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AutomationEdge vs VisualCron comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 4, 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
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
AutomationEdge
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
21st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VisualCron
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
17th
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 June 2025, in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category, the mindshare of Automate is 1.7%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AutomationEdge is 1.1%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VisualCron is 0.9%, 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.
BhargavJotva - PeerSpot reviewer
An RPA tool to automate functions, tasks, and processes that also allows users to do coding from the scratch
The initial setup of AutomationEdge was satisfactory for our company. For deployment for a large process, it will take around two months to develop the process. Else, it can be done in fifteen days. My organization gets to automate the banking processes using the solution. There are different requirements for different departments. Finance departments need something to automate their processes, and the requirements may vary for the information management department. There is a different type of automation requirement if there are some secretive documents that we have to keep on triggering mail.
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

"Fortra's Automate has effectively replaced the workload of an entire employee, saving us significant time and money."
"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."
"Overall, the whole product is really nice and provides significant benefits."
"I would rate the technical support as a nine out of ten because it is quite fast and courteous."
"Fortra's Automate performs the job effectively and has the capability to alert us of any issues."
"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 the ease of use from a programming perspective very valuable."
"The interface is simple, user-friendly, and very intuitive."
"The support from the vendor is very good."
"If we want to change your processes, we can code it from scratch, making it a beneficial feature of the product."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...I rate the technical support of the solution a nine out of ten."
"It is a valuable tool for developing efficient solutions, especially in finance and banking."
"The studio design is fine compared to other similar products. There is nothing extraordinary about it, but at the same time, there are not any negatives."
"The product's most valuable feature is the executor."
"It helps us with cost optimization and easy implementation."
"The ability to automate our processes with external plug-ins and zero code is the most valuable feature."
"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 helped us reduce manual steps."
"'ve only had a few cases where I've had to request support in the past 12 years of use, but the support response time and resolution were was extremely quick."
"The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%."
"We don't have to do any coding. We just plug and play and it works."
"The most valuable feature of VisualCron is its ability to schedule interactive jobs so that you can have interdependencies within the job and interdependencies of a job on another job, and so on."
"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."
 

Cons

"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."
"I currently have three bugs open with them that I don't know if they are addressed in the new release."
"The technical support could be better. We suffer from language barriers, as we are in Argentina."
"We really need a free development environment for customers. Building and testing automation on production isn't ideal."
"I find that most important features are strong, however, there is a lack of good development for artificial intelligence, such as machine learning."
"I would like to see some better web automation, a wizard like the one in the product WinAutomation would be very nice."
"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 interface could be more user-friendly and easier to navigate."
"With the solution, customizing software can be time-consuming."
"The price of the solution could be improved."
"The installation process could improve. It was difficult to complete."
"AutomationEdge's ecosystem has shortcomings and needs improvement. When we compare AutomationEdge to other RPA tools in our company, we find that it has a very minor online community."
"They could provide more technologies for IT and security to enhance machine learning capabilities."
"With other automation solutions in the market, we can simulate the process in our notebooks where the solution creates the code for us, but with AutomationEdge we can't do this."
"We cannot use extra modules while working with AutomationEdge. It crashes if we have lots of data to process in Excel."
"AutomationEdge's primary issue is its price point, especially compared to other products."
"Our suggestion to make it better and more manageable in terms of GDPR: Implement it in a very partnership way."
"There are some conditions in the mail trigger, but you can only use them as an "AND" condition, not as an "OR" condition. This is an improvement that could be useful. For example, some people put "invoice" in the subject and others put "invoice" in the body. If I want to make a trigger for everybody whose sending invoices, I have to make two jobs for this now."
"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."
"I would like for VisualCron to expand audit log to show who changed job variables that are initialized per job run."
"The error timeout and info could be better. When making web request calls, it will time out sometimes and we won't get any useful info out of the error response."
"The documentation is a bit weak."
"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

"Once you buy the software, you just pay for the support for backend help."
"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."
"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."
"I'm only involved in running the product and maintaining the systems, so I can't speak to the cost."
"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 perspective, one of the biggest selling points of Automate is its price point."
"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."
"The cost is a bit high for a small business like ours, but we manage with Fortra's Automate."
"If you are looking for a budget solution, you can consider AE. It has all the features. Scaling it is way easier because of the cost itself."
"The product is available at the lowest price."
"Pricing can be made better. Currently, I think the pricing is based on the market. The pricing also depends on the business partners that offer you the solution."
"It is expensive but its value can justify the cost."
"The licensing for this solution should have a more competitive pricing model. The price is in the top five of similar products."
"Price-wise, AutomationEdge is pretty affordable, making it not so expensive when you compare this with other tools in the market."
"I give the price of the solution a nine out of ten."
"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."
"ROI is 95 percent."
"The price is a bit high."
"ROI is one month."
"The pricing is extremely fair, and because of that I recommend purchasing multiple instances to split out the processing load across multiple application servers."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
15%
Healthcare Company
8%
Real Estate/Law Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
28%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Insurance Company
8%
Healthcare 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...
What do you like most about AutomationEdge?
It helps us with cost optimization and easy implementation.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AutomationEdge?
I rate AutomationEdge's pricing as a six to seven. It is expensive but its value can justify the cost.
What needs improvement with AutomationEdge?
AutomationEdge's primary issue is its price point, especially compared to products from companies like Microsoft that...
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
Smart Dubai Government (SDG)
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 AutomationEdge vs. VisualCron and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.