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Michael-Peters - PeerSpot reviewer
RPA Architect at Symrise
Real User
Improves accuracy and has the easiest interface and good scalability
Pros and Cons
  • "I like the low-code/no-code approach and the graphical interface. Among all the RPA tools, UiPath is the one with the easiest interface."
  • "Orchestrator needs an overhaul. They have added so many functions that it is sometimes quite hard to find the right settings."

What is our primary use case?

We have a lot of SAP Extract, transform, and load (ETL). We have human resources and time management. We have a very diverse tool landscape due to natural growth. We are in a very early stage of transformation, so we use it to bring information into multiple systems at the same time.

We also have a good few financial use cases related to tax. We work in Europe. Within the EU, there are different regulations, and sometimes, we have very short deadlines. On the third or first business day, we have to get information out of 16 or 17 SAP systems and format them. We have to get them out to Italy and Spain for government stuff.

The objective that we were trying to achieve by implementing UiPath was hard cost savings, but I changed that a little bit. It is not the right technology for hard cost savings. We have now changed it to quality and efficiency, and what they do with quality and efficiency is up to them.

How has it helped my organization?

Currently, we only use the core RPA. We joined the company only eight months ago. We worked for another company before, and that company is at a very early stage. We are setting up our CVs and our citizen development program, so currently, we only use core RPA and core automation services.

We are not using AI yet, but we are about to change that with Document Understanding. In the company where I worked before, we used Document Understanding, and it helped us a lot.

UiPath automations have increased the accuracy of our operations. We have a lot of peak sessions with finance and techs. There are quite high penalties if we get something wrong. For example, if we calculate our tax incorrectly and we pay too much, that does not mean we get the money back. If we pay too little, we also have to pay a penalty fee. We have reduced the error rate by over 25%. We saved 1.24 million last year. That is one aspect. The other aspect is the peak time work. We had a team of people coming in on the third business day at 5 am. I had to download all the reports and things like that because they had to get the report out by 12 pm. If they were not out by 12 pm, we had to pay a penalty. After automation, people came in at 8 am, and the reports went out by 10 am. 

What is most valuable?

I like the low-code/no-code approach and the graphical interface. Among all the RPA tools, UiPath is the one with the easiest interface.

What needs improvement?

Orchestrator needs an overhaul. They have added so many functions that it is sometimes quite hard to find the right settings. They have a tree hierarchy with the host and the tenant. Some settings you do on the host, and some settings you do on the tenant. You need to know at which level you are to find what you need. It all looks very same.

The other thing that I have been telling them for years is the width of the activity. You cannot change the width. I do a lot of training to show something, and I constantly have to go into the advanced editor to show what is in there, but the big thing right now is Orchestrator.

Buyer's Guide
UiPath
February 2025
Learn what your peers think about UiPath. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2025.
839,319 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for 12 or 13 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have not had any issues. If something happened, it happened because of the human network.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is very scalable.

How are customer service and support?

The USA support is okay. I would rate them a seven out of ten.

Their support in Europe is good or very good if you get the right people. I would rate them between six to nine out of ten.

Their support in Asia needs improvement. I would rate them a four out of ten.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have worked with Blue Prism. I have worked with Automation Anywhere. I have worked with what I call the Microsoft suite, which includes Power Apps, Power Automate, and Azure Logic. I worked very shortly with OpenSpan, later known as Pega. I trained at a university. I trained others in automation as part of the robotics lab at the University of Hanover. We looked at several tools there. 

In terms of comparison between UiPath and Microsoft Power Automate, given the use cases for which I normally use them, they both have areas where they are good. If Microsoft could get their documentation right, the attended series of UiPath would be in a lot of trouble. Given the whole unattended and hyper automation or intelligent automation, which is the main focus of UiPath, you need orchestration. That is where the big bucks and the big savings are, but to get the technology out with the attended bots or shadow IT, Microsoft Power Apps and Power Automate are important because they help people understand what technology can do. What we see very often is that people start with Power Apps, sometimes even with a macro, and then they realize that they have hit a certain barrier very quickly. They come to us. Initially, we take what they have and just enhance it with UiPath, and then over time, we bring the functionality from the macro, Power Apps, or Selenium and migrate them into our things.

How was the initial setup?

Currently, we are on-prem, but we are migrating to the cloud in November. We are currently not using the latest version, but with the migration, we will be.

I was involved in its setup. The Orchestrator setup could be easier. There are a few loopholes that you need to understand. UiPath Studio is straightforward, but the setup of Orchestrator has become a little bit more complicated over time. You need to connect them to bots, and you need to know what type of user you need for what type of robot, which has become more tricky. Overall, the setup of Orchestrator and certificates can be a bit challenging.

In terms of the implementation strategy, we took a test server and put it on. We did some testing with our network and information security team, and once they were happy, we moved it out to production.

What about the implementation team?

For the current implementation, we did not take any help. The first one was done by a partner, but they did not do a good job. I did the second installation on my own because I knew how to do it.

In the previous company, they had a partner system. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I do not like the enormous jumps that they have had in the past. The ROI has become a lot harder because of the pricing changes. When you have time to plan for it, the ROI is there. If it was cheaper, it would make my life easier, but on the other hand, it is worth it. These jumps year after year are a problem for me because then I have to go back and say that prices have increased by 30% percent, and I get asked, "For what?" It takes a lot of time.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

In this company, UiPath was already chosen. In the company before, I looked at all the big ones. I chose UiPath for the ease of use. 

What other advice do I have?

I would advise finishing UiPath Academy courses. After you have finished them the first time, finish them the second time.

I would rate UiPath a strong eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Madison McMahon - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior RPA Dev at Aeyon
Real User
Top 20
Gives many options to do things, and saves a lot of time and money
Pros and Cons
  • "A lot of the prebuilt models that are on an AI Center are valuable. Being able to go in there and train your data, give sample data, label the fields, and different OCR methods are also valuable."
  • "UiPath is very stable. I have not had any issues in terms of that. The only issue we used to have was if a website were to change or an application were to change, but we have found ways to work around that and deal with those types of situations."

What is our primary use case?

At Aeyon, we use UiPath to develop custom solutions for our clients that drive innovation and digital transformation within the public sector. We work closely with the US Marine Corps, Army, Navy, Coast Guard, NASA and several other Federal agencies. We have built 50+ automations for a wide range of use cases, but the ones we see most often include financial reconciliation, data extraction using AI/ML Models, data entry, data manipulation/consolidation, downloading/moving files in bulk, data validation, and interacting with various web applications.

The business objective that our organization is trying to achieve with its AI-powered automation initiative is to greatly reduce the time spent on repetitive/clerical tasks and allow the employees more time to focus on the important tasks that grow their business such as collaboration and innovation. Aeyon successfully helps our client achieve this objective by using UiPath to develop solutions that increase efficiency, reduce operating costs, and drive ROI.

How has it helped my organization?

Our AI-powered automation initiative has fundamentally changed what our organization is able to achieve. It has made a huge impact on the way we process documents for not only ourselves but our clients as well. It saved a lot of time and money.

We use AI Center for data extraction on structured and unstructured document types. The pre-built models are very versatile and efficient, and the ability to train custom models makes it a great solution for almost any use case. I feel that AI Center and UiPath Document Understanding were pretty easy to learn. It only took me about a week to learn. There are tons of helpful tutorials and other resources online. I like how it has the prebuilt models as well as the option to be able to go and train your own data, so I would give it a ten out of ten.

