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Blue Prism Cloud vs IBM Datacap 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
30
Ranking in other categories
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (5th)
Blue Prism Cloud
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (6th)
IBM Datacap
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (6th)
 

Featured Reviews

Jane Rachma Kiniti - PeerSpot reviewer
Automate has streamlined workflows and increased efficiency with powerful automation
The best features of the solution are the flexible automation features, it is rich with beautiful connectors, and it is easy to use with little to no coding knowledge required to get started, so anybody can use the tool. The intuitive interface of Automate has an intuitive design, which makes it easy to learn and use even without a strong technical background, and it has a drag-and-drop interface, which makes everything so easy and straightforward. The error handling capabilities in complex automation tasks are powerful, as it handles all types of tasks, whether complex or simple. I've never faced any problems even when dealing with complex tasks, so everything is super smooth and highly reliable, even when dealing with big tasks, as it has never slowed down. Automate's compatibility with existing IT infrastructure has impacted our business operations positively by providing smooth integration with other software that we use, such as Gmail, Jira, and Microsoft 365 apps, which gives us a unified platform instead of having to keep switching from one software to another, saving a lot of time and streamlining the whole workflows. The automated analytics have helped improve our business processes since it has increased our efficiency by automating our everyday tasks, freeing up time for us to focus more on strategic activities such as analyzing data and developing new business strategies. It is also cost-saving. By minimizing manual labor, it decreases human errors that can lead to costly mistakes. By automating the tasks, it helps to save costs, and it also improves our accuracy by reducing these errors to ensure that tasks are done almost perfectly.
AyanBanerjee - PeerSpot reviewer
Automation and AI integration enhance performance and user experience
The improvements or enhancements I would like to see in Blue Prism Cloud revolve around further developing server-client architecture, focusing on centralized control for remote agents. I believe more capabilities in that area could be beneficial. At the moment, I don't recall any specific features or functionalities missing from Blue Prism Cloud that come to mind. In terms of complexity, I find that Blue Prism Cloud is somewhat straightforward to use. Flexibility-wise, it engages well with Microsoft-based technologies. However, there are challenges with OCR capabilities that remain an issue. While there are readily available features that work well, the effectiveness does depend significantly on the type of use case I am implementing.
DeekshithShetty - PeerSpot reviewer
High-accuracy document processing with easy integration and good image enhancement
The OCR extractions are very good, almost 100% accurate now. The integration with other tools is very easy, with inbuilt actions to configure and directly export to multiple depositories. It is also good at image enhancement, including the removal of lines, which is helpful in processing and automation and ensures very little user intervention, thus saving time.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The intuitive interface of Automate has an intuitive design which makes it easy to learn and use even without a strong technical background, and it has a drag and drop interface which makes everything so easy and straightforward."
"The product effectively handles all the tasks we require."
"I find the ease of use from a programming perspective very valuable."
"The solution is continuously adding more integrations to help with workflows and bot and task creation."
"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."
"The best feature of Automate is its ease of use, which is a major selling point."
"The interface is simple, user-friendly, and very intuitive."
"The pricing is excellent. I would give them perfect marks in that regard."
"The reusability of the solution is excellent. It's a superior feature - far superior to any other tool on the market."
"The primary focus lies in integrating the three major cloud platforms with Blue Prism Cloud: Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, and GCP. This integration goes beyond security measures for the primary template policies. It also includes addressing compliance requirements. For instance, I can incorporate specific compliance templates and policies generated in Blue Prism and integrate them with local templates for ISO 27001 and GDPR, particularly concerning software tools and headsets. This integration eliminates the need for auditing and reviewing technical details individually. Instead, I can simply examine the container report. This approach proves beneficial when clients heavily rely on container environments."
"Blue Prism is able to scale up at an enterprise-level. It's what I used when I was working for a big bank in Belgium."
"It is an easily scalable solution."
"It's easy to use, the interface, the the the the queries is which we use. It's user friendly."
"The corporate leverage is better with Blue Prism. They just present better in a large corporation. It's easier to sell suits and ties than it is sneakers and jeans in financial institutions. That's not really about the application per se; it's the perception."
"The user-friendly interface of Blue Prism Cloud is nice, and compared to the previous one, it has some advanced features such as drag and drop, PDF extraction, and accessing external applications with connectors, which has helped me design and automate processes."
"The ease of building automation and the development environment"
"The second thing that I like about Datacap is the fingerprint capture which is easy to configure on Datacap. From the form of the document, if a document is redundant in the same department, we can configure the capture based on the form of the documents"
"Very scalable and stable data capture and extraction solution that's very simple to install."
"The feedback from our clients that this solution has increased their efficiency and their turnaround time on opening any account for end users, thus attracting more customers."
"I work for an insurance company, and we use Datacap for document processing."
"The most valuable feature is its ability to capture data, which changes all the time into different formats."
"The OCR extractions are very good, almost 100% accurate now."
"It helps companies figure out how to use advanced imaging techniques, processes, best practices, and other tools."
"The solution offers many features that are beneficial for customers."
 

