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Automation Anywhere vs Broadcom Service Virtualization 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
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (5th)
Automation Anywhere
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
557
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (3rd), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (3rd), Process Mining (1st), Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (3rd), Agentic Automation (2nd)
Broadcom Service Virtualiza...
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
Service Virtualization (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
Service Virtualization
 

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.
Vatsal Mehta - PeerSpot reviewer
Accommodates diverse use cases and effectively meets customer requirements
AI agents need further improvements. AI agent technology in agentic process automation is still evolving. We have only scratched the surface, and there are many potential use cases yet to be explored. As technology advances, I believe it will enable us to implement more comprehensive automation solutions. Document Automation has issues related to speed. When I compare Document Automation with IQ Bot, IQ Bot is faster than Document Automation. My understanding is that they are still evolving Document Automation, and this issue of slowness will be resolved in the upcoming .35 version, so we are good with that. They are working on signature identification and validations for handwritten documents. Currently, we are able to extract data out of scanned but digital images, but there is still scope for improvement for handwritten documents.
reviewer956754 - PeerSpot reviewer
Scalable with good recording and creating of virtual services, but it's not stable and there is no support for previous versions
The learning curve is an area that needs improvement, as well as stability and performance. Stability has to be improved. It is not a stable solution. Especially, when you create custom solutions there are issues with memory accumulation. I would prefer that they stop adding features, which is what they do. Instead, focus on stabilizing it and make it work. What's the point of adding new features? It just increases the cost. I'll give you an example; CA and I have continuous applications, and insight is one of the service activation components. It has never worked in any project, just for the namesake and for showing they have this one. Support needs improvement, they don't support the migration from an older version to the current version. The price can be reduced. This portal, after one week, if it is enterprise-assigned, will stop working. Now we have a policy that every week, we have a scheduled restart of everything, and maintain it. The stability is so poor that this is what is required. Broadcom acquired it recently, approximately a year ago. Broadcom was not involved with the software before. They were known for having a history with the hardware, physical devices, and appliances. Now, they are focusing on both. Much of their technical expertise, have gone. There is no expertise.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"It gives us a central place to schedule tasks and run them distributed."
"The pricing is excellent. I would give them perfect marks in that regard."
"I find the ease of use from a programming perspective very valuable."
"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."
"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 licensing of the product is very good. You only need to license it once and then you have it forever."
"I like the interface; it makes managing automation easy. We can set different schedules and templates for each task."
"A project that we automated: A person used to spend about eight to twelve hours every week to finish the process. The bot finishes it in half an hour. Now, the person just reviews it, then passes along the information. This has helped our organization because originally EMEA and APAC would not receive the files the same day that they were processed. But because the bot only takes a half an hour, everyone can now receive the files on the same day."
"For most of the cases that we have worked on, the application has been stable."
"The best aspect is the user interface. It is very user-friendly and snappy, responding quickly compared to other available tools. It is easy to learn, and the community support is good for asking questions and getting answers."
"We have been able to reduce our number of FTEs."
"There are things that used to take us a lot of time, like manual entries or HR queries, but now that the bots are in place, we are saving a lot of time."
"Overall, based on my experience with Automation Anywhere, I would rate it a nine out of ten."
"The document management processes that IQ Bot gives has very good functionality of how you can actually take unstructured data and make sense out of it, connecting inferences, then making the data available to the user. So, IQ Bot is one of the best tools that I can think of in that aspect. This solves the problem of various document structures, document formats, etc."
"The setup is straightforward. Automation Anywhere provides customer success managers to help with the setup."
"It is definitely scalable."
"We had a number of back-end services that were not available during testing times. What this had allowed us to do is get our early life testing done while those services are not available."
"We have had developers produce code later than we wanted to, but we've had some other stuff that was dependent on that. So what we were able to do was virtualize these assets and then go forward with our developer and not have to wait for these additional services to be available."
"I think the pricing is quite fair because this solution provides a lot of functionalities, and is quite stable."
"The most valuable feature is that it supports so many protocols. We, being a large bank, have almost all the protocols, and it supports all of them, so that's one good thing."
"The most valuable features are the recording and creating of virtual services."
"Unit testing or early life testing did not have to be stopped or delayed because those services were not available."
"There are several areas that are easily configurable."
 