It has definitely increased the accuracy of our operations. It has reduced the risk of clerical errors. Document processing has allowed us to be able to compare data for that extra layer of making sure that everything is extracted correctly.

It has freed up a lot of time because instead of having to manually go through and find ways to track data or manually look at it, we are able to use different AI technologies to fit pretty much any use case. For most of our clients, it saves them an average of about 100 hours annually on the smaller processes, and then we have some larger ones where they are even saving about 15,000 hours annually, which is a lot of extra free time for them to focus on collaboration and those kinds of things.

What is most valuable?

A lot of the prebuilt models that are on an AI Center are valuable. Being able to go in there and train your data, give sample data, label the fields, and different OCR methods are also valuable.

What needs improvement?

The improvement is not necessarily in the product itself. The main difficulty we have usually has to do with pricing and identifying the best solution for each specific use case on a long-term scale. If there was an easier way to track the AI unit usage and determine which pricing plan would best fit the need for each use case, then that would be extremely valuable.

UiPath is very stable. I have not had any issues in terms of that. The only issue we used to have was if a website were to change or an application were to change, but we have found ways to work around that and deal with those types of situations.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for about four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Overall, it is very stable. There is low technical debt and monitoring. After a process has been deployed, for the most part, it is stable after testing and everything.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is very scalable. I have had no issues in that department, and I know that they continue to make it more and more scalable, which is awesome to see with each new release.

How are customer service and support?

Their support is great. There are so many resources available online. There is UiPath Academy, and there is the ability to chat with them 24/7. I have never had an issue getting in touch with their representative quickly when I needed help with something. I would rate them a ten out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I started off using UiPath, and then I got a job a few years back where I used a software called Kofax. I was able to see a lot of similarities, but I still felt that it was very limited in its ability to integrate with third-party software. I remember several use cases where I thought that if this was UiPath, I would know how to do it. I noticed a lot of limitations with Kofax. It was a bit of a learning curve going from UiPath to Kofax, and then I realized that there were a lot of things that Kofax was not able to integrate with in terms of third-party software. Based on my experience with Kofax, I definitely feel that UiPath is superior.

I have used Microsoft Power Automate for a few processes. We use that for some of our smaller projects. We just started looking into that as an option as well for certain use cases. It is important to us that UiPath has orchestration whereas Microsoft Power Automate does not because orchestration gives you a way to run processes in the background rather than on your local machine. You can also do event triggering and time schedules. UiPath definitely gives a lot more options and freedom to be able to do things without having to manually run the process.

How was the initial setup?

I was involved in its initial setup. I pretty much came in when it was coming from the ground up. I have helped install it. I have helped customers set their licensing plans and install everything on their local machines so that they can run the automation and get set up with orchestration and all that.

Its initial setup was pretty straightforward. You need to have UiPath Studio installed. They now offer automation. They have UiPath Cloud. You just sign into that, and you have access to Orchestrator and all of those services just right off the web. It is pretty easy to set up.

Our implementation strategy includes getting on a Teams call with the client so that we are able to look at their screen and walk them step by step through various aspects, such as:

  • Where to save specific folders?
  • How to get signed in to the appropriate account?
  • How to access Orchestrator and the logs in there to see if there are any issues with the process?
  • How to monitor it?

We look at their screen and walk them through various things. We keep that communication line open if they ever have issues or questions in the future.

What about the implementation team?

We did not take any external help. Our company did it through our own team members.

What was our ROI?

We try to calculate ROI for all of our clients for projects that we deploy. We usually calculate it in terms of total cost savings annually and also in terms of how many hours of labor are being saved annually. It is cool to see those numbers continuing to grow.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The licensing is very affordable, especially when you compare its benefits. However, I know that AI units are purchased separately and can be costly depending on the specific use case. We are still trying to figure out how to track our usage and which tier or plan to go with, but overall, it is affordable in comparison to other options.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I evaluated Automation Anywhere as well as Blue Prism. At my last company, we were trying to figure out between those two and UiPath. After comparing everything on a wider scale, we realized that UiPath was going to be the better solution for us.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate UiPath a ten out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
UiPath
February 2025
Learn what your peers think about UiPath. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2025.
839,319 professionals have used our research since 2012.
reviewer1642455 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at a real estate/law firm with 201-500 employees
Real User
Top 20
Provides the ability to recognize screen elements, saves us time and costs
Pros and Cons
  • "The ability to recognize screen elements and their robot technology are both very valuable features."
  • "UiPath does not have a delivery product."

What is our primary use case?

We use UiPath to automate business processes.

We use UiPath Orchestrator and other products in the cloud, but we deploy the robots to our own internal network. The robots are managed by the cloud, but they run within our applications on-premises. The UiPath administration system and configuration are also done in the cloud.

How has it helped my organization?

The ease of building autonomous automation depends on the design. In our organization, we have developed a good design that recognizes the business process and the design features. We want to develop it in a way that is easy to follow. If we do this well, it will be easy for the developer to understand what needs to be built. The studio product, which is UiPath's development product, is also a very easy product to use to build the automation.

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation.

They have a large and active user community. If we are a large enough customer, UiPath assigns dedicated account managers, pre-sales staff, and developers to work with us. They also organize community events, such as the one where one of our senior managers was invited to give a keynote speech from a customer perspective on their experience with UiPath. These events are positive and beneficial. UiPath is a large company and is probably one of the top three RPA vendors. As a result, they have a large and active user community.

UiPath has helped us reduce our on-premises infrastructure. We used to have an on-premises administration or orchestration system that consisted of databases and application services. We no longer need that system, as everything is now in the cloud. This is beneficial for managing upgrades, capacity, and costs. UiPath costs us less overall, even though their cloud licenses are slightly more expensive than on-premises licenses.

We use certain UiPath Academy courses to train our developers before they start working on projects. The Academy offers consistent and quick training in all the core elements of UiPath. This saves us time and resources, as we don't have to tie up valuable staff in maintaining training materials or delivering training. The courses are self-paced, so new employees can complete them at their own pace. They are also up-to-date with the latest features of UiPath, ensuring that our developers are always learning the latest skills.

UiPath does not speed up our digital transformation as much as it reduces the cost to a level where we can afford to do our digital transformation. I always consider the RPA solution to be feasible until such time as we can properly transform the business behind the scenes. I refer to it as system automation rather than RPA automation which is a true digital transformation.

It reduces human error by automating repetitive tasks. This means that we no longer have to train people on how to do these tasks, and they can be performed consistently and accurately every time. This is especially important for tasks that require data entry into fields or applications that do not have validation. By automating these tasks, we can avoid the cost of hiring and training people, and we can also reduce the variation in the process. This leads to a more efficient and error-free operation.

UiPath has helped free up our employees' time by automating repetitive tasks that were previously done manually. For example, employees were previously responsible for entering information into multiple systems, which was a time-consuming and error-prone process. UiPath robots can now perform these tasks much more efficiently, freeing up employees to focus on more high-value work. In addition, UiPath has helped us to eliminate the need for some contractors who were previously hired to perform manual data entry tasks. This has saved us money by eliminating those contractor positions. In the last four years, we have used robotic process automation in 90 percent of our processes and fully automated ten percent. This has saved us the equivalent of 200 full-time employees.

