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Automate vs Blue Prism comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

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
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Blue Prism
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category, the mindshare of Automate is 1.6%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Blue Prism is 10.0%, down from 12.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
 

Q&A Highlights

reviewer1373997 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 29, 2021
 

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.
Mohamed Salah Baccouche - PeerSpot reviewer
Way more efficient for debugging than other tools but the UI is complicated
The UI is more complicated than other tools. In Power Automate, it doesn't even feel like you are working because the tool does the job for you. But in the solution, there are studio, process, and object interfaces and you have to decode your own objects. The free objects that are predefined are not good compared to other tools. There is still a lot of work to do on the solution's intelligent automation part.

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."
"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 solution is continuously adding more integrations to help with workflows and bot and task creation."
"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."
"I would rate the technical support as a nine out of ten because it is quite fast and courteous."
"The best feature of Automate is its ease of use, which is a major selling point."
"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."
"The pricing is excellent. I would give them perfect marks in that regard."
"It is a scalable solution."
"It's quite easy to use and easy to understand the process studio."
"It has a centrally managed infrastructure, and it is secure. Our client was using it because of its ease of use. They had already identified some workflows that were trained on Blue Prism RPAs. It was much more convenient for them to preselect Blue Prism as compared to other vendors."
"The most valuable feature is the design studio and its ease of use."
"All of the processes that we've automated have been completed successfully, and the bots are able to process them as expected."
"If there is a task that Blue Prism cannot do out of the box, Blue Prism provides me the facility of designing one and integrating it into the application. This process is called Visual Basic Objects."
"The ease of development is the most valuable. Standard VBOs are pretty useful there with Excel and different things. Our custom developments for SAP and things like that are pretty easy to set up and quick to get going."
"The tool's user interface is very intuitive."
 

Cons

"I currently have three bugs open with them that I don't know if they are addressed in the new release."
"I find that most important features are strong, however, there is a lack of good development for artificial intelligence, such as machine learning."
"The product also has a limited use case in some respects."
"The technical support could be better. We suffer from language barriers, as we are in Argentina."
"The documentation is not that great."
"I would like to see some better web automation, a wizard like the one in the product WinAutomation would be very nice."
"The documentation for errors needs improvement as many of the error messages we receive are very vague."
"It's possible that they could use a stronger community for seeking guidance and help."
"Blue Prism could be more scalable."
"The initial setup and deployment could be simplified."
"The control room is still the desktop version, which restricts access. You can't really access it from anywhere."
"The solution is pretty high priced. The tool's support also needs to be better."
"I would like to see machine learning functionality integrated with the automation."
"There are some new tools on the market that work better than Blue Prism. When Blue Prism receives information I have found other RPA solutions refresh the application better. At this moment it's not the best application."
"It isn't very easy or intuitive for our developers to program the bot to make intelligent decisions. A bot, for the lack of a better word, is stupid, and it can only do what we program it to do. It cannot make intelligent decisions. For example, if we are reviewing Uber charges, they could be posting their transactions under different corporation names, even though they are under the same parent company or group. A human can easily understand that it is the name of the same company, and it just has an asterisk or space, but a bot cannot do that. When a bot cannot complete the transaction, it sends out an exception rate, business exception, or system exception for a human to do a manual review. The exception rate has been high because the bots cannot make decisions that we think are very simple, which is understandable because that's how they were programmed. There is potential in utilizing the higher intelligence side of the tool, but it is not easy to code higher intelligent actions. It is a very lengthy process to get the provisioning to ensure that it is kind of doing what it needs to do. Provisioning involves multiple things, and it is quite complicated and not the best experience, but it is not just because of Blue Prism. Blue Prism is easy, but it takes a long time to onboard into our in-house system."
"Blue Prism is not very flexible when it comes to integrations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I'm only involved in running the product and maintaining the systems, so I can't speak to the cost."
"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."
"Once you buy the software, you just pay for the support for backend help."
"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 like the way this solution is priced because you can buy a license, or you can buy the software outright."
"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."
"Blue Prism is an expensive solution, especially in Southeast Asia, while in Europe and the UK, it can be considered moderate in terms of cost."
"I give the price of the solution a seven out of ten."
"The price of Blue Prism is high compared to others solutions. It would be helpful if they could provide a trial version for new users to try. Other vendors provide a community or trial version. There are not any hidden costs."
"Blue Prism is less expensive than some of the other RPA solutions."
"It is a bit higher in cost as compared to Automation Anywhere and UiPath. The rate also differs from client to client. Margins are also important when it comes to costing and licensing. There are some additional costs involved besides the standard licensing costs. You have the development team cost, which includes the project manager, development team, analyst, and testers. You also need a team manager. You also have the tools cost, architecture cost, platform cost, and the licensing cost of each bot."
"Blue Prism has a really simple licensing model, where the licenses are not confusing and there are no hidden costs the way there are in UiPath."
"Compared to other tools on the market, it is one of the most expensive."
"We really don't bear the costs. The cost is borne by the customer. It runs into about $100,000 per year per customer for Blue Prism. We normally budget around $30,000 for the first year for the hardware, setup, and people cost."
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Answers from the Community

