Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

ABBYY Vantage vs IBM Datacap comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 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

Automate
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (5th)
ABBYY Vantage
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (7th), Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (1st)
IBM Datacap
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (6th)
 

Featured Reviews

Jane Rachma Kiniti - PeerSpot reviewer
Automate has streamlined workflows and increased efficiency with powerful automation
The best features of the solution are the flexible automation features, it is rich with beautiful connectors, and it is easy to use with little to no coding knowledge required to get started, so anybody can use the tool. The intuitive interface of Automate has an intuitive design, which makes it easy to learn and use even without a strong technical background, and it has a drag-and-drop interface, which makes everything so easy and straightforward. The error handling capabilities in complex automation tasks are powerful, as it handles all types of tasks, whether complex or simple. I've never faced any problems even when dealing with complex tasks, so everything is super smooth and highly reliable, even when dealing with big tasks, as it has never slowed down. Automate's compatibility with existing IT infrastructure has impacted our business operations positively by providing smooth integration with other software that we use, such as Gmail, Jira, and Microsoft 365 apps, which gives us a unified platform instead of having to keep switching from one software to another, saving a lot of time and streamlining the whole workflows. The automated analytics have helped improve our business processes since it has increased our efficiency by automating our everyday tasks, freeing up time for us to focus more on strategic activities such as analyzing data and developing new business strategies. It is also cost-saving. By minimizing manual labor, it decreases human errors that can lead to costly mistakes. By automating the tasks, it helps to save costs, and it also improves our accuracy by reducing these errors to ensure that tasks are done almost perfectly.
Amr Hammad - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables efficient information extraction with strong OCR capabilities
The solution itself is valuable due to its ability to classify and extract information with embedded OCR, which is good. ABBYY has a very good OCR in both Arabic and English. Additionally, they have a new version called Vantage, which is cloud-based. However, we still work with the old version because most of our clients are government entities.
DeekshithShetty - PeerSpot reviewer
High-accuracy document processing with easy integration and good image enhancement
The OCR extractions are very good, almost 100% accurate now. The integration with other tools is very easy, with inbuilt actions to configure and directly export to multiple depositories. It is also good at image enhancement, including the removal of lines, which is helpful in processing and automation and ensures very little user intervention, thus saving time.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability to connect to websites and pull data is the solution's most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature is the drag-and-drop interface, which is very Windows-like."
"The best features of the solution are the flexible automation features, it is rich with beautiful connectors, and it is easy to use with little to no coding knowledge required to get started, so anybody can use the tool."
"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."
"The licensing of the product is very good. You only need to license it once and then you have it forever."
"We have found the pricing to be very reasonable."
"The best feature of Automate is its ease of use, which is a major selling point."
"I like the interface; it makes managing automation easy. We can set different schedules and templates for each task."
"I like the flexibility of the layout. For example, for the documents that we're using, this is the main feature that is very useful and makes it flexible for extraction."
"The UI is user-friendly and ABBYY Vantage supports over 100 languages."
"The initial setup is not difficult. The vendor provides technical documents to assist with deployment."
"The machine learning capability is pretty good."
"The solution itself is valuable due to its ability to classify and extract information with embedded OCR, which is good."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ability to extract content from documents. It is able to identify specific fields and special characters."
"It's a very useful and user-friendly product."
"We like the fact that this solution is enterprise-ready, so it can be deployed on-premises, scale it, etc."
"It's resiliency. There are multiple ways of identifying what you are looking for. There are multiple export formats."
"The most valuable features of IBM Datacap is the capturing and recognizing of pages, documents as well as the scanner and barcodes."
"At the forefront of my thoughts, the standout feature of this intelligent product is its remarkable capability. This project we're currently engaged in revolves around streamlining workflows within both our company and the customer's company. It entails handling information from various documents with diverse formats and types, even when they contain the same data. The ability to connect this information with the appropriate database and recognize it irrespective of the format or source is an extremely valuable feature. Moreover, leveraging machine learning is crucial since our customer deals with an extensive archive of over five million documents. Machine learning can significantly alleviate the backlog by becoming well-versed in various scenarios they might encounter during their work once we've completed our application."
"It is highly extensible, which we found to be most valuable. It is a very extensible solution because it is based on configurable rule sets. We were able to amend and adjust the solution and very easily add custom code and custom components. It does require some programming experience, but we found that not to be an issue. We liked its extensibility."
"It reduces human error and saves time."
"I work for an insurance company, and we use Datacap for document processing."
"The installation of the solution is very simple."
"It is very easy to develop this software. It is low code, and if you can't find the things you need on it, you can develop custom actions with more complex code underneath. They sync well, which is very useful for automating a lot of processes. It is a really valuable feature for the clients because we can ingest information and automate plenty of processes for them. The operators don't have to waste that much time on tasks. With Datacap, they can be automated."
 