We have saved approximately $18 million over the four years we have been using UiPath. These are real savings, as people are no longer doing those tasks. In particular, we have been able to eliminate 100 full-time equivalent contractors. These are hard savings that we can actually measure. UiPath has a tool that allows businesses to identify a process, enter the key steps, and calculate the amount of time spent on those steps. UiPath then magically calculates the potential savings. These savings are real because they are based on the amount of time that people would have spent on those tasks if they were not automated. The results of this analysis are then stored in the Automation Hub tool. This tool allows us to see which high-value processes should be automated first. UiPath is smart enough to tell organizations they don't need to analyze all of the processes themselves. They can let UiPath do it for them. The Automation Hub tool does not go into the details of the design or the automation of the processes. It simply captures the processes that the business has identified as being manual and in need of automation. This gives us a pipeline of work that UiPath can then sell us licenses to automate.

What is most valuable?

The ability to recognize screen elements and their robot technology are both very valuable features. The ability to recognize the screen element that we want to input or extract data from is very good. It is also very extensive. We also like the way that the unattended mode allows us to run it as a background process on a desktop. We can run these things quite well. UiPath's robot technology is very reliable. 

What needs improvement?

I see UiPath as a practical product that is trying to achieve end-to-end automation or end-to-end processing. They are playing in this space and bringing their AI connectivity or components into their product. However, I think the only downside is that, as we have seen recently, for some of the processes we have automated, we have documentation on the technical elements that we have automated, but people have forgotten the business rules. UiPath has a task capture product or a process mining product but it could be improved by capturing the business process and then how the automation that we have developed feeds into that overall business process, and making that available to the business so that they know what the business processes are. UiPath does not have a delivery product. For example, when we go into Microsoft DevOps, UiPath does not do that. Once we have identified the process and have coded it in UiPath, there is nothing to tell us about how we deliver that process, and who is assigned to a task to build the components. There is no project management or DevOps delivery pipeline model inside UiPath, so we cannot manage the development.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

UiPath is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

UiPath is extremely scalable.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is excellent.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The on-premises deployment of UiPath is complex. We had a lot of network issues because we have a secure network architecture. We had to split up our database elements, application server elements, and virtual machines that run the robots. This was complex. High availability was also complex to achieve, as we had to set up load balancing and failover. Finally, upgrading the system was a nightmare. It took forever, and UiPath releases a major release every year. Deploying in the cloud is much more straightforward.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The license cost for UiPath is about $500,000 per year.

I always say that the price of UiPath is too expensive. But if we identify a high-value business process to automate, UiPath becomes a very cost-effective product. A robot license costs $6,000 USD per year, or $10,000 NZD. This is about one month's salary for one person. If we can automate a process that would otherwise require ten people, the investment in UiPath will pay for itself quickly.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism before deciding on UiPath. We are a large organization and can afford the cost of UiPath, but it was more about the functionality of the product at the time. UiPath consistently ranked ahead of the others in terms of functionality, according to Gartner and Everest. I believe we made a wise choice. It is also easier to get developers for UiPath because of their Academy.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate UiPath nine out of ten.

UiPath's AI functionality can be used to help developers build automation processes, but it can be expensive. We use the open-source TensorFlow technology from Google, which is the same technology that UiPath uses. Our developers are willing to build and manage this technology themselves, which is a cost-effective solution. However, if we use UiPath's AI functionality, it will be managed by them.

I am an architect. I have worked as an integration architect, infrastructure architect, and network architect. When I first saw UiPath, I thought it was just for scripting the front end, but it is much more powerful than that. I really like it because it allows me to find slow, expensive, and inefficient business processes and automate them. This can lead to real savings for the business. With traditional applications, there is often a business case that needs to be made before the application is built. But with RPA, we can see the savings every day. For example, if we automate a process that used to take ten full-time employees, we can see that we are saving ten FTEs every day. I enjoy using UiPath because it is a real solution within IT that can drive out real costs from the business.

I recommend that those who want to use UiPath do not treat it like any other IT system. Do not simply implement it and expect it to be of high value. The most important thing is to understand the business well enough to use the tool to its full potential. In other words, automate high-value or high-benefit processes.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1514160 - PeerSpot reviewer
Robotic Process Automation Consultant at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Consultant
Easy to learn, easy to hire resources, and good community and partner support
Pros and Cons
  • "UiPath is much easier to learn than other tools. Its interface is not that complicated. It is very user-friendly."
  • "They should give the flexibility to customers to reduce the number of licenses. UiPath does not want you to reduce the number of licenses. It is not easy to reduce the number of licenses even though there is a provision to do that. It would be good to give flexibility to customers to upscale and downscale whenever they want."

What is our primary use case?

We are a platinum partner of UiPath. We work exclusively for UiPath and do implementations. We provide solutions using UiPath products.

One of the use cases was for a client from the manufacturing industry for onboarding apprentices. We did this project in India. They were onboarding 300 to 400 apprentices. Their insurance and other things were done manually, which was time-consuming. It used to take them a week to complete the whole process, which was a problem in case an accident or incident happened in the first week. They wanted to do automation to ensure that on the first day itself, after the employees are onboarded, the insurance and other tasks are completed.

How has it helped my organization?

RPA as a technology has many benefits. UiPath comes with all those benefits. In addition, you also get flexibility, the availability of resources and new features, the ability to scale up, and an excellent partner ecosystem with UiPath.

As a tool, UiPath is becoming a hyper-automation platform. Every six months, they add something new to the platform. If you want new features, you can subscribe to those. From just an RPA tool, it is becoming an intelligent automation platform. They bring everything into the same platform. When you subscribe to Office 365, you get the entire package from Microsoft. UiPath also does the same thing. They bring automation, process mining, and all other things into the same platform. You can pick and subscribe to whatever you want. You can scale up as you want.

At this point in time, everybody is looking for intelligent automation solutions. UiPath has something known as AI Center that consists of multiple machine learning models. Solutions that have the intelligence to automatically understand and make decisions are the demand of the hour. For example, earlier, invoice processing was template-based. It was done using ABBYY and other OCR tools. UiPath now has a product for document understanding that supports the customers in extracting the details of the invoices without templates. It has a machine-learning model. I have been using their AI Center or document understanding module since 2019. It matures every year. For example, in 2019, if we loaded 15 to 20 invoices, it extracted only 20% of the data, whereas now, it extracts more than 80% of the data because over time, the model has got trained, and it gives better results. 

As a company, they are growing very fast. They are acquiring multiple companies. If they do not have competency in any field, they either partner with other firms or acquire them. They have recently added a communication mining product. It is something that is going to help the BPO industry a lot where call centers have many people taking the calls and rerouting them. Putting a machine learning model or a communication mining product on top of it will definitely help to reduce the effort. It will help with cost reduction and optimization of the existing operations. All the new features that they are adding are aligned with the usage of the platform as an intelligent automation platform.

UiPath also has benefits in terms of resources for implementing automation. If a customer wants to build a COE, they need to onboard resources and train them. UiPath is the easiest in terms of finding resources. For Pega Automation or SAP automation, you may not be able to find as many resources in the market as UiPath.

