hours as well."
"Unattended robots are my favorite because it allows us to completely remove a process from a person's day."
"The most important feature of all is the UiPath community and the forums, as they have helped me with countless questions!"
"We were able to automate a lot of data entry into our financial system. We've automated spreadsheet manipulation in the area of financial management."
"I find the most valuable features are automation and RPA."
"They have also recently added a feature for attended automation, Picture in Picture, which is also nice to have. It's helpful because you don't want to just sit back and let the bot run and not work during that attended automation. Using the PiP feature, you can have it running on your desktop without having to interrupt it to your work."
"The RE Framework provided by UiPath is quite extensive. It solves a lot of problems and gives us a lot of time back. We do not have to create our own framework."
 

Cons

"They do not encrypt passwords, so this is an issue with HIPAA compliance."
"The product also has a limited use case in some respects."
"There is room for improvement regarding cloud functionality; there are a few missing features, and the logging could be better, especially air logging. We can go into logging events and create our own task, but it would be nice if this were more detailed."
"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 OCR for Hebrew text needs to be improved."
"The interface could be more user-friendly and easier to navigate."
"The documentation is not that great."
"I find that most important features are strong, however, there is a lack of good development for artificial intelligence, such as machine learning."
"How long it takes to deploy will depend on how confident you are with your development. The development itself is not easy."
"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."
"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."
"When you are doing desktop automation, they do not have a clear structure to create the code."
"More scripting capabilities could be included in Microsoft Power Automate."
"Looping can be a bit tricky."
"On the governance side, there isn't enough documentation on how to govern Power Automate. People just build bespoke automation, which then becomes a problem point for different companies."
"There are two versions of the automation suite. You've got your cloud functionality, and you have got your on-premises functionality for legacy systems. There are a lot of functionalities between the two systems that don't cross-correlate with each other. A lot of the functionality in the cloud system is not there on the production side in the on-prem system. If they could implement some of the similar functionalities and streamline them for integration, it would be a lot easier. There should be seamless integration between the two systems."
"The support is a little bit lacking, response-wise. Just like in banking, where they give you a relationship manager, they should provide someone who is responsible for a project. That person would be responsible for responding to your queries quickly and efficiently."
"Improvement should definitely be made in the area of screen capture, where Adobe Flash is still being used."
"I'm not sure if UiPath completely supports Slack automation. I've seen tutorials that show you can automate in Slack, however, I've had some real problems with the process."
"The price always has room for improvement."
"It is a little confusing at first. I came from Blue Prism where you have one dashboard and very little jumping back and forth. In Orchestrator, you have menus, and there is a lot of jumping between tabs and sub-tabs to get to the specific information, but once you learn that, it is pretty intuitive. There is just that initial learning curve if you're coming from another system. Blue Prism does everything in the one pane, and even though UiPath is neatly laid out, you just got to learn how they laid it out."
"What we have in mind in terms of what the robots could do for us is significantly more than what UiPath does now, but it takes more work. From my perspective, there is just a wide scope of implementation that goes beyond what we're starting right now. That is essentially the improvement."
"Sometimes it takes time to provide results."
"The cognitive capabilities of UiPath are pretty time-consuming. If that can be improved, it would help a lot."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Once you buy the software, you just pay for the support for backend help."
"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."
"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 comes with a package that costs approximately $20,000 USD per year."
"I'm only involved in running the product and maintaining the systems, so I can't speak to the cost."
"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."
"It's more fragmented licensing, where every little thing that you add, you get an extra license cost."
"There is zero licensing cost. It comes with our Microsoft Office subscription."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being expensive because there are charges for additional plug-ins."
"We are just using the free products at the moment. We are using the ones that come with the license that we have got."
"This is a cost-effective RPA solution."
"Its license is a part of our enterprise agreement. It is a three-year contract, but we pay yearly. So, it is a yearly license. There are no additional costs."
"It depends and varies a lot according to the licensing terms. There is no cost to maintain if we have less than 10 forms. Microsoft only charges if there are more than 10 forms. So, most of the companies can survive without paying anything extra. It is included in the Office 365 licensing."
"There are many different ways to license it."
"UiPath is a pretty expensive tool compared to what the market offers, including open-source alternatives that can do similar things."
"The price of both UiPath and Automation Anywhere is high. The basic package is included in the price, but in case you require any professional or golden package, you have to pay a higher price."
"UiPath is costly compared to Power Automate Desktop, but if you want to do most things, UiPath helps a lot. The more you use it, the cheaper it gets."
"The pricing is very expensive, making it challenging to continue using UiPath when competitors like Microsoft offer cheaper alternatives like Power Automate. Why continue to use UiPath when you're paying three to five times more?"
"For the features and the quality of features that they provide, it's a very reasonably priced product."
"The pricing is competitive, and for large-scale use cases, UiPath may make better sense cost-wise. However, it is not very viable for small-scale use cases. Power Automate is much cheaper and has similar functionalities. UiPath offers two options. If you choose the on-premises option, then you would have to manage it yourself, but if you go for the fully managed one, then there won't be any overhead cost. We are gradually moving to Power Automate and Power Apps because we are already on the Microsoft stack, and it helps us reduce the footprint. If the cost of UiPath were comparable to that of Power Automate, then UiPath would have been the better alternative."
"The initial investment cost is expensive, but I promise you guys this will be very helpful as we can easily automate applications and our productivity has increased."
"Because we have so many agents, that's why we went unattended. Attended was very expensive for us because it's a per person license. Where we can take entire workflows, do the triggering and scheduling, etc. We never have to have any human interaction with unattended."
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Answers from the Community

reviewer1749891 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 27, 2022
Jan 27, 2022
UiPath
See 2 answers
HY
Jan 12, 2022
JV
Jan 27, 2022
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Healthcare Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

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.
What is your primary use case for HelpSystems AutoMate?
We used the platform primarily for task automation, including transmitting EDR files. Additionally, we've utilized it...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortra Automate?
The starter pack was all we needed and was reasonable. Others were either more expensive or didn't do all that I want...
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...
Best RPA tools for IBM iSeries
I can only speak to UiPath since that is the only RPA solution that I have used. I know that there are specific packa...
I am evaluating Blue Prism and UiPath for RPA for my company. Which one do you recommend?
I'm very familiar with UiPath and the RPA industry: was hired by Daniel Dines in 2015 when there were 35 employees an...
What do you like most about UiPath?
UiPath is user-friendly, meaning even without coding knowledge, we only need basic logic understanding.
 

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate
Power Automate, Microsoft Flow, MS Power Automate, WinAutomation by Softomotive, ProcessRobot by Softomotive, Minit
No data available
 

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
1. Accenture 2. Deloitte 3. PwC 4. IBM 5. Capgemini 6. KPMG 7. Ernst & Young 8. Infosys 9. Cognizant 10. Wipro 11. Tata Consultancy Services 12. HCL Technologies 13. Genpact 14. Tech Mahindra 15. DXC Technology 16. Atos 17. NTT Data 18. CGI 19. L&T Infotech 20. Hexaware Technologies 21. Mindtree 22. Mphasis 23. Virtusa 24. Syntel 25. Zensar Technologies 26. WNS Global Services 27. Hexaware Technologies 28. Larsen & Toubro Infotech 29. Persistent Systems 30. QuEST Global 31. Sonata Software 32. Zensar Technologies
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Power Automate vs. UiPath and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
832,765 professionals have used our research since 2012.