Cons

"The OCR for Hebrew text needs to be improved."
"The workflow for variables could be better. The input and output of task-level variables could be made a little clearer in terms of passing those around from one task to another upon success, etc. Things like that could be a little easier potentially."
"The user interface could be slightly enhanced to make it more modern."
"The technical support could be better. We suffer from language barriers, as we are in Argentina."
"Currently, there are many instances where I see empty logs, indicating that, while tasks are scheduled, commands are not executing successfully."
"The documentation is not that great."
"They do not encrypt passwords, so this is an issue with HIPAA compliance."
"Fortra's Automate is not as reliable as I would like it to be."
"The price for trainings or certifications are on the very, very high side."
"One major area that requires improvement in ABBYY Vantage is its current JSON output format."
"ABBYY Vantage could improve the processing of handwritten notes."
"The lack of patch update notifications creates a blind spot."
"ABBYY Vantage is mainly available on the public cloud but for clients that use a private cloud, it is complicated to set up the solution."
"Occasionally, we found the Machine Learning feature to be not working as per our expectations. Sometimes, it also failed to extract details from a PDF. It would be great if training batches work with 100% accuracy. I don't see any other major concerns with ABBYY FlexiCapture."
"It's important to incorporate image detection for signatures or other handwriting elements."
"Their tutorials are not enough. They can improve the tutorials and maybe add more examples in their tutorials. Currently, if you want to learn ABBYY technology, it is very difficult. There are just a few resources, such as YouTube channels and blogs. There are not many resources for learning ABBYY."
"What could be improved in IBM Datacap from a technical perspective is having everything together all in one place, rather than having several different interfaces. The addition of cloud-based OCR technology would also make this solution better. There's also room for improvement for their technical support."
"It can take some time to implement."
"Speed of OCR is one issue. It's a challenge because we have customers that have millions and millions of pages that they want this solution to crank through. In order to do that you have to have a large infrastructure in place, and that directly impacts licensing based on the core count."
"We have page requirements where some values must be copied on each page. For example, say I need to scan a bunch of documents, and the name will be a field on every page. We don't have a default functionality in Datacap to copy the field value on the first page to all the pages. That feature would make the documents easy to prepare."
"Datacap has performance issues when processing large volumes of documents. We're doing 18,000 pages daily. Scanning takes almost 20-30 minutes, but it normally takes one or two minutes. We informed IBM and opened a ticket for that. They forwarded the issue to developers but didn't give a specific timeline for it to be resolved. Version 8.1 is already at the end of support."
"I've faced some bugs or issues. They should do deeper testing of the product before releasing it because some of the bugs that I found were a bit simple. I understand that it is a massive product, and some of the functionalities can get overlooked."
"Recognition between certain numbers and letters could be improved. Sometimes this solution misreads five with an "S" for Singapore."
"The interface can be more intuitive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Compared to other products, the pricing model for this solution is much more convenient, flexible, and adaptable to the Portuguese reality."
"I believe the price falls within a reasonable range, which significantly influenced our decision regarding the product. This aspect is crucial for any technological solution, especially in our country where enterprises might be hesitant to invest heavily in something untested or uncertain about its practicality and potential returns."
"It comes with a package that costs approximately $20,000 USD per year."
"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."
"It has gone up in price. The price of Fortra's Automate has increased since we first started using it. It does a lot but also costs a lot. It was a lot more affordable before Fortra owned the software."
"I like the way this solution is priced because you can buy a license, or you can buy the software outright."
"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."
"Once you buy the software, you just pay for the support for backend help."
"It is more on the reasonable side as compared to the competition that I am aware of. I'm not an expert on pricing schemes for all sorts of things, but when we offer them a solution, we like to say we're agnostic. So, we offer more than one solution when possible. Amongst the ones that we've offered, ABBYY usually is the more reasonable solution on a big scale. On a small scale, they're all pretty similar. As far as I understand, you pay a license for a number of pages, and that's pretty much it. It has just the rate per page, and it decreases as you scale."
"The price of this ABBYY FlexiCapture is a bit expensive and the price is based on how many documents have been captured. For example, one or two million captures."
"We were able to qualify for a reasonable price. The price is in the low to medium range compared to other solutions."
"They have a trial license that is limited to a certain number of pages. The paid license varies from six months to one year depending on the number of documents that need to be processed."
"ABBYY is fairly priced."
"The price of ABBYY FlexiCapture is better than some competitors, such as OpenText."
"It costs 5,000 Euro per year for one license. There are almost 500,000 pages available, so I think the price is good for what we have. It's worth the money."
"Our company receives discounts because of our good partnership with the vendor and our vendor's partnership with ABBYY."
"If you want IBM Datacap on cloud, which is a service run by IBM, the price can be quite expensive, but if you want to just purchase the licenses and own those yourself, then the price is very competitive."
"Pricing depends on how much we use it. We pay per bulk quantity. We pay as you go. Therefore, it sort of depends on our usage of it."
"IBM could offer more competitive pricing. This would allow them to attain more users. Some of our clients are considering moving to a different solution called Encapture which is similar but offers more competitive pricing."
"This solution offers seamless integration with other enterprise products, which is my area of responsibility, focusing on government sector projects. Larger enterprise projects don't pose problems. It might be suitable for small businesses as well."
"You save a lot of time and money, but the benefit is you have people who are able to run the systems, check to see if there are any errors at all, and there are a lot less errors than a human system."
"In Egypt, we have exchange rates that change year to year, and currently, we're facing an increase in the exchange rate between our Egyptian pound and the dollar. Since we have been using IBM DataCap two years ago we had a good price, it was not expensive. However, I cannot say now if it is expensive or not because of the exchange rate. Additionally, I don't have the data of other competitors and I don't know the prices."
"Pricing needs to stay competitive."
"This solution is the most expensive in the market."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) solutions are best for your needs.
869,513 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Performing Arts
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise12
 