When clients want to automate a manual process, their expectation is that once automated, they do not want anybody to look into that process. It should run without any human intervention, but sometimes, there are scenarios where human intelligence is required to make a decision or trigger something. For example, if you do automation on a portal, there might be a captcha or multi-factor authentication where you enforce a human to come into the picture. Generally, everybody is looking for automation that runs without any human intervention. If 10 to 15 people do an activity, usually, the customer expectation is that none of those people should have to look into it, but realistically, only about 80% of those employees can be used for other tasks. 20% are still needed to monitor the system. 

UiPath speeds up digital transformation. RPA is normally the first step of digital transformation because it is the technology that you can add with minimal investment. The rest of the things require much more than what is required for RPA. Digital transformation starts with identifying the right candidate for automation and putting a process or a bot to do the processing. After that, you can build AI on top to make decisions. This digital transformation does not require expensive or complex application upgrades or IT application support. If any of the processes require upgrading the existing system or additional licenses, we normally do not recommend RPA for that. We can do automation using API calls and other methods.

UiPath saves time. RPA technology is generally adopted for the reduction in FTEs and time. The time savings vary based on different engagements.

What is most valuable?

UiPath is much easier to learn than other tools. Its interface is not that complicated. It is very user-friendly. Among all other similar tools, UiPath is the one that came out last. It came out in 2016 or 2017. They had the opportunity to understand what are the best features of other tools. They also knew how to put it together so that people pick it up faster. UiPath's founders are from a technical background, so there is a developer-oriented approach, which is another benefit of this solution. In the RPA market, if you want to hire resources, you will get more UiPath developers than any other technology. If any customer wants to adopt UiPath as a tool and build a team, there are more options for UiPath. You get a bigger resource pool to select from. For other tools, you will not find that many resources. This is something that we have seen while hiring people.

UiPath Community is one of the main differentiators from other tools. You can easily compare the number of subscribers of UiPath Community or UiPath forums with Stack Overflow, but Stack Overflow is not just one tool. You have everything there. You have Java, you have Python, and you have .NET. From a technical perspective, queries related to different technologies are there. In UiPath Community, you get the same level of support. I have seen developers solving puzzles and tricky questions. About 90% of questions get answered in the community. The way UiPath promotes its community is also not unique. It is not like anybody else. I have not noticed anything similar to the MVP programs that they run in other tools. They promote people who contribute more to the forum. Anybody who is giving a solution gets marked and evaluated based on the support provided in the forum. They give them exposure on the platform. They mention their MVPs for each year, which is motivating many people. I do not think anybody else is doing that. I have a team of 120 people. I see the motivation in the team to spend an hour or half an hour on a daily basis to see if any questions are there to which they can respond to have an opportunity to get into the MVP segment. UiPath is doing a lot to ensure that there are more active users in the community and people give good suggestions and solutions.

The UiPath Academy is one of the best self-training portals. They have two types of portals. One is for everybody. Anybody can subscribe and log into it and start taking courses without paying anything. They also have another portal for partners, which has more details. They do not have static material. They update the material every six months. When they have a release, they update the information. UiPath Academy is a very good platform for self-training purposes. They also have other training programs such as instructor-led training. UiPath's training and support mechanism is excellent.

What needs improvement?

Their technical support should be improved. Their support has deteriorated with the increase in the number of customers. That is one area of improvement.

They should give the flexibility to customers to reduce the number of licenses. UiPath does not want you to reduce the number of licenses. It is not easy to reduce the number of licenses even though there is a provision to do that. It would be good to give flexibility to customers to upscale and downscale whenever they want.

For low-code development, they already have something called UiPath Apps, but it needs improvement. Generally, to build a small workflow, we use Microsoft Power Apps. Even though UiPath has a local platform, it is not comparable to the Microsoft Power Apps platform. If they invest a bit more in that, for creating workflows, we can use UiPath Apps rather than opting for a third-party tool.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with UiPath since 2018.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Nowadays, all RPA vendors are trying to bring in something new every six months, but they don't get adequate time for doing the testing. As a result, there are multiple bugs. They should stabilize the release, do proper testing, and then only launch it. Otherwise, we need to wait for the next release for a bug to be fixed. Similarly, the training material for all established products from all the vendors is good, but with constant new releases, it is a challenge to get the latest material. They should release the training material before they start selling the product so that everybody is well aware of the features and the issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

With the cloud model, you can subscribe to whatever you want and scale up as you want. You also get the flexibility of a monthly subscription from the cloud. If you want to run automation for one month or a certain period, options are available.

If a customer is subscribed to the UiPath Cloud and wants to add more processes, they just need to ensure that they have their infrastructure on-prem for only putting the robots. The load on the Orchestrator is handled by UiPath. You do not have to worry about that, so scalability is handled by UiPath. These are no issues, but for on-premises, all these things have to be handled manually. You have to increase the storage, but from the product perspective, there is no challenge in scaling up. Today, if we run 100 processes, and tomorrow, if we need to run 1,000 processes, we just need to procure the licenses and additional hardware.

How are customer service and support?

Their support could be better. As the company grew, the number of customers increased, and their support deteriorated. When you raise a ticket, rather than addressing the concern of the client, they just want to close the ticket. It has gone to that stage. This could be because of the number of customers. It was not like this earlier.

We have been working with them for a long time. We know what questions we need to ask. Our concern mainly comes when a client contacts UiPath's customer service. Rather than asking them for additional details, they give a response saying that a particular feature is not supported and close the case. I would rate them a six out of ten at this point in time. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have worked on other platforms, but at this point in time, I am predominantly working on UiPath. I have worked with Blue Prism. I also have some experience with Automation Anywhere and WorkFusion.

How was the initial setup?

I have worked with the on-prem and cloud deployments. In earlier versions, the cloud model was not there. UiPath has a product called Orchestrator, which is an application web server. In on-prem installations, you had to put this application web server on a Windows Server. It then orchestrated the entire automation. You also had to install Developer SDK, called UiPath Studio, on a Windows machine. You had to connect that Windows machine to the Orchestrator tool. For running the process, you needed a bot. You installed that bot on another virtual machine or Windows machine. These were the three mandatory components earlier in 2018.

After that, they brought in the concept of cloud subscription. With the cloud subscription, they install the Orchestrator itself and give a public endpoint to the customer. The benefit is that customers do not need to install Orchestrator on their premises. They can directly connect to the Orchestrator that is hosted on their cloud platform. Of course, they have the authentication and all those things. With the cloud model, there is no requirement of installing their application server inside the environment. UiPath Studio and the bots still remain in the client environment. 

Previously, anybody with Windows experience could do the installation. Our developers used to do the installation, but since machine learning came into the picture, the platform changed because Windows was not able to do the processing. Machine learning requires resources, so they converted the platform from Windows to Linux. If you now want to install Orchestrator with the machine learning model and all other things, it is not a Windows installation. It is a Linux installation, so earlier, somebody with basic Windows skills could do the installation for machine learning models and other things on-prem, but now, this cannot be done by a normal developer. Somebody with Linux experience is required for installation. However, they offer a cloud subscription where you do not need to install anything on Linux. You can directly access the endpoint and start using it. They also offer a disaster recovery tool. UiPath provides something known as HA for on-prem installation. It is a multi-node installation. This HA tool is also installed on Linux, so previously all tools were on Windows, but all the new products or tools are on Linux. They require Linux expertise for on-prem installation as well as knowledge regarding firewalls, etc. You need an infrastructure engineer for that.