reviewer1373997 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 29, 2021
Jun 29, 2021
@reviewer1356150 @Nilesh Pawar @reviewer1390509 @Alex Yuan @Hayaa Kayasseh you've all recently written reviews for one of these products. Do you have any insight to share with @reviewer1373997 about governance and business continuity requirements for these products?
See 2 answers
Rony_Sklar - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 20, 2020
@reviewer1356150 @Nilesh Pawar @reviewer1390509 @Alex Yuan @Hayaa Kayasseh you've all recently written reviews for one of these products. Do you have any insight to share with @reviewer1373997 about governance and business continuity requirements for these products?
Mohammed Tafazal - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 29, 2021
For any RPA tool it required have a generic /universal governance model where  1. sponsor or Head of RPA implementation 2. Business analysts 3.Architects(solution/technical) 4.Developers ( Full stack - Build, Test and SIT) 5.Scrum master or Sprints head or Project manager 6. QA ( Test automation) - optional Above generic governance model/structure roles for handling any kind of RPA process. One proven way to implement centralized automation management is via a CoE. The best practices of Robotic Process Automation states that the use of bots doesn’t increase negative risks for the organization in the development of reusable solutions. The responsibilities of a Centre of Excellence will depend on the exact governance model used. The most common activities include the following: Drive RPA in the business, training teams, and increasing awareness of RPA in those. Calculate the criticality and quality of the developed solutions, ensuring the application of best practices. Monitor the operation of bots and guarantee that execution SLAs (service-level agreement) are met. Follow and report the main development stages. Guarantee the execution of established governance processes. Guarantee the continual improvement of processes and tools. Business Continuity Requirements: To have backup or disaster recovery machines for the critical RPA processes with load balancing using central orchestration in different clusters. For any of the RPA there is orchestration tool which handles all the initiation and processing from one location have it maintained well from risks and disasters with load balancing. This will helps in business continuity.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
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?
I am a consultant and I am making a lot of processes in human resources, payroll, certifications, trainings, web scraping, pre-reporting, and many processes that need to be automated on the web. My...
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 rate the pricing as an eight out of ten.
Should I choose Blue Prism or Microsoft Power Automate?
Hello Netanya, it depends on your needs and your expertise. In my humble opinion you can start a big RPA project implementation with Blue Prism which is stable and mature software, in order to ser...
I am evaluating Blue Prism and UiPath for RPA for my company. Which one do you recommend?
I'm very familiar with UiPath and the RPA industry: was hired by Daniel Dines in 2015 when there were 35 employees and left in 2019 when there were 3K+. I'm a big believer in the product, leadershi...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate
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
Coca-Cola, Walgreens, American Express, Royal Bank of Canada, Pfizer, Shop Direct, O2, Siemens, Ascension Healthcare, Jaguar Land Rover
Find out what your peers are saying about Automate vs. Blue Prism and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,671 professionals have used our research since 2012.