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ABBYY Vantage vs IBM Datacap comparison

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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
28
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) (7th)
 

Featured Reviews

Anabel Marco - PeerSpot reviewer
Automates processes efficiently with cost-effective scaling and robust customer support
Web scraping is quite good since it offers a lot of possibilities. Another important feature for me is its compatibility with MBI, the Power that is ISEQUADO Centers. I appreciate the ability to scale and increase the number of bots or studios without additional expense. Automate's non-reliance on additional orchestrators makes it quite cost-effective.
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 most valuable features of Fortra's Automate include its FTP functionality and file manipulation capabilities."
"The licensing of the product is very good. You only need to license it once and then you have it forever."
"Overall, the whole product is really nice and provides significant benefits."
"Web scraping is quite good since it offers a lot of possibilities."
"Fortra's Automate performs the job effectively and has the capability to alert us of any issues."
"Fortra's Automate has effectively replaced the workload of an entire employee, saving us significant time and money."
"I would rate the technical support as a nine out of ten because it is quite fast and courteous."
"We are still in the process of rolling it to production and tweaking it (our AD groups are a mess), but the improvements are priceless. Having users ID's created the same way every time without human error is the best part. We don't need to worry about why groups were not added, user rights not set to folders or missing a private folder being created, typos or just even knowing when things are done and logged."
"The solution itself is valuable due to its ability to classify and extract information with embedded OCR, which is good."
"Time-saving with increased levels of accuracy."
"Its ease of use is valuable. It is easy to use and configure."
"We like the fact that this solution is enterprise-ready, so it can be deployed on-premises, scale it, etc."
"Allows us to run through documents and extract information."
"Abbyy is really good in terms of reading OCR."
"The OTR (Optical Text Recognition) is the most valuable feature of this solution."
"The most valuable features have been the rate of recognition and the structured documents."
"It helps companies figure out how to use advanced imaging techniques, processes, best practices, and other tools."
"I can have all scanners accessible from my end."
"The feedback from our clients that this solution has increased their efficiency and their turnaround time on opening any account for end users, thus attracting more customers."
"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."
"The installation of the solution is very simple."
"I work for an insurance company, and we use Datacap for document processing."
"The standout feature of this intelligent product is its remarkable capability."
 

Cons

"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 interface could be more user-friendly and easier to navigate."
"I would like to see some better web automation, a wizard like the one in the product WinAutomation would be very nice."
"The documentation for errors needs improvement as many of the error messages we receive are very vague."
"Some companies have asked for voice integration. This is likely part of the roadmap."
"The OCR for Hebrew text needs to be improved."
"I find that most important features are strong, however, there is a lack of good development for artificial intelligence, such as machine learning."
"There is room for improvement regarding cloud functionality; there are a few missing features, and the logging could be better, especially air logging. We can go into logging events and create our own task, but it would be nice if this were more detailed."
"Initially, it was good, but now, in terms of ease of implementation and accuracy, there are better competitors in the market. What we are seeing in some of the other tools isn't there in ABBYY. They have to improve it to include such features. Otherwise, it will be difficult for them to compete in the market."
"ABBYY Vantage's reporting could be improved - they don't have any out-of-the-box or detailed advanced reports."
"They can have more advanced workflows. They can have some custom status in their workflow. It was there, but they can introduce more cases such as triggering an email or interacting with other systems with APIs. They can be included as stages in their workflow rather than doing it all by scripting."
"There is an area of improvement. For example, when we read the data from the OCR, the accuracy is not good."
"The system does not always train itself to recognize data properly."
"ABBYY Vantage is a product that does not include the Arabic language."
"There is always room for improvement in any product. Some of the configurations for the machine learning models for invoice reading are fairly complicated. There is so much customization that is possible with that sort of thing, so it makes sense that there are a lot of options, but some of the more important ones can be a little better streamlined or more upfront. Currently, machine learning models are a little bit difficult to configure satisfactorily."
"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."
"The user interfaces for exception processing can be tweaked. I commonly find that we try to tweak and customize some of those components to more of what the industry standard is. The product is still trying to play catch-up a little bit in those areas."
"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."
"There are times when external features impact services. For example, Windows patching or antivirus updates can affect production-level services."
"I would like better ease of use and more support options."
"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."
"The reading efficiency of the solution needs to be improved."
"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."
"One of the things that we wished for was to have an easier way to carry out the customizations. Currently, if you want to customize data, you need to have a developer with C# knowledge. If IBM could implement a no-code or low-code platform for Datacap, it would be easier to adjust it without needing a developer, which was always the most difficult part."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"I'm only involved in running the product and maintaining the systems, so I can't speak to the cost."
"It has gone up in price. The price of Fortra's Automate has increased since we first started using it. It does a lot but also costs a lot. It was a lot more affordable before Fortra owned the software."
"From a distributor's perspective, one of the biggest selling points of Automate is its price point."
"It comes with a package that costs approximately $20,000 USD per year."
"Once you buy the software, you just pay for the support for backend help."
"Compared to other products, the pricing model for this solution is much more convenient, flexible, and adaptable to the Portuguese reality."
"The cost is a bit high for a small business like ours, but we manage with Fortra's Automate."
"Its price is a little bit high and can be lower. Its licensing is very expensive. I don't remember exactly, but for each page, it is about four or seven cents, which is too expensive."
"It is expensive as compared to UiPath. We pay for the licensing and the page count."
"We were able to qualify for a reasonable price. The price is in the low to medium range compared to other solutions."
"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."
"We did not go with the licensed version of this solution."
"Our license is $6,000 and includes unlimited users for the verification station."
"Its price should be a little lower. It is a lot higher than the competition, and if they just break the gap a little, then more people might jump onto their product. Their price is definitely a deterrent in the few cases that I remember. They have monthly and yearly options, and if you want, they also have per project and per page options. They do charge extra for different types of installation. They have the standalone, which is pretty straightforward and a lot cheaper than the server installation. Server installation gives you a lot more, and it gives you control over the environment."
"For us, the price is reasonable."
"It varies, and it depends on the client's requirements and negotiations. Nowadays, Datacap is also included in the IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation."
"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."
"Pricing needs to stay competitive."
"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."
"We were using the User Value Unit licensing, which means we get charged per active user of the system, and if I'm not mistaken, we also had it for the rule runner service. They had a PVU license model, which is a processor value unit. For each process that we have in our system, we pay a certain amount of money. We found the pricing to be quite steep. It was really an expensive solution in comparison to Kofax, which had a different licensing model and was actually cheaper overall because they charge per page and not per user and per process."
"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."
"This solution is the most expensive in the market."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
5%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Insurance Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about HelpSystems AutoMate?
We use it for specific cases, mainly secure file transfers, which are vital for us. And it works for us.
What is your primary use case for HelpSystems AutoMate?
The main purpose is for automation. That has been the purpose why I have been using it so far.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortra Automate?
Regarding pricing, it is very friendly. I would not say that it is really cheap or very expensive, but it fits within...
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: June 2025.
860,632 professionals have used our research since 2012.