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VisualCron vs akaBot comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
akaBot
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
18th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Agentic Automation (3rd)
VisualCron
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
16th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Managed File Transfer (MFT) (16th), Workload Automation (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category, the mindshare of Automate is 1.8%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of akaBot is 0.2%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VisualCron is 1.0%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
 

Featured Reviews

Anabel Marco - PeerSpot reviewer
Automates processes efficiently with cost-effective scaling and robust customer support
Web scraping is quite good since it offers a lot of possibilities. Another important feature for me is its compatibility with MBI, the Power that is ISEQUADO Centers. I appreciate the ability to scale and increase the number of bots or studios without additional expense. Automate's non-reliance on additional orchestrators makes it quite cost-effective.
Duy Lương Minh - PeerSpot reviewer
User interface streamlines task automation and improves efficiency
akaBot made a noticeable difference at Wika because it is lightweight and easy to use, and moreover, akaBot has a forum to answer many questions. The ease of use stands out because the design of akaBot is very friendly. The best features that akaBot offers in my experience include the UI automation in the browser or in the Windows application. What I appreciate most about the UI automation in browsers or Windows applications is the auto-generate selector in a browser and Windows application. This feature makes a difference because it reduced most of the time developing the bot.
Sourav-Dutta - PeerSpot reviewer
It's user-friendly, and I didn't need long to understand the process
We use VisualCron for all our automation needs, like connecting to FileZilla, calling APIs, generating PGP keys, creating encryption files with the PGP key login to Azure, etc. It can automatically log in to SQL Server and execute SQL script jobs in bulk. We had 2,000-3,000 users at my previous…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I find it very user-friendly. Our IT department and other departments can seamlessly collaborate without requiring extensive training. As a business department, we particularly value this aspect, as our team doesn't consist of many IT users. However, we couldn't solely rely on a drag-and-drop approach to implement and utilize the solution within our departments."
"The interface is simple, user-friendly, and very intuitive."
"The best feature of Automate is its ease of use, which is a major selling point."
"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."
"I would recommend Automate because it has made my work much easier."
"The most valuable features for my client are timing and scheduling."
"This tool has machine learning and voice recognition and computer vision, which are both quite useful aspects. These aren't available in other tools. It's a good addition to this tool and it gives the solution an edge on the market."
"The cost is affordable, and it fits our requirements."
"akaBot made a noticeable difference at Wika because it is lightweight and easy to use, and moreover, akaBot has a forum to answer many questions."
"The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%."
"I love VisualCron because we previously spent a lot of time writing Power switches to connect to SQL Server. VisualCron makes it easier to execute services or connect to FileZilla by only adding the credentials to the master credentials stored in the solution."
"The ability to clone jobs to shorten the time it takes to implement a process has been invaluable, but its flexibility also gives us the ability to create a job that can handle a multifaceted process with a complex workflow."
"It helped us reduce manual steps."
"VisualCron is a very powerful program to automate different steps in your business processes. We use it to automate replacing files and inform departments about the replacement."
"What I like about VisualCron is that like its name, it's a very visual tool. In my previous company, there were a lot of scripts for all kinds of services, and through VisualCron, you get to group all flows and get a nice visual overview. VisualCron also has an alerting feature, so you receive alerts from it. VisualCron makes everything clearer and easier to maintain. Every other solution that I was looking for almost always needed a programmer, but with VisualCron, you can do what you need to do without programming skills, so this is another valuable feature of the tool."
"What I found most beneficial from VisualCron is that you can directly connect it with different databases, user accounts, and credentials. You can run queries from one machine to another using the credentials, unlike PowerShell, that's run by the machine itself. With VisualCron, you can directly ask other machines and run requests through user credentials. Suppose you have an AWS or Azure environment. In that case, you can maintain the connection between on-premises and cloud-based machines, which is the type of setup in the organization I'm working for. You can directly call some of the services via VisualCron on your local on-premises machine, and I found that an excellent feature of the tool."
"It has improved our organization with more automation within the business departments and less administration and development in the IT department. Usually, as the IT department, we are the bottleneck for many requirements within the business. With this tool, the business departments are able to perform many task themselves."
 