UiPath provides training for different roles. They have training for developers, business analysts, solution architects, and infrastructure engineers. These are the four main roles for which they provide training, and these are the four roles that are manually required for implementing the UiPath product.

In terms of maintenance, UiPath updates the product every six months. They have two main releases. They have a spring release and a fall release. They have .6 and .10 releases. If I am installing the 2023.6 release now, they will provide support only for three years, which will be till June of 2026. After that, they will not support it, so customers need to upgrade their environment once every three years. For the on-prem setup, when you do the upgrade, you need to bring down the environment because robots are there. Once they are upgraded, you need to ensure that everything is running properly. It requires the infrastructure team and the application development team to ensure that everything is working fine. It is normally a one-month activity, but it can vary depending on the number of processes. It requires at least two weeks. In the cloud model, product upgrades happen automatically. Orchestrator is hosted in UiPath Cloud, and they upgrade it. There are no issues. You just need to take care of UiPath Studio and the robots in the machine. That can be easily handled by the application development or support team. In terms of support, the number of people required depends on the complexity and the criticality of processes. If you have automated a banking application, you may require somebody for monitoring around the clock.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

They have been increasing the price. The explanation that they provide is that they are adding more features. This works perfectly fine for customers who are looking for new intelligent automations, but there is another set of customers who use UiPath for vanilla, plain automations. Offering them something that is not required and asking them to pay more puts a burden on them. That seems to be a problem for the customers. Many of them have mentioned this concern because it is increasing the prices of automation every year, which is not acceptable to all customers.

As a company, they try to move from on-prem to the cloud. They give cloud subscriptions unless a customer specifically requests an on-prem solution. With the on-prem solution, you will not get the latest features automatically. You need to update it on a periodic basis. There is an overhead in terms of maintenance. In their new licensing model, they charge the same for the on-prem product and the cloud product. For an on-prem installation, you have the infrastructure cost in addition to the licensing cost. By going for the cloud version, you can easily skip the infrastructure cost.

What other advice do I have?

When you start your RPA journey, you should never start with just one process. You should have a pipeline in your mind in terms of the number of processes. You can start small, but you need to have a roadmap of what you are going to do by the end of the year. If you automate only one process, you will not get value from this product. Tools such as UiPath and Automation Anywhere are capable of doing so many complicated tasks. They charge you so that you can do all those things. If you do just a small task with that, your cost and your outcome will not match, and you will not appreciate the platform. That is why I recommend having a roadmap. You should also go for a tool for which you are able to get support when you get stuck. There is no question that UiPath is the easiest one.

RPA as a technology is going to be like Microsoft Excel. Soon, everybody's system will have bots to automate activities. It could be for extracting data from the internet for your analysis or for your project. It will be used for all redundant activities or rule-based processing where you have to extract the data and follow some steps. In five or ten years, it is going to be a mandatory technology. 

Overall, I would rate UiPath an eight out of ten. I am not completely happy with the way they bring out new versions or features in a half-cooked state. Stability or reliability is critical when you are launching something new.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Rohit Khanna - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at Capgemini
Real User
A cost-effective, reliable tool that saves time and improves accuracy
Pros and Cons
  • "It is a very easy and stable product."
  • "The user interface needs a little bit of improvement in terms of performance. Sometimes, it slows down, but it depends on the OS that you have. If you are running it on Microsoft Windows, it is slower than on macOS or Linux."

What is our primary use case?

It depends on the task that is assigned to me, but mainly, I'm using it for PDF automation and Java API-related automation. It is being used for extractions of PDFs and automation of the APIs to get a better and more rapid response.

How has it helped my organization?

UiPath helps a lot in everything related to automation. We have lots of tasks, and we need to get accurate results. Our experience of automating using UiPath has been good. It is easy to get good information or good output from the data.

Its AI capabilities are very helpful for automating more processes. If we want to extract something, we can easily use it. Its AI capabilities make it easy to automate a process and get accurate results.

It works well with all languages, such as Python, Java, C++, etc. It also works with APIs. It is helpful to understand the APIs to extract the data. 

It enables us to implement end-to-end automation. 

It has improved productivity and reliability and saved a lot of time. It has also reduced human error. It has reduced human error by 30% to 50%, and it has freed up employee time by 40% to 60% depending on the task or use case of an employee.

It has reduced our on-premises footprint a little bit.

What is most valuable?

It is a very easy and stable product. 

It saves a lot of time. It increases our productivity, and it also helps with project reliability and scalability.

The courses available on UiPath Academy are helpful if we want to go deep into the UiPath scripts or tools. UiPath Academy is also helpful when we want to learn something new that is available in the new versions or improve our skills and knowledge.

What needs improvement?

The user interface needs a little bit of improvement in terms of performance. Sometimes, it slows down, but it depends on the OS that you have. If you are running it on Microsoft Windows, it is slower than on macOS or Linux.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using UiPath for the last two to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is very stable. I would rate it a 10 out of 10 in terms of reliability. The tool is very secure. If a user wants to run it on a Mac, it works flawlessly.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is very scalable. I would rate it a 10 out of 10 for scalability.

We are using it for multiple departments. We have IT consultancy and IT services, as well as product teams. In my company, there are about 5K people. Some of them are end-users, some are developers, some are admins, and some are testers.

How are customer service and support?

For any issues, we can take the help of the UiPath customer support and the UiPath community.

When we have some issues with the deployment tasks and automation tasks, customer support helps a lot, and they always try to resolve issues in a short time. Their technical support is incredible. They are always ready to help with customer queries and they try to resolve them within hours, not days. Sometimes, they resolve them within 30 minutes, but it also depends on the issue or priority. I would rate them a 10 out of 10.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

This is the first tool that I have been using for the last two to three years.

How was the initial setup?

It depends on the project size. If the project is complex, it takes time. In my opinion, it is straightforward if you know how to use it. If you don't know how to use this tool, it is very difficult. On average, it takes half an hour to one hour.

In terms of maintenance, it requires some maintenance, which is taken care of by the admin side. They have to make sure that it is up to date.

What was our ROI?

It is very cost-effective, and it gives an ROI. It saves a lot of time as well as money. It helps to build client relationships and improve customer feedback. There is a 20% to 30% saving on costs. It has saved $5,000 to $6,000 per year.

The time savings depend on the task and the size of the process. We can save 10% to 50%.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Its price is moderate. It is neither very expensive nor very cheap. Everything is good in terms of pricing.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend it to every developer or software engineer who wants to work on the automation review task. 

Overall, I would rate UiPath a 10 out of 10.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1642377 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior RPA Developer at a marketing services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Reduces costs, frees up employees, and makes building automations easy
Pros and Cons
  • "We had a cost reduction of approximately 20% in our operations."
  • "If I can get a little bit more data and a little bit more customization on Orchestrator, that would be really great."

What is our primary use case?

We have automated tasks within our organization and are automating our marketing applications. Internally, we have automated in-person and webinar event creation for Microsoft. Whenever there is a request for creating an event that is covered on, for example, either on Jira or the Dynamics 365 application, the task makes an API and pulls data from both sources. It then creates an event on Marketo. It runs totally unattended. We have actually saved the build time that was previously around 45 minutes and we have reduced it to just four minutes.

How has it helped my organization?