Cons

"They do not encrypt passwords, so this is an issue with HIPAA compliance."
"We really need a free development environment for customers. Building and testing automation on production isn't ideal."
"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."
"I find that most important features are strong, however, there is a lack of good development for artificial intelligence, such as machine learning."
"The user interface could be slightly enhanced to make it more modern."
"I would like to see some better web automation, a wizard like the one in the product WinAutomation would be very nice."
"The user interface could be slightly enhanced to make it more modern."
"I currently have three bugs open with them that I don't know if they are addressed in the new release."
"The issue is that it is not dynamic or intelligent."
"Several things need improvement, like ease-of-use, adding tended robots, adding process recording, and updating the look and feel so it seems modern."
"The AI part is currently missing in Blue Prism Studio... It would be good if the AI part is included in Blue Prism Studio, which can make it much more efficient and good to work."
"Decipher, one of their solutions, is a waste of time."
"Blue Prism could be more efficient in its resource use. Having one LPR agent per virtual machine wastes resources. If we could execute many applications at the same time, it would improve and optimize the resource used."
"They should improve the user-friendliness and they should change their business model."
"Pricing for Blue Prism Cloud is a pain as it's a little higher."
"Blue Prism Cloud needs to improve its AI capabilities."
"Its weaknesses are primarily tied to the lack of available resources and expertise in the market to effectively support and provide solutions and services to each customer for seamless implementation. Expertise in this specific product is rare throughout the market. One key reason is the product's limited downloads. Additionally, archiving solutions are often perceived as complex and challenging, dissuading many companies from venturing into this domain. Consequently, partners who specialize in archiving solutions are always seeking straightforward, uncomplicated options that are easy to manage and meet customer expectations."
"Our main language in Egypt is Arabic, and IBM DataCap does not support it perfectly. All our documentation is in Arabic. It's not English or any other language. However, we have overcome this problem by using QR codes in the document to extract the data from it. They should have better support for Arabic."
"Datacap has performance issues when processing large volumes of documents. We're doing 18,000 pages daily. Scanning takes almost 20-30 minutes, but it normally takes one or two minutes. We informed IBM and opened a ticket for that. They forwarded the issue to developers but didn't give a specific timeline for it to be resolved. Version 8.1 is already at the end of support."
"The user interfaces for exception processing can be tweaked. I commonly find that we try to tweak and customize some of those components to more of what the industry standard is. The product is still trying to play catch-up a little bit in those areas."
"Recognition between certain numbers and letters could be improved. Sometimes this solution misreads five with an "S" for Singapore."
"Going forward, IBM needs to ensure that the output is perfect (as it can make the product) while staying true to platform's core."
"There should be an increase in the capacity of the workflows. Datacap is a little limited in this aspect. So, you cannot really implement all the possibilities."
"Its weaknesses are primarily tied to the lack of available resources and expertise in the market to effectively support and provide solutions and services to each customer for seamless implementation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"From a distributor's perspective, one of the biggest selling points of Automate is its price point."
"I like the way this solution is priced because you can buy a license, or you can buy the software outright."
"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."
"Blue Prism Cloud’s pricing is fine for commercial usage."
"Pricing can be negotiated in situations where there will be heavy usage."
"Blue Prism comes at a higher price point compared to other solutions on the market."
"The pricing is fine."
"The default configuration does not include large-scale log injection, but if you require, such integration, it may incur additional costs per gigabyte. I don't have the exact pricing information for log injection, but it is possible that it varies depending on the volume of data. While there may be a basic service included, additional features might come at an extra cost. When working with cloud environments like VMs, calculating costs involves considering factors such as usage duration, network traffic, inbound and outbound data transfer, as well as network access control. The pricing structure for cloud coverage solutions follows a similar pattern, although specific pricing details would need to be obtained separately."
"There are costs for the machine to run the robots."
"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten, with one being cheap and ten being expensive."
"We found the pricing reasonable, and it aligned with our budgetary requirements."
"This solution offers seamless integration with other enterprise products, which is my area of responsibility, focusing on government sector projects. Larger enterprise projects don't pose problems. It might be suitable for small businesses as well."
"It varies, and it depends on the client's requirements and negotiations. Nowadays, Datacap is also included in the IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation."
"We were using the User Value Unit licensing, which means we get charged per active user of the system, and if I'm not mistaken, we also had it for the rule runner service. They had a PVU license model, which is a processor value unit. For each process that we have in our system, we pay a certain amount of money. We found the pricing to be quite steep. It was really an expensive solution in comparison to Kofax, which had a different licensing model and was actually cheaper overall because they charge per page and not per user and per process."
"If you want IBM Datacap on cloud, which is a service run by IBM, the price can be quite expensive, but if you want to just purchase the licenses and own those yourself, then the price is very competitive."
"Pricing needs to stay competitive."
"Pricing depends on how much we use it. We pay per bulk quantity. We pay as you go. Therefore, it sort of depends on our usage of it."
"This solution offers seamless integration with other enterprise products, which is my area of responsibility, focusing on government sector projects. Larger enterprise projects don't pose problems. It might be suitable for small businesses as well."
"This solution is the most expensive in the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Performing Arts
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Educational Organization
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Performing Arts
9%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise12
 

