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Automate vs Tidal by Redwood vs UiPath Platform comparison

 

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:
 

Mindshare comparison

Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
Workload Automation
Agentic Automation
 

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.
Steve Mikula - PeerSpot reviewer
Very reliable processing engine, and scheduling is flawless—crucial elements in our financial transaction processing
Because we've been on it for 20 years, it's pretty easy for us to automate jobs with Tidal at this point. It has become second nature. It's pretty simplistic to set up and get going, although there are different levels of complexity you can have within the product. It depends on how simple you want to keep it. If you just keep it: Job A, Job B, Job C, Job D, that becomes pretty simple. But when you start integrating some complex calendars that use sub-calendars—and you can go three, four, or five deep to set up schedules—it becomes more complicated. The beauty of it is you can go as deep as you need to. We can get really complex or we can keep it simple. We have some use cases for both scenarios. The thing that I like the most is the reliability of the engine. The actual scheduling part of the product is pretty much flawless, but the stability of the product is what I find to be reassuring. We are a financial company, we move billions of dollars a day, and if we don't have our transactions processed in a timely manner we can be penalized and our clients can be penalized. It can have a serious financial impact.
Amjed Al-Tayyan - PeerSpot reviewer
Automation streamlines onboarding and reduces the load on customer service agents
As the head of the division, I do not use UiPath myself. However, I am the decision-maker, so I review the features. The combination of both full-attended and half-attended automation, where you can automate tasks and still interact when required, is very useful. It provides efficiency by freeing staff from unnecessary tasks, resulting in a balanced workload and more productive use of an employee's time. The tool has a noticeable ROI, and the investment is worth every penny as it reduces tedious tasks and improves scalability. It is very easy to use. During the COVID lockdown, my son who was 11 at the time attended a UiPath and Automation Anywhere training with me. He has already automated his school tasks requiring saving data and uploading some documents to the portal. If a kid can do this, it shows how easy it is.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"We have found the pricing to be very reasonable."
"This product is quite easy to install, learn, and use, with our new employees being able to start using it in projects for clients after only two weeks of internal training."
"The most valuable features for my client are timing and scheduling."
"I would recommend Automate because it has made my work much easier."
"Automate increases efficiency and eliminates errors during documentation and invoicing processes."
"The ability to connect to websites and pull data is the solution's most valuable feature."
"The product effectively handles all the tasks we require."
"From a management standpoint, when using the solution for cross-platform, cross-application workloads, I've never had a problem with the application. It's very interactive, especially with the different security levels that they offer."
"The best feature of Tidal Workload Automation Software is its ease of integration with other systems, including ERP, CRM, and BI tools."
"Especially in the newer versions of Tidal, the segmentation of user permissions enables us to give people operator permissions for their jobs, to rerun jobs, but view-only for other groups' jobs. We're able to keep people from hurting themselves or other groups accidentally. The permissioning is really good."
"We had a number of different schedulers in this organization and we've been porting everything that was running out of these other, unrelated schedulers into this scheduler. That has afforded us the ability to set up direct dependencies between processes that couldn't talk to one another before. Over the 15 years, we've definitely gained a lot from that. What had been manual controls have become automated controls..."
"By leveraging machine learning algorithms, Tidal Automation can use this data to optimize turbine settings and improve overall efficiency and performance."
"We have to run about 12,000 jobs every day and the majority of them need to be launched from our ERP, JD Edwards. The native compatibility of the Tidal platform with JD Edwards dovetails with our greatest need. It's directly connected to the heart of our IT system. We couldn't work without it."
"Tidal Automation is very efficient and can quickly automate most manual and repetitive tasks."
"Tidal Automation by Redwood is a user-friendly solution."
"There is a recording feature that copies each step of a task. You can automate every process via this recording. It's a cool feature that helps you define the variables."
"This solution has improved business by facilitating increased speed and accuracy."
"The tool's most valuable feature is Task Capture."
"The ability to connect various systems that do not have any kind of API between and the areas where we need to mimic what a human does to a system in terms of input and output is valuable."
"I like the user interface. I'm using Cloud Orchestrator and UiPath X. It's a platform for customizing and building automated processes."
"UiPath is good for data scraping and extracting information from websites."
"UiPath has helped us with compliance-related tasks. These tasks involve reviewing various systems and taking screenshots to get proof of compliance. It's a costly process that can be mostly automated. The employee doesn't need to collect all the proofs; they just have to check if they are correct. For example, they must verify that the referenced time stamp is correct."
"UiPath has multiple valuable features, including stability, automation, and integration with different applications."
 