Cons

"It would be an improvement if Automate had better stability tools, whether by recommending a certain amount of memory because it can be a memory hog at times."
"The 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 documentation for errors needs improvement as many of the error messages we receive are very vague."
"Some challenges include the system being too loaded or delayed in taking instructions and responding quickly as needed."
"I would like to see some better web automation, a wizard like the one in the product WinAutomation would be very nice."
"I find that most important features are strong, however, there is a lack of good development for artificial intelligence, such as machine learning."
"The OCR for Hebrew text needs to be improved."
"Sometimes when we communicate with the ERP system and there is an issue, we are not always aware of the specifics of Automate and the source of the problem."
"If they can provide more intelligent automation, it would be beneficial."
"I used UiPath before akaBot, and I think UiPath has more features than akaBot."
"I would like for VisualCron to expand audit log to show who changed job variables that are initialized per job run."
"The documentation is a bit weak."
"VisualCron is software, and you will experience performance degradation when you scale up. VisualCron takes too much memory or CPU power. We have to increase the hardware resources of a specific server or system."
"The only problem I face when I use the tool is that it doesn't contain much documentation or it doesn't have many video tutorials on its features."
"Our suggestion to make it better and more manageable in terms of GDPR: Implement it in a very partnership way."
"I want to improve the UI in VisualCron, as it's not as user-friendly, particularly when setting up the task scheduler. If you're familiar with the tool, then no problem, but if not, you'll have a problem typing text because sometimes, the cursor points to other places, so there's an issue with text box alignment in VisualCron. That was painful for me when I was just a VisualCron novice, but when you become used to it, there won't be a problem."
"VisualCron's command console is a little bit difficult to understand and needs to improve."
"VisualCron seems to operate like an efficient machine when it comes to improvements and enhancements and new features. I always appreciate the quick response I get when bringing up an issue or coming up with suggestions. I've mentioned before that it would be great to see a move away from SQLCE and XML configuration files."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"From a distributor's perspective, one of the biggest selling points of Automate is its price point."
"Once you buy the software, you just pay for the support for backend help."
"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."
"I'm only involved in running the product and maintaining the systems, so I can't speak to the cost."
"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."
"It comes with a package that costs approximately $20,000 USD per year."
Information not available
"The price is a bit high."
"ROI is one month."
"We are fine with a rather cheap setup. Licensing with VisualCron is fair. You have a simple one-year licence in different sizes. There isn't a licensing jungle with hundreds of options and opt-ins."
"VisualCron is correctly priced because it wasn't very cheap, and it wasn't overly expensive, so the price for it was set correctly. When my previous company bought VisualCron, it was €800 per server per year. On a scale of one to five, I would rate the pricing for VisualCron a five because it was just right. The tool was affordable, and it has one of the most competitive pricing in the market."
"The pricing is extremely fair, and because of that I recommend purchasing multiple instances to split out the processing load across multiple application servers."
"ROI is 95 percent."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
5%
No data available
Computer Software Company
28%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Insurance Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about HelpSystems AutoMate?
We use it for specific cases, mainly secure file transfers, which are vital for us. And it works for us.
What is your primary use case for HelpSystems AutoMate?
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for akaBot?
The pricing of akaBot is cheap, which is a significant advantage for us.
What needs improvement with akaBot?
If they can provide more intelligent automation, it would be beneficial. For example, integrating more artificial int...
What is your primary use case for akaBot?
We use akaBot in our finance and accounting process. This is the main use case for akaBot.
What do you like most about VisualCron?
The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%.
What needs improvement with VisualCron?
The documentation is a bit weak. The tool must provide a better set of documentation.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Aldergrove Financial Group, Preferred Health Professionals, Mindbeam Technologies, First Credit Union in British Columbia, Vestcom International, Prime Liberty Benefits, University of Tampa, CNLBancshares, World Precision Instruments, BJ's Restaurants, Globe Pequot Press, Accudata Technologies, Norton Healthcare, Pacific Toxicology Laboratories
1. Aetna 2. Accenture 3. Adidas 4. AIG 5. Air France KLM  6. Allstate 7. Amazon 8. American Express 9. AmerisourceBergen 10. Aon 11. Apple 12. ATT 13. Autodesk 14. Bank of America 15. Barclays 16. Bayer 17. Berkshire Hathaway 18. Boeing 19. BNP Paribas 20. Citigroup 21. CocaCola 22. Comcast  23. ConocoPhillips   24. Cisco Systems  25. CocaCola  26. Dell 27. Disney
7 Eleven, ABB Sécheron SA, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Amazon Europe Core, Apple, Assa Abloy, Aston Martin, Banco Santander, BMW (Australia)
Find out what your peers are saying about UiPath, Automation Anywhere, Microsoft and others in Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.