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."
"Fortra's Automate is not as reliable as I would like it to be."
"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."
"The interface could be more user-friendly and easier to navigate."
"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."
"They do not encrypt passwords, so this is an issue with HIPAA compliance."
"I would like to see some better web automation, a wizard like the one in the product WinAutomation would be very nice."
"The technical support could be better. We suffer from language barriers, as we are in Argentina."
"The AI Sense functionality is what I believe can be improved since when I tried to use it for automating a use case involving a Citrix Virtual Machine, it was unable to capture objects consistently."
"As a solution, it could have been easier to use than in the current state."
"Anything that can be done to simplify the solution. I would love to see it where anybody who can run Excel will be able to create bots. Right now, I am watching everyone around me struggle with the tool."
"Excel functionalities, the macro interface can be improved in the next release of RPA platform Automation Anywhere. Functionalities such as maneuvering on the excel worksheets, increased capability to manipulate formulae, and other Excel functionalities will give Automation Anywhere and edge in the RPA platform category since most financial applications use a lot of Excel and macro sheets for their calculations and postings."
"Automation Anywhere has a persistent click-related issue that can make automation difficult, particularly in unattended environments."
"Migration is probably our biggest challenge. When we were trying to do the migration to the new version, it was a little bit painful. We didn't have that many bots, and I can't imagine the level of effort that some of the bigger customers have to put in for that. The product is stable, but moving from one release to the other was the issue."
"Configuring A2019 and using it is getting a little difficult because of frequent errors of compatibility. It is not so user friendly like the enterprise desktop version."
"There is still a way to go for Automation Anywhere where we can see improvement. Mostly, we want to see more artificial intelligence and machine learning. Now, I can see only this mostly in the IQ Bot where we construct the data from PDFs. I also want to see more features where we can use the artificial intelligence in automating tasks as well."
"It is not a stable solution."
"I would rate the tech support a nine out of ten. They need more knowledge about the connectivity to DevOps orchestration."
"​From a reporting perspective I think we would like to have a more user-friendly approach."
"I'd like to see more of the newer technologies included in there, looking mainly from a mobile perspective, possibly, so you can virtualize some of the aspects that we're going to be doing for mobile testing."
"One major feature I would like to see is on the user administration part. Right now, anybody can access any of the folders and any of the projects."
"More examples of portal-based virtualization."
"They can always work on usability and making simple things simple to do. This is true of every product that deals with complexity."
"The workstation component has a very out-dated UI and is in dire need of a facelift."
 

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."
"I like the way this solution is priced because you can buy a license, or you can buy the software outright."
"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 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."
"Compared to other products, the pricing model for this solution is much more convenient, flexible, and adaptable to the Portuguese reality."
"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."
"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 is expensive. Automation Anywhere has reduced the price slightly, as we have grown. However, the price is still excessive enough that we are engaged in PoCs on other tools."
"It's cheaper than other similar solutions."
"On a yearly basis, our licensing costs are about $80,000. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"They're very flexible around pricing and licensing."
"The pricing is a bit higher."
"The pricing for Automation Anywhere is reasonable."
"We are currently negotiating a contract. Depending upon that, we will definitely look at increasing usage."
"Our annual licensing costs are about $500,000."
"I don't have the exact dollar amount, but we have spent close to $1,000,000 for a three-year agreement, for an enterprise level."
"There are additional fees for advanced-level technical support."
"I think the pricing is quite fair because this solution provides a lot of functionalities, and is quite stable."
"There is a yearly licensing cost, and I would give it a four out of five."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
40%
Computer Software Company
17%
Retailer
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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?
I am a consultant and I am making a lot of processes in human resources, payroll, certifications, trainings, web scra...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortra Automate?
The pricing is quite good compared to its competitors. Competitors are often more expensive than Automate. I would ra...
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.
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Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate
Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise
ITKO LISA, CA LISA, CA Service Virtualization
 

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
Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
Union Bank, Swisscom, Autotrader, KPN, ING Bank, Best Buy, American Family Insurance, TESCO, Telefonica, Molina Healthcare, California DMV, Aktia, City Index, Con-way, DirecTV, GRU Airport, Liquidnet, NAB, Nordstrom, T-Mobile, TIM Brasil, 
Find out what your peers are saying about UiPath, Microsoft, Automation Anywhere and others in Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Updated: May 2025.
850,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.