Cons

"Error messages should be better. For error status, there should be better documentation because a lot of times, error messages that you get are quite vague. For example, you get a message saying that the workflow has run into an unknown status, which is vague. It just tells you that it failed, but you don't know how or why it failed. It makes debugging difficult."
"While this solution is continually improving, as it is now, the user interface could use improvement when I compare it to a product like UiPath."
"The interface could be more user-friendly and easier to navigate."
"The vendor is currently working on a solution that allows us to automatically create a process that is based on a document that we receive via email."
"The documentation for errors needs improvement as many of the error messages we receive are very vague."
"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."
"It's possible that they could use a stronger community for seeking guidance and help."
"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."
"One area for improvement is the command-line interface and the API to bulk-load jobs. It's a little bit kludgy, but we still manage without it. They're working on it and it's getting better all the time. In addition, the documentation for their API for creating jobs needs to be updated. It's a bit of a learning curve."
"The biggest improvement they need to work on is doing better QA checks before they release new patches and service packs. We do find that you can't trust getting the new product right away, as they have to get some bug fixes out. They do tend to have some bugs in the first iteration."
"From an administrative point of view, I wouldn't give really high marks to the solution. I actually entertained getting the JAWS application at one point. One of the shortcomings with the scheduler is the reporting capabilities. At least at the time, JAWS was the best that they had for a third-party integration. I think they've got things in the pipeline to help alleviate that gap."
"The software's performance and scalability could be improved, particularly when dealing with large-scale workloads or complex business processes."
"The current user interface of Tidal Software is functional. However, it can be improved to make it more intuitive and user-friendly."
"For the most part, the drill-down and the logging are really good. But if we take an Informatica job, for example: We have the ability, and the operators have the ability, to actually drill down and see, at a session level, where the failure is. There is, unfortunately, no way to extract that into an actual output email or failure email. It's not that that information is not available, but extracting it into an email would be a nice-to-have."
"Tidal's adaptability and user-friendliness could be increased by integrating it with additional programmes and platforms."
"Their software installation and update process could use some improvements. I'm pretty sure they're working on that, but that's definitely an area where it could be streamlined a lot. There's still a lot of manual work that you have to do with the schedule when you deploy masters or do the agents."
"The high cost of UiPath licensing significantly reduces the value we get from the solution."
"Some kind of code repository would be good. Other than that, everything is fine in UiPath. They improve it every quarter and bring something new."
"UiPath could be more intuitive in how it formats strings, variables, or databases. This can sometimes be difficult, even for someone with a computer science background. Additionally, some tasks require a team effort as one person can get overwhelmed or discouraged."
"A lot of the UiPath processes are capturing information from government websites. It's difficult to capture the correct format, so we need to use a third-party application to capture the information correctly. It would be better to have that capacity with UiPath, so we don't need another product."
"In the world of NextGen technology, it would be ideal if they could speed up their beta products."
"There was a security block because, manually, people still worked with the older versions, but the bot wanted the latest upgrade from the application, so in some cases, there was a delay or failure, or the bot got killed. It was a mixed bag, so I cannot say it was one hundred percent successful, which is an area for improvement."
"UiPath's Unassisted Task Mining has room for improvement."
"Task management is complex and difficult for new users. They should simplify the interface for new users. There are lots of flow charts and automation things in task management, so I would suggest streamlining it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The cost is a bit high for a small business like ours, but we manage with Fortra's Automate."
"From a distributor's perspective, one of the biggest selling points of Automate is its price point."
"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."
"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."
"I like the way this solution is priced because you can buy a license, or you can buy the software outright."
"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."
"The solution enables admins and users to see the information relevant to them, but this is bundled as an add-on that we would have to pay for."
"Tidal is a low-cost tool and not expensive in comparison to other tools."
"We've been able to purchase more adapters because the cost of the product has been very reasonable."
"Their pricing seems very fair. It is more than the other solutions, but the functionality and the support are very much there. You pay for the job scheduler, and then they have certain things that are built into it, such as the FTP processes. If you then want to do JD Edwards jobs, you need an adapter. If you want to do SQL jobs, there is another adapter. Similarly, if you want to do Oracle jobs, there is an adapter. It is like there is the base and then there are the adapters for the jobs that you want to do, but it seems that's also how they pay for each of those adapters and keep them up to date."
"We are satisfied with the pricing of Tidal. It's in the moderate range and it feels very achievable for us."
"There have been pricing increases, but with the reduction that our company obtained from Tidal this year, the pricing has become very acceptable for this type of product."
"There are project, system, and server costs. Some of the things that they are doing is introducing new products. They are introducing what they call their Repository, which is a way for you to move a job. That doesn't cost anything to us, because it is reusing a tool called Transporter. The repository is the successor to Transporter, so we already own it and are sort of grandfathered in. But that new product requires a server and database, so now we have to go out and get a server and database. So, there is a cost there."
"They work with you on licensing. So, it has been great. Everybody has different licensing, but I've had good luck with the licensing. They've been very accommodating. You basically need to buy a license for each physical server, but then you're allowed an unlimited number of virtual servers."
"UiPath is expensive which is why we need to have bots that run 24/7 to maximize the work and justify the cost."
"Kapow has dynamic licensing, which is something that we would really like to have, so we could scale up at peak hours or peak times of the month. This is when we really need to throw more robots at some processes. To my knowledge, that is not possible with UiPath at the moment."
"UiPath is a bit more expensive than other similar solutions, and its price is increasing daily."
"I would rate the pricing as seven out of 10, where 10 is the most expensive. The pricing increased with the latest release. It used to be cheap. Now, it is expensive. However, it does come with supported features, which almost justify its cost."
"Right now we only have a couple of Studio licenses and a couple of bots, so we're at about $8,000 USD per year."
"On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the most expensive, I would rate the price an eight out of ten."
"The price of UiPath is too high."
"Its price is moderate. It is neither very expensive nor very cheap. Everything is good in terms of pricing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
5%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Insurance Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
5%
 