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?
My main use case for Automate is to deliver enterprise-scale script execution jobs, which means we are using Automate...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortra Automate?
Until now, I have not specified any other tech products except Microsoft Power Automate, N8N, and Make.com that I've ...
What do you like most about Blue Prism Cloud?
It's easy to use, the interface, the the the the queries is which we use. It's user friendly.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Blue Prism Cloud?
Concerning pricing, it's moderate now, but when it comes to the cloud, it is a bit expensive.
What needs improvement with Blue Prism Cloud?
The area for improvement in Blue Prism Cloud is the support component. Whenever I reach out to the Blue Prism communi...
What do you like most about IBM Datacap?
The installation of the solution is very simple.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Datacap?
Pricing is in the mid-range but could be more affordable, rated at four point five.
What needs improvement with IBM Datacap?
IBM needs to improve on scanning and reading accuracy for unstructured documents. Additionally, an important missing ...
 

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate
Blue Prism Thoughtonomy Virtual Workforce, Blue Prism Virtual Workforce, Thoughtonomy Virtual Workforce
Datacap
 

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
Cabot Credit Management, Hovis, Utilita
Turkcell, PowerSouth Energy Cooperative, Central Nacional Unimed, Conqord Oil
Find out what your peers are saying about Blue Prism Cloud vs. IBM Datacap and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.