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?
My main use case for Automate is to deliver enterprise-scale script execution jobs, which means we are using Automate...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortra Automate?
Until now, I have not specified any other tech products except Microsoft Power Automate, N8N, and Make.com that I've ...
What do you like most about ABBYY Vantage?
Vantage is flexible and customizable. It's a low-code/no-code tool, so you don't need to get into detailed coding. Yo...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ABBYY Vantage?
I would say the pricing is in the middle. It's neither high nor low.
What needs improvement with ABBYY Vantage?
The vendor invoice processing skill of ABBYY Vantage could be enhanced by adding more fields that are commonly used a...
What do you like most about IBM Datacap?
The installation of the solution is very simple.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Datacap?
Pricing is in the mid-range but could be more affordable, rated at four point five.
What needs improvement with IBM Datacap?
IBM needs to improve on scanning and reading accuracy for unstructured documents. Additionally, an important missing ...
 

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate
ABBYY FlexiCapture
Datacap
 

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
NHS,  Carlsberg,  DHL,  Societe Generale,  Citi bank,  Deloitte,  3M,  Volkswagen,  Adidas,  PwC Browse through our customer stories.
Turkcell, PowerSouth Energy Cooperative, Central Nacional Unimed, Conqord Oil
Find out what your peers are saying about ABBYY Vantage vs. IBM Datacap and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,513 professionals have used our research since 2012.