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 Tidal Automation?
Tidal Automation by Redwood is a user-friendly solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tidal Automation?
The price is reasonable in terms of the product’s functionality.
What needs improvement with Tidal Automation?
Initially, it is complicated to understand the functionalities as there is limited product documentation. The setup a...
Best RPA tools for IBM iSeries
I can only speak to UiPath since that is the only RPA solution that I have used. I know that there are specific packa...
RPA that Bots can run without centralized control?
Yes, Attended Bots which can run without centralized control Module. RPA Tools like Automation Anywhere, uiPath ,Pow...
How do I choose between UiPath and Microsoft Power Automate?
Microsoft‌ ‌Power‌ ‌Automate‌ ‌is‌ ‌intuitive‌ ‌and‌ ‌easy‌ ‌to‌ ‌integrate‌ ‌and‌ ‌use.‌ ‌I‌ ‌like‌ ‌that‌ ‌there‌ ‌...
 

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate
Tidal Workload Automation, Cisco Workload Automation, Tidal Enterprise Scheduler
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
Information Not Available
1. Accenture 2. Deloitte 3. PwC 4. IBM 5. Capgemini 6. KPMG 7. Ernst & Young 8. Infosys 9. Cognizant 10. Wipro 11. Tata Consultancy Services 12. HCL Technologies 13. Genpact 14. Tech Mahindra 15. DXC Technology 16. Atos 17. NTT Data 18. CGI 19. L&T Infotech 20. Hexaware Technologies 21. Mindtree 22. Mphasis 23. Virtusa 24. Syntel 25. Zensar Technologies 26. WNS Global Services 27. Hexaware Technologies 28. Larsen & Toubro Infotech 29. Persistent Systems 30. QuEST Global 31. Sonata Software 32. Zensar Technologies
Find out what your peers are saying about UiPath, Automation Anywhere, Microsoft and others in Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Updated: June 2025.
859,957 professionals have used our research since 2012.