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Appian RPA vs Fortra's Automate comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 15, 2026

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

Automation Anywhere
Sponsored
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
669
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (2nd), Process Mining (1st), Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (1st), Agentic Automation (1st), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (2nd), AI Legal & Compliance (1st), AI Finance & Accounting (2nd), AI Procurement & Supply Chain (1st)
Appian RPA
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (21st)
Fortra's Automate
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category, the mindshare of Automation Anywhere is 4.9%, down from 8.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Appian RPA is 1.3%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortra's Automate is 2.8%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Automation Anywhere4.9%
Fortra's Automate2.8%
Appian RPA1.3%
Other91.0%
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
 

Featured Reviews

Nadeem K. - PeerSpot reviewer
Rpa Developer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Automation has freed teams from repetitive finance and supply tasks and supports global operations
In the current organization, we had trouble initially because I think the documentation and support could be better than what it is now. This is one difference between Automation Anywhere and other RPA tools such as UiPath. In UiPath, if you have an issue, you go to the UiPath website and search for it, and you get lots of help materials. In Automation Anywhere, you do not get exactly what you are looking for. You get a very large number of results when you search for something, and from this large result set, you have to filter out what you need, or only partial information will be available. User handbooks are available for each product. In that regard, I would say Automation Anywhere is lagging compared to other RPA tools. It is difficult to get hold of their customer support team. I want to clarify that it is not a matter of us building logic on Automation Anywhere and it failing. When it is a product-related issue, they have to give us support because we only know how to develop within Automation Anywhere. We do not know how to fix Automation Anywhere itself. Whenever we have an issue, trying to get in touch with them always takes three to four business days.
Ashish-Chopra - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Architect at Westpac Bank
Automation has reduced manual errors and now needs better high-volume data handling
In my opinion, Appian RPA can be improved. We are planning to conduct a proof of concept on volume because we are still not entirely certain about how well the record type feature performs on Appian with high volumes of data. After conducting client calls with HSBC, Santander, and a few of the Big Four, we learned about use cases where Appian has been used for high volumes of data. We are planning to conduct a proof of concept to test that hypothesis. Additional features that could enhance Appian RPA in the future would include AI on Azure. Currently, their AI is only AWS-based, and we are in discussions with the company about this because we are an Azure shop. I believe this would be a good area for them to concentrate on.
reviewer2849709 - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Manager
Automation has transformed manual reporting and data extraction into scheduled digital workflows
The interface of Fortra's Automate is similar to GoAnywhere. I am not completely pleased with it, although it is intuitive, but it lacks something in terms of complexity. There is still clicking through many items involved. There are two things I would improve in Fortra's Automate. One is about the interface, as I need it to be improved because it is somewhat complex to navigate. The second is about performance reporting. I want those reports to be customizable. You can generate these reports and see what is happening with error logs, but the customization option is limited. Additionally, there should be an option to export them. Currently, you can export as Excel and PDF, but there is no option to export and send them to your email.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Most of the features of Automation Anywhere (AA) are good, but one big feature which I really like is its OCR (optical character recognition) feature."
"Its ease of use is the most valuable feature. It is easy to train developers and find the right people, then use them to build the tool."
"There are ready plugins and connectors to integrate with APIs for common systems like Oracle or Microsoft."
"Overall, Automation Anywhere is a very user-friendly and easy-to-use tool, and if clients are looking to implement automation into their business, I would definitely recommend Automation Anywhere over other tools because it is well-suited for their purposes and can be easily utilized."
"There were about three to four people who were manually updating data into a system, then we replaced that process or augmented that with a bot that now reaches data and enters it on behalf of users, which gives significant hours back to the business so those people can work on some other high value task."
"I think most of the keystroke level activities that users used to do in probably the last five years is now taken care completely by Automation Anywhere and similar RPA providers."
"When this technology first came to market, I thought it was about robotic things, which we cannot do, however, when I started to learn about Automation Anywhere, it's completely different; it's a user friendly tool with drag and drop commands and a person just needs technical, logical thinking."
"Support for Automation Anywhere is wonderful; I had an issue related to Chrome not working with the latest update, and they helped me extensively and even came on call to support me."
"The best feature of Appian RPA is that it is highly integrated into the Appian platform itself and is very easy to configure in the end-to-end Appian automation solution."
"I find the pricing of Appian RPA reasonable because it is user-based, and we can experiment with it."
"Appian RPA is super easy to use, offering low code, no code capabilities."
"Compared to other vendors, it's the scheduling tool because a lot of vendors want to charge you extra for their enterprise-level license to have a scheduling tool built in to give you the ability to set up regular schedules to run and do certain data checks."
"Customers of AutoMate will realize their ROI within 90 to 120 days from their go-live date."
"Fortra's Automate has become a digital worker that performs our clicks, data entry, file handling, and system actions that are done manually, helping us to automate them."
"Fortra's Automate performs the job effectively and has the capability to alert us of any issues."
"I like the interface; it makes managing automation easy. We can set different schedules and templates for each task."
"A great feature that you seldom see in these kind of systems is the ability to use a database as trigger to launch a task. This is something I asked for a few years ago and that was added."
"The most valuable feature is the drag-and-drop interface, which is very Windows-like."
"Overall, this is a pretty nice product and I really recommend it because it is very easy to use."
 

