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Blue Prism Cloud vs Microsoft Power Automate 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
Blue Prism Cloud
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Power Automate
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
3rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
128
Ranking in other categories
Process Mining (4th)
 

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 Blue Prism Cloud is 1.4%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Power Automate is 20.0%, down from 21.6% 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.
Aaron Ingram - PeerSpot reviewer
Automates accounts payable process with no human interaction and saves 100% time
Edge browser extensions could be made slightly more resilient. It would be nice if they could package new libraries for end users rather than have them search for libraries. The extension resiliency would be huge. If we're looking for intelligent document processing and OCR functionality, we haven't found them yet.
MohammedIdais - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitate informed decision-making through data analytics and efficient process automation
The most valuable feature for me is the process mining capability. It helps show the optimal way to utilize a process by discovering, validating, and improving the process automation. For example, when building a process from start to end, I may not be sure if it is efficient or optimized. This feature provides validation and improvement of the process using process mining. Additionally, it has amazing integration capabilities with multiple systems, directly working with the database.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It gives us a central place to schedule tasks and run them distributed."
"Overall, the whole product is really nice and provides significant benefits."
"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."
"We have tried other RPA solutions like UiPath or Automation Anywhere. They are fantastic products but complex, and it's hard to understand everything. It would be best if you had a skilled developer or several. Automate is easy to implement, administer, and use. It's appropriate for us because our cases are simple and easy to automate. We don't need complicated tools with many features; We prefer to get a significant ROI quickly."
"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."
"The most valuable features of Fortra's Automate include its FTP functionality and file manipulation capabilities."
"The user performance is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature is security."
"Blue Prism Cloud is a stable solution."
"It's easy to use, the interface, the the the the queries is which we use. It's user friendly."
"The most valuable feature is the customizability."
"The ease of building automation and the development environment"
"This solution comes with a lot of good features."
"It provides good, clean data that enhances our AI initiatives."
"The solution is very easy to use. It's a code three platform that works very easily with documents to create custom automations."
"I have found the scheduling and email notifications features to very good compared to other RPA tools I have used."
"I use the product for automation."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Power Automate are the connectors, such as loops, which make things easier."
"The solution is comparatively quick to deploy for making smaller automation processes."
"The solution is relatively easy to use and cost-effective."
"The most valuable feature is that it is pretty low-code, so you don't need much coding expertise to use it."
"Power Automate Desktop allowed me to quickly visually identify parts of a screen and record it. So I can see that I know I'm going to have to click this button here, this field there, and this tab here, and I can literally go and quickly just record all of them and identify them and have them in a list that I can see and say - there's my list of things."
 