Previously, we had a build time of around 45 minutes just to process one request. This was kind of a disaster because even in 45 minutes of build time, and this is the average build time, people were making mistakes. When these errors happened, the company had to actually pay money to the client. For example, if a company has an event at 3:00 PM on September 1st, and due to time zone issues, someone manually wrote \ 4:00 PM then people would arrive at 4:00 PM, whereas the event had started at 3:00 PM. Mistakes like that could become a very, very big issue.

Using UiPath, we were able to reduce these kinds of errors. We were also able to reduce the time by more than 90%, just by deploying the bot that could do API calls in order to complete a specific point of data gathering.

For the portion that we automated, the errors that were happening were reduced to 0% and the efficiency was up to 90%.

What is most valuable?

We've found the usability of Studio very easy. It's simple to understand everything. It's very simple to just start developing within UiPath. 

The Orchestrator is fantastic in terms of usability as all you have to do is just need to deploy your bot there. It gives you several options of how to schedule it, how to monitor it, and it also gives you the dashboard that allows you to see the performance of your bot.

I really like the fact that we have a cloud model, where we can actually go ahead and use their cloud to run our bot. That is a very good kind of feature. 

I really like AI fabric and the documented understanding model, as that actually allows us to do a couple of very complex POCs. They went very well and right now, those prefaces are currently in the pipeline. Hopefully, they will get started with them next month.

The ease of building automation using UiPath is very easy. When it comes to comparing it against other tools, UiPath might be the easiest one. It's totally subjective, of course. That said, there are scenarios where automating certain kinds of scenarios with UiPath is not that easy. Overall, it's pretty good at automating all kinds of stuff.

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation. End-to-end coverage is very important. While working with clients like Microsoft and Google, we have to actually go ahead and make sure that you're actually providing all of these kinds of services. With services such as documentation you also need to be on top of the latest market trends. UiPath actually provides us with not only the ability to handle all of this but to also document all of these kinds of things. That is available, either as a part of some other products or is embedded within the Studio itself as a part of an extension. That is something that I really like as that actually reduces the time that I invest in the creation of the documents. That, and the client actually requires all of these documents before even we can go ahead with the contract, makes having them on hand so important. 

The Automation cloud has helped decrease time to value. Earlier, the deployment of an on-prem Orchestrator took around two to three days for proper configuration and for making sure that there's a disaster recovery mechanism. Automation cloud has everything built already within it, which makes things faster and easier. This reduces the amount of time that is required by us to deliver. Within our area of work, within marketing, time is everything. Once you have taken on the project, the client expects you to deliver it as soon as possible. The requirements that you're getting from the client are very, very time-sensitive. If you're essentially not delivering it on time, that is going to be an issue. Automation Cloud actually helps us to do that without thinking about other things. It actually goes ahead and does a couple of things for us that we don't have to worry about, such as deploying the Orchestrator on the cloud, making sure that everything is properly set up, and making sure that the disaster recovery option is there. These kinds of things actually save us days of time for installation, if not days of debugging time. 

It's very important for our company to scale up automation without having to pay attention to infrastructure. There are a couple of projects that we have where we don't really care about the infrastructure. If it is handled by UiPath, it's absolutely fine. However, for example, in the case of some of our elite clients, what happens is that they actually need to know the details and how data is being propagated amongst different servers. If we're not controlling the environment, if we're not handling the entire knowledge, we won't be able to give them the same thing and the project might go away just because of this fact. Therefore, I'm not saying it's not very important. It's actually very, very important. That's why we use both services that are provided by UiPath - both on-prem and cloud. That said, if we have projects where we don't need to worry about it, it's nice to have the option not to.

UiPath has helped us minimize our on-premise footprint. Their customer service has actually helped us reduce that. UiPath was released in 2015. There are experts on this particular thing in the market, and most of those experts are found via UiPath only. When help is provided by UiPath themselves, that can actually resolve the issue in a matter of hours rather than days.

We use attended automation. We usually use attended automation within the HR department. Basically, we're using it for onboarding, for monthly salary management. It's great for automating some of the basic SAP projects as these are the places where we require human interaction, either to handle the credential part or to provide some inputs. This actually helps bring confidence into the process and also phases out the work of a particular human. Automation has integrated with some human day-to-day jobs so well that now when employees come in, the primary thing that they have to do is just to trigger the bot and start providing input. Work that they used to do for the first half of the day, is completed in the first hour of the day. That's the kind of benefit that is being provided by attended automation.

There is good AI functionality and we use it for some proof of concept projects. That said, we haven't yet used it for more complex or involved automation or processes just yet. We have one project in the pipeline that we have to start working on this month. 

We use UiPath Apps. We use UiPath Apps as a form. Essentially, we have created UiPath Apps in such a way that helps HR people to onboard individuals. For example, whenever someone has to get onboarded, they have to actually provide some details in terms of who they are, their previous company, and some other basic details. Also, HR will need to provide some extra details, in terms of who will be the individual's manager, et cetera. Finally, IT has to assign some kind of role. What we have actually done, is we have created an app where a user or a new individual has to actually provide all the information. Then, HR just needs to select the particular role. Everything is pre-configured. We automatically assign specific roles. In terms of IT, we can now automatically assign specific resources such as laptops, monitors, or headsets to that particular person. Since everything is automated, within a couple of minutes of registration the person receives his new ID password and details. Instead of waiting for an entire day, it happens in just a matter of one or two minutes.

UiPath Apps has increased the number of automation we can create while reducing the time it takes to create them. Earlier, we used to create automation, in terms of forms. Those automations were types of attended automation. A person had to have specific access to that particular computer before doing this kind of work. In this scenario, the issue we had was that every time it was not possible to handle manual steps if we were onboarding ten people at a time. Everyone had to wait for their turn and that was not very efficient. What we have done is we have actually deployed UiPath Apps whose links can actually get loaded onto an individual's mobile. One just needs to open it on their mobile and get started. That's it. Everything executes parallelly. We have also made our system scalable so that multiple VMs can learn the process at the same time.

UiPath speeds up and reduces the cost of digital transformation. Doing so does not require expensive or complex application upgrades or IT support.

We have found that UiPath has reduced human error. We were getting some human errors related to time zone issues and some of the other issues such as daylight savings. There were several other issues related to accidental typing or of people not focusing properly, even after several integrations. That's part of the reason we went ahead and automated processes. Obviously, a bot only follows what you have programmed it, what you have programmed within it. The errors are literally reduced to zero within that specific section.

UiPath has freed up employee time. We have actually retrained the freed-up employees into UiPath to act as support engineers. As a rough guess, I would say that we have saved around 120 hours a week just by deploying UiPath.

The additional time enabled employees to focus on more essential work. For people who were actually acting as build personnel, we have re-deployed them as a person who actually interacts directly with clients or who does QA work. This is a higher position that comes with a higher salary as well. There have been promotions simply due to implementing UiPath.

Employees are pretty happy. Initially, everyone was scared that they might lose their jobs. However, but adopting UiPath methods and retraining people, some are even getting promoted and we find that they are actually encouraging automation processes so that new work can come in and the remaining people could also get on better.

The product has reduced the cost of our automation operations. In terms of marketing operations, for example, it has reduced the cost. Along with the help of similar investments, we need fewer people and more bots currently. That's definitely a big thing for us. We had a cost reduction of approximately 20% in our operations. This is just a ballpark. That said, overall, UiPath has saved our organization a lot of costs. I cannot speak to exact savings, as that requires business knowledge, which I do not have complete access to. 