Cons

"It is negative right now. What we are expecting, for one bot creation, is a six-month turnaround for getting ROI, but that is only the developer man-hour versus actual time saved."
"Currently, Automation Anywhere's debugging functionality is minimal."
"I would like more cognitive abilities, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. E.g., if I see you, your facial recognition has to be there. If I send your picture, it should tell me your name, where you are from, and when I met you because we forget people. It should have these type of capabilities."
"It may sound a little funny or weird, but one thing that we are thinking is we have to go to various websites and pick up relevant data from various websites using the bot. That is something we have seen that none of the bots have been able to really do it because the back-end of those websites do not allow bots to scrap through all these websites and get the relevant data in one place. We would like to see how the bot companies would crack this idea. But, that's why I said, this look weird because of the legal reasons why this cannot be done. This is something that I am looking forward to."
"The pricing is a little bit high compared with other tools."
"I feel that document extraction like IQ Bot can be made more refined so that it may reach its full potential."
"Automation Anywhere should add a couple of commands which will help most developers not to always use a script, a good example is in String operations."
"Improvements that can be made are: It should be easier to automate tasks on a virtual machine that uses a different environment altogether."
"There are many competitive products in the market right now, for example, UiPath and Automation Anywhere. These competitive products are now coming up with features which Appian RPA currently does not have."
"In my opinion, Appian RPA can be improved."
"There are not any areas that need improvement off the top of my head."
"The intelligent automation feature could be improved. It's interesting because it's simple, but the automation quality isn't always good. It's easy to use, but sometimes you need to make a slight improvement to the automation, and that's not so easy."
"If Fortra's Automate could add more logging in jobs, that could be helpful."
"The interface of Fortra's Automate is similar to GoAnywhere; I am not completely pleased with it, although it is intuitive, but it lacks something in terms of complexity."
"One thing I dislike about Fortra's Automate is that it does not perform well with OCR software, which is optical character recognition."
"Areas for improvement in Automate would be a more modern web-based workflow designer, an enhanced real-time monitoring dashboard, and built-in API integration tools for REST and SOAP."
"We aren't completely satisfied with the stability; the system can slow down and the program occasionally crashes and closes."
"I would like to see some better web automation, a wizard like the one in the product WinAutomation would be very nice."
"Regarding the pricing of Fortra's Automate, for a startup or mid-market company, I would say it is not cheap and is definitely on the higher side."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Because it reduced the time duration of our processes, our costs went down."
"We have purchased licenses, but are trying to obtain more bot programmer licenses."
"The cost of this solution is a little bit high, but it is worth the price."
"We are interested in saving manual engineer man-hours. So far, we have saved $100,000."
"Pricing is too high for small-scale groups. The Control Room yearly fee is high, making it difficult to break even."
"It is the most economically friendly and it provides you with a lot of functions."
"I advise others that even as of right now, the setup cost and licensing cost to automate bots on Automation Anywhere is steep but it is worth the investment!"
"Pricing is affordable and I would recommend beginning with the Starter Package."
Information not available
"Once you buy the software, you just pay for the support for backend help."
"From a distributor's perspective, one of the biggest selling points of Automate is its price point."
"It comes with a package that costs approximately $20,000 USD per year."
"I 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."
"From a distributor's side, one of the biggest selling points is its price point. Without going into any numbers, compared to UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and Blue Prism, we're significantly cheaper. The main difference is that other competitors usually charge you per process. However, in Automate's case, it's priced per bot. So, a bot can run multiple processes at the same time, but you are only priced for a single bot."
"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."
"I like the way this solution is priced because you can buy a license, or you can buy the software outright."
"The cost is a bit high for a small business like ours, but we manage with Fortra's Automate."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Insurance Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business162
Midsize Enterprise86
Large Enterprise566
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It depends on your use case. Is it simply to automate a couple of processes? Is it to augment a human team? AA is ver...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
From my experience using AA tool, it depends on the applications that you want to automate, because there some applic...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It is a highly preferred RPA tool. You can check my Automation Anywhere Review to know more.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Appian RPA?
I didn't handle payments or costs. We recommended infrastructure stacks to our clients, who implemented them, and we ...
What needs improvement with Appian RPA?
In my opinion, Appian RPA can be improved. We are planning to conduct a proof of concept on volume because we are sti...
What is your primary use case for Appian RPA?
We have been working with Appian RPA along with the entire workflow case management suite. Recently, Appian released ...
What is your primary use case for HelpSystems AutoMate?
I mainly use Fortra's Automate to automate routine IT tasks and schedule workflows, which reduces manual work. I auto...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortra Automate?
The setup cost is free, but I believe it is a little expensive.
What needs improvement with Fortra Automate?
Fortra's Automate could be improved as the reporting could be more flexible, and some advanced workflows could be eas...
 

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)
Jidoka RPA
HelpSystems Automate, Automate
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
empark, talan, liverpool, ayesa, aeromexico, teknei
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Appian RPA vs. Fortra's Automate and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
921,148 professionals have used our research since 2012.