Cons

"They do not encrypt passwords, so this is an issue with HIPAA compliance."
"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."
"It's possible that they could use a stronger community for seeking guidance and help."
"I currently have three bugs open with them that I don't know if they are addressed in the new release."
"I would prefer not having to log in to update a ticket; being able to respond via email would be beneficial."
"The workflow for variables could be better. The input and output of task-level variables could be made a little clearer in terms of passing those around from one task to another upon success, etc. Things like that could be a little easier potentially."
"The documentation is not that great."
"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."
"I wouldn't call Blue Prism user-friendly. It's one of its downfalls. They would benefit from having drag and drop functionality, for example. It would make them a strong competitor in the space. There needs to be less reliance on coding for customization, similar to Microsoft's Power Automate."
"They should improve the user-friendliness and they should change their business model."
"The pricing was a bit high, from what I understand. That might have played a role in the decision to migrate to another solution."
"Pricing for Blue Prism Cloud is a pain as it's a little higher."
"Lacking advance features like CIO and optical character recognition"
"The cost is a bit high. Other tools are much cheaper."
"The main issue is screen scraping with Blue Prism gives us a big challenge because we need to define which technologies are web-based have been built instead of by itself discovering the technology that it is built on."
"There are a few smart services that are not available in Blue Prism. For example, Excel sheets that are converted into a CS sheet have limitations with the number of columns when imported. This could be improved."
"It would be good to have some kind of on-premises solution for BPMN users, but I don't think Microsoft will ever go back to the on-premises solution. They all train their clients to use their online services. It is easy, but it doesn't follow the industry-wide standards. I can only use the processes that Microsoft gives us. I can't map a business process by using other standards or notations, such as Business Process Management (BPM). I have to use whatever Microsoft gives us. I would like to have support for some standards because if we decide to use another BPM tomorrow, we will have to remap everything in notation to transfer from this solution. This is the only block or obstacle that I see in using this solution. It is closed in its infrastructure."
"More OCR and AI capabilities are needed to improve the solution. Other solutions have better features, such as Blue Prism and UiPath."
"They can improve the description of errors and provide more details. Sometimes, when I receive an error, I can't understand what is wrong. It would be useful to have a desktop version to modify or edit workflows. Its scalability can also be better."
"I would like more integration with other tools. It integrates well with Microsoft products, but there should be more integration with other platforms and tools, such as chatbots."
"It lacks a lot of functionality that other tools have. There should be queue management, and there should also be the capability to deal with a little bit more complex automation. If it had queue support and if it was capable of doing more complex automation, it would be a much better tool."
"There should be more transparency when it comes to which features accompany the pricing, as there appear to be hidden features of which I am not aware."
"How long it takes to deploy will depend on how confident you are with your development. The development itself is not easy."
"The connectors and the integration capability can be improved. Microsoft RPA is a growing platform, and it is not yet particularly mature."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is a bit high for a small business like ours, but we manage with Fortra's Automate."
"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 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."
"Once you buy the software, you just pay for the support for backend help."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The price is very competitive when you are comparing to other providers."
"We found the pricing reasonable, and it aligned with our budgetary requirements."
"The pricing is fine."
"Blue Prism Cloud's cost is very high."
"I rate the platform’s pricing a seven out of ten."
"The licensing of the solution is on a subscription-based model and costs around 4,999 for one bot's license. If someone wants to increase the number of bots you want from Blue Prism, then they provide a discount."
"The cost to use Microsoft Power Automate is approximately $15 per user per month, for the basic plan. However, the solution comes free with the Microsoft 365 Suite."
"The solution is free with Microsoft 365."
"The free version is quite good."
"I give the cost a three out of ten."
"This is a cost-effective product and now that it has been acquired by Microsoft, we don't expect the cost to increase with the next release."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being expensive because there are charges for additional plug-ins."
"There are many different ways to license it."
"Initially, we had a Microsoft account for Office 365. Later, we discovered that our license included access to Power Automate at no additional cost. There was a small fee for additional features, but it was negligible compared to the benefits. There are not any additional fees required to use the solution."
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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
16%
Computer Software Company
16%
Educational Organization
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
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?
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 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?
If we utilize Blue Prism's full capabilities, then it is cost-effective. Otherwise, the pricing can seem high. It req...
What needs improvement with Blue Prism Cloud?
Decipher, one of their solutions, is a waste of time. Other than that, there's nothing specific I can think of.
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 ‌...
How is Automation Anywhere compared to Microsoft Power Automate?
‌Neither‌ ‌solution‌ ‌requires‌ ‌any‌ ‌coding‌ ‌experience,‌ ‌and‌ ‌both‌ ‌are‌ ‌easy‌ ‌to‌ ‌use‌ ‌and‌ ‌have‌ ‌great...
 

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate
Blue Prism Thoughtonomy Virtual Workforce, Blue Prism Virtual Workforce, Thoughtonomy Virtual Workforce
Power Automate, Microsoft Flow, MS Power Automate, WinAutomation by Softomotive, ProcessRobot by Softomotive, Minit
 

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
1. Coca-Cola 2. General Electric 3. Siemens 4. Accenture 5. Deloitte 6. Johnson & Johnson 7. Ford 8. Nestle 9. Procter & Gamble 10. IBM 11. Amazon 12. Google 13. Microsoft 14. Adobe 15. Cisco 16. Oracle 17. SAP 18. Intel 19. HP 20. Dell 21. Verizon 22. AT&T 23. T-Mobile 24. Walmart 25. Target 26. Home Depot 27. McDonald's 28. Starbucks 29. Nike 30. Apple 31. Facebook 32. Twitter
Find out what your peers are saying about Blue Prism Cloud vs. Microsoft Power Automate and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.