What needs improvement?

The AI Center area could definitely improve. The StudioX model could also improve just a little bit so that the introduction of variables is better and would make it possible to pass on a similar kind of data in between multiple activities. This is a very simple concept, however, this kind of feature is not available within UiPath. 

From the business perspective, a little bit more insight on the dashboard that is currently available in Orchestrator would be ideal. I agree with UiPath having a dedicated tool for insights, however, right now, it's a paid tool. 

If I can get a little bit more data and a little bit more customization on Orchestrator, that would be really great.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using UiPath for three years and eight months. I've used it for the same amount of time the company has used it.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The product is quite stable now. There are certainly some places where UiPath has to work, specifically in terms of actual stability, where there are still some unknown errors that are coming in. 

In terms of Orchestrator, I have noticed there are some places where there are glitches. Things are not very clear at first as everything is changing quite quickly, I'll say that. Even in the enterprise version, everyone wants to be on the very latest version. However, there is a drastic change between the versions themselves.

For example, 2019, 2020, and 2021 versions, all three are drastically different amongst themselves. This kind of change is definitely good for the provider in that they are doing something better. However, as a consumer, I don't really want to go ahead and go through an entire learning curve all over again along with handling my current job of handling all the work, just so that I can cope up with what changes the product team has made. It should not be necessary to go through this level of adjustment for each and every release. At this point, I have been through three to four migrations and in each migration, I have gone through some kind of a learning curve.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Automation Cloud actually helps us to rapidly scale up. We don't have to invest time now in configuring Orchestrator, or the cloud version of UiPath. All we have to do is we just need to basically request for a particular package and, maybe, either with the help of a package or with the help of the UiPath team, it is pre-configured for us. That way, we just need to utilize it. Therefore, scaling is simple.

The scalability is great. It has actually allowed us to schedule the bots or maintain the bots in multiple VMs without having any worries about how to utilize licenses, or how to actually go ahead and deploy the bots manually or install the bots manually on certain VMs. Everything is automated within the UiPath environment.

If we talk about attended users, right now, we have more than 10 people using attended bots. Their roles are essentially from the recruitment team, from HR. Some of the marketing staff are also using it in analyst positions. 

We definitely plan to increase usage and we're using UiPath pretty extensively. We have a couple of projects in the pipeline and currently, we're also working on some of the more complex projects within the team.

How are customer service and technical support?

All the projects are having a specific date of delivery. Everything is running parallel as we also follow an Agile method. In this Agile method, if something is stuck, it will eventually impact the date of delivery. And we really don't want that. UiPath actually helps us a lot by providing 24-hour support and it helps us in setting a lot of the items we need to use. They do it quite easily and quickly.

On the scale of one to ten, it's definitely a ten. Whenever I have a doubt, they are always there. They even offer to get on a call with them and actually go ahead and resolve the issue themselves, if they know how to do it. 

Many times, there have been scenarios where the issue was unique to us. They actually presented us with some debugging steps that we can do on our end. Most of the time, those debugging steps actually helped us to resolve the issue. When none of these options work, they were very keen to figure out how they could actually improve the experience and what could be implemented by the developers within those specific parts of the product in order to resolve the issue. We have given them feedback in the past and in a couple of future versions, we were able to see those ideas implemented.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were using AutoHotkey before this product, as well as Selenium. However, after implementing UiPath, we have not used anything along with it.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward. The installation of the Studio was quite straightforward. We just had to go through all the legal terms and everything. Once we went through those, we just had to install it. The same thing is true for Orchestrator as the on-prem installation of Orchestrator is pretty straightforward. You just have to get the setup, link it with the skilled server, and then install it. 

Apart from that, the configuration within Orchestrator was very simple as there is only one file that allows us to log on to everything. It made it pretty obvious.

The deployment took somewhere around two days for the entire setup. 

In terms of the implementation strategy, firstly, we decided to set up all the databases and all the dashboard-related services such as Power BI. We decided to do this first due to the fact that the dashboards and databases are the base of any application. 

We decided to implement it first in Azure. On the same day, we decided to get the cloud version of the Orchestrator as well. It was quite easy in terms of Azure. There's a three-way plugin that is available there. We just had to install that on the specific VM and we were done. Finally, on the second day, we went ahead and installed all of the Studio. Once Orchestrator is up, we could install Studios and link them to Orchestrator in order to get the license. That was our strategy and our approach.

We essentially have one dedicated resource for maintaining all the deployments and to watch if anything goes wrong. We have three dedicated resources for maintaining all the bots that are currently running as well. We don't need a big team to maintain everything. 

What about the implementation team?

In one of our projects, we actually used Azure Cloud for the deployment of Orchestrator and the deployment of packages. The experience is quite good. Azure provides the DevOps side of our service that allows us to set up the pipeline and automatically deploy any kind of project to the Orchestrator as soon as it is committed.

What was our ROI?

While the company has likely been looking at ROI, I don't directly deal with those details.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

A couple of our clients cannot actually go ahead with the initial investment of Orchestrator as it costs quite a lot. The thing is that we don't need that much of a license in order to automate our processes. Having a free version of a cloud or having a cheaper version of Orchestrator has actually helped a lot.

Automation Cloud helps decrease UiPath's total cost of ownership. However, overall, if we talk about scalability, once the number of licenses that I need increases, ultimately, Automation Cloud might be a bit expensive. It depends upon the version you're using. Yet, since the license cost is increasing, what happens is if you go ahead and buy more than five licenses, then essentially you would have been in better shape if you would've actually bought the paid version of Automation Cloud and installed it on-prem. That would've been a cheaper option. It's subjective. Our scenario is just that we need two unattended licenses to do the job.

Some of the clients do consider the initial investment of UiPath to be expensive. It's seen as expensive specifically from the cost of getting a licensing for an on-premises setup. For some projects, UiPath can be overkill. However, it is the best software a company can invest in for automation purposes. 

I cannot speak to the exact cost, as I don't handle licensing directly.

It's paid per year. We get licenses not directly from UiPath. Rather, we get them from a vendor.

There are additional costs as well. For example, the cost of an SQL server is one. We are definitely using the Azure product suite as well. We had to actually invest quite a lot in SQL Server in terms of database management, just to make sure that everything gets logged properly and that the Orchestrator is functioning properly. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We switched to UiPath after we compared multiple tools. We looked at certain parameters such as the ability to automate marketing tools, the ability to automate quickly, and how user-friendly it was. Out of all these three parameters, UiPath stood on top.

We looked at Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, and PEGA.

What other advice do I have?

I specifically have been using the community version of UiPath. The company has been using the enterprise version.

We do use the Automation Cloud offering.

We do not use the SaaS version of the solution. 

I'd advise users to give it a try. I started my career in UiPath and since then I've been loving it. I became a UiPath MVP as I really enjoy working with the product so much.

That automation does not need to be very complex, so you don't need very complex tools to automate any software. Tools like UiPath can do most of your job.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
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Solution architect at Incite corp
Real User
Top 20
The prompt-based workflow-building feature, where you can use natural language to build workflows, is impressive
Pros and Cons
  • "I appreciate the orchestration capabilities and document processing integrations."
  • "Sometimes, it takes a while to open and launch workflows, and this speed issue could be addressed."

What is our primary use case?

We have been using UiPath for almost the last five years in the industry, where a lot of research development, and clinical trials are happening. Many of the processes are centered around clinical trials, especially around translation. 

Being a global company, we conduct a lot of clinical research involving various languages and regulations. Earlier, we were outsourcing translation services, which presented security and timing challenges. 

With UiPath, we built bots that collect clinical trial documents from various sources and translate them into the desired language, ensuring security and faster delivery. We no longer need to outsource, and translations are now super fast, sometimes within hours.

How has it helped my organization?

UiPath has significantly helped our organization by providing solutions that save time and enhance efficiency. It has automated many tasks, allowing our staff to focus on other projects. 

We've built attended bots for research analysts who can now complete tasks while attending meetings. These bots save 5,000 to 8,000 hours yearly, contributing to our overall efficiency and allowing us to save a lot of money. UiPath has also enabled us to achieve outcomes like speed, scalability, security, productivity, and quality.

What is most valuable?

The user experience that UiPath offers, particularly the ease of use with the Studio's drag-and-drop feature, speeds up development significantly. 

The connectors available in integration services are helpful for quickly connecting with applications like Salesforce and ServiceNow

I appreciate the orchestration capabilities and document processing integrations. 

Additionally, the prompt-based workflow-building feature, where you can use natural language to build workflows, is quite impressive.

What needs improvement?

While UiPath is exceeding my expectations, there is room for improvement, particularly in the studio's performance. Sometimes, it takes a while to open and launch workflows, and this speed issue could be addressed. Additionally, the support could be improved, especially regarding the availability and expertise of support engineers.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using UiPath for almost the last five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

UiPath is very stable. I have never experienced any bugs in the product.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

UiPath has always met our expectations in terms of scalability, as we can scale it across the global enterprise level.

How are customer service and support?

Support is one area that could always use improvement. There have been challenges in getting timely support, especially during emergencies, and sometimes we don't get experienced engineers to solve problems.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

In my career in digital transformation over the last fifteen years, I have used tools like Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere. However, UiPath has proven to be superior because of its ease of use and continuous improvement.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of UiPath was straightforward and very quick. It took only a couple of hours to set up the environment.

What about the implementation team?

I handled the implementation in-house with the support of UiPath and have been involved in every phase of the development life cycle, from infrastructure setup to discovery and deployment.

What was our ROI?

We are saving almost five million dollars every year. Our bots save about 5,000 to 8,000 hours yearly, equating to roughly $5 million to $7 million dollars in savings annually.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing could be reduced as Microsoft Power Automate is becoming a strong competitor. There is a significant difference in cost between UiPath and Power Automate, with Power Automate being more affordable for some automations.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

In the past, I have worked with Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere. I find UiPath to be superior due to its user-friendliness and innovative features.

What other advice do I have?

Always explore using AI first, as it is often a cost-effective and simple solution. UiPath's integration of AI workflows in a user-friendly way brings a lot of potential for automation.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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DEBASIS SAHOO - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at Cozentus
Real User
Top 20
Is user-friendly, easy to learn, and manage
Pros and Cons
  • "UiPath takes the complexity out of automation by using a low-code approach."
  • "UiPath's extensive built-in features, like communication mining, can be overwhelming to learn due to the sheer volume."

What is our primary use case?

UiPath is a software tool used in Robotic Process Automation (RPA) that allows you to build automated workflows to handle repetitive manual tasks in your daily work. It can automate tasks across various environments including Windows, Citrix, and using image recognition. Additionally, UiPath is incorporating artificial intelligence and machine learning, with generative AI specifically enabling you to develop automation in a wider range of fields like healthcare, telecommunication, and manufacturing.

UiPath offers deployment flexibility: we can install it on our servers on-premises or choose their cloud service, UiPath Automation Cloud. While they provide their option, UiPath is also compatible with other cloud platforms for deployment.

How has it helped my organization?

Building automation is easier with UiPath than with Automation Anywhere or Blue Prism. UiPath's centralized platform offers a more intuitive user experience, and its extensive online community provides readily available answers to your questions.

It allows for the creation of end-to-end automation workflows, even for tasks with imperfect results. For instance, if an AI extracts data from a PDF with a low confidence level, UiPath can trigger the creation of a ticket in an action center. This ticket would then be assigned to a human for review, who can confirm the data's accuracy or return the document to the AI model for improvement.

Over the past nine years as a UiPath user, I've witnessed a wealth of new features emerge. The UiPath user community has been an invaluable resource throughout this journey, providing both learning opportunities and solutions to our automation challenges.

UiPath has been a game-changer for us, reducing costs, improving scalability, minimizing human error, and saving significant time. Their user-friendly platform allows us to automate processes in as little as 15 days, and with the free UiPath Academy courses and community edition, we have everything we need to learn and practice at no cost.

UiPath Academy offers beginner-friendly courses with step-by-step instructions and video tutorials, making it a great resource for those new to the world of UiPath and automation.

UiPath speeds up and reduces the cost of digital transformation andreduces human errors by automating repetitive tasks where errors can be caused due to fatigue or illness.

UiPath helps free up our staff time to work on other tasks. What would take a human, for example, ten minutes to complete, takes the robot seconds. Ithelps save our organization money.

It is easy to learn.

What is most valuable?

UiPath takes the complexity out of automation by using a low-code approach. Instead of writing intricate macro scripts, we simply drag and drop pre-built elements to create our automation, making it accessible even for those without extensive coding experience.

What needs improvement?

UiPath's extensive built-in features, like communication mining, can be overwhelming to learn due to the sheer volume. This learning curve applies across platforms; switching to another company would require mastering new skills like business analysis and product management. Additionally, the modern analysis process demands deep dives into code and solution levels, making it a complex task to achieve.

There's a need for greater emphasis on applying AI and machine learning to enhance technologies like Optical Character Recognition, fingerprint scanners, and facial recognition systems.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for almost nine years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

If one of our machines goes down, UiPath will resolve the issue within 24 hours.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is good.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

While we've experimented with Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, and Microsoft Power Automate, they lacked UiPath's ability to centralize all our automation initiatives. Choosing the right RPA tool requires careful consideration of cost, functionalities, and the specific features each platform offers.

How was the initial setup?

The cloud deployment is straightforward. The logs are all maintained in the orchestrator. 

What was our ROI?

The return on investment from automation grows with the number of processes automated. This translates to greater cost and time savings, freeing up resources to tackle new projects that can generate additional revenue.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

UiPath is expensive. The license types depend on the deployment method and the number of bots required.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate UiPath eight out of ten. UiPath is user-friendly, easy to learn, and manage.

UiPath introduced communication mining in the last two years. We do use it but the use cases are primarily for the health sector and insurance sector but they have been steadily declining.

UiPath's cloud deployment offers a hassle-free experience – they manage the infrastructure and maintenance, so we don't need to worry about any hardware or upkeep on our side.

Six people in our organization use UiPath.

While running UiPath on-premises with a high volume of bots might involve some minor maintenance tasks for us, the cloud-based option takes care of everything – UiPath handles all the maintenance on their end.

UiPath offers a multifaceted platform, requiring users to learn distinct aspects based on their roles. Developers will delve into coding and automation creation, IT business analysts will focus on process design and optimization, product managers will manage the automation lifecycle, and salespeople will highlight the product's capabilities to potential clients.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Buyer's Guide
Download our free UiPath Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: February 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free UiPath Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.