BotFarm vs IBM Datacap comparison

Automation Anywhere and IBM are both solutions in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category. Additionally, 91% of Automation Anywhere users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of IBM users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between BotFarm and IBM Datacap based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed BotFarm vs. IBM Datacap Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

BotFarm vs. IBM Datacap

June 2025

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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

Featured Reviews

Anabel Marco

Account Director at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

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.

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Ganesh-Subramanian

Digital Transformation Lead at Expleogroup

Offers enhancement in data accuracy with low-code requirements and easy onboarding

It's a scalable product. In our organization, we sometimes write a script once and reuse it several times, which improves workflow efficiency. Our team inputs the datasets one by one or in a batch mode into BotFarm and schedules them or calls individually as needed. For instance, if one individual has 15 or 20 forms that need to be scanned and logged immediately, it's possible to implement with BotFarm and its scheduling operations. The solution is ideal for small and medium-sized enterprises and can fit in for large enterprises as well, depending upon the use case. For instance, if 100 agents are working across different locations through a mobile app, all the data from the agents can be stored in a common repository and scheduled. BotFarm can be configured based on the architecture and business operations.

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DeekshithShetty

Software Development Senior Specialist at NTT Data

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This tool has machine learning and voice recognition and computer vision, which are both quite useful aspects. These aren't available in other tools. It's a good addition to this tool and it gives the solution an edge on the market."

"Fortra's Automate performs the job effectively and has the capability to alert us of any issues."

"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 most valuable features for my client are timing and scheduling."

"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."

"Overall, the whole product is really nice and provides significant benefits."

"The best feature of Automate is its ease of use, which is a major selling point."

"The licensing of the product is very good. You only need to license it once and then you have it forever."

More Automate pros

"BotFarm is an easy solution to use and the interface is better than older versions."

"There are not many challenges when setting up this solution, and there is a good amount of documentation to go with it."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"The most valuable features I have found to be the screen scraping and the integration with third-party solutions."

"The most important feature of BotFarm is web automation."

"From a solution standpoint, screen capture and tight integration with Outlook are valuable features."

"What I like most about BotFarm is that it's one of the leading RPA products in the market. Very few products focus on robotics today, so I like that BotFarm offers a lot in terms of what general customers expect it to do."

"BotFarm has been working perfectly fine with our business model. Its scalability is the most valuable feature. We can easily scale out bots on a need basis. Portability is another valuable feature. We work with different payment systems like Visa and MasterCard and have bots for them. Because of BotFarm, we are able to reuse these bots."

More BotFarm pros

"At the forefront of my thoughts, the standout feature of this intelligent product is its remarkable capability. This project we're currently engaged in revolves around streamlining workflows within both our company and the customer's company. It entails handling information from various documents with diverse formats and types, even when they contain the same data. The ability to connect this information with the appropriate database and recognize it irrespective of the format or source is an extremely valuable feature. Moreover, leveraging machine learning is crucial since our customer deals with an extensive archive of over five million documents. Machine learning can significantly alleviate the backlog by becoming well-versed in various scenarios they might encounter during their work once we've completed our application."

"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"

"There's something that's very unique about IBM DataCap. It provides me with a good solution for extracting, reading the QR codes, and scanning them. In this stage, we are working in a UIT phase before implementing this protocol in all our branches. From my initial observation, IBM DataCap is good, it is not working too fast, but in a good manner for us."

"Datacap is good at processing unstructured data. You can build up some nice data flows, and it is simple to configure. The tool adopts a low-code approach, but you can do a lot of coding if you want to customize and automate your flows. Datacap also has the flexibility to integrate."

"One of the valuable features of Datacap is the user experience. One thing that IBM did a few years ago was they standardized all of their ECM products on Content Navigator, including Datacap. If you're an IBM ECM customer you have FileNet, you have Datacap, you have StoredIQ and you have a consistent user experience, user interface."

"I can have all scanners accessible from my end."

"It helps companies figure out how to use advanced imaging techniques, processes, best practices, and other tools."

"The big thing these days is really the Insight Edition component and being able to build annotators to extract from literally unstructured content: paragraphs and information where there's no start anchor point to define where that data is located. There could be a number of entities in that which you have to draw information from. Being able to extract from them is really the differentiator today between that product and many of the other products..."

More IBM Datacap pros

Cons

"I would like the updates to be easier to deploy. Integration with Amazon S3 is somewhat lacking."

"I would prefer not having to log in to update a ticket; being able to respond via email would be beneficial."

"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."

"I believe we need to test various OCR tools that assist in evaluating, let's say, six different customer resyncs. We analyze their spending patterns and documentations, but current OCR support has limitations, requiring highly standardized documents, which isn't always the case. With a more advanced OCR system, we could improve processes related to credit risk management and legal matters. We're exploring how to integrate Fortra's Automate with our CRM platform, taking cues from instances where Salesforce seamlessly merged with Automate. However, we use a different CRM, Insight for New Enterprise, and we're seeking ways to connect the automation process within our CRM. We aim for the automation to continue smoothly, even in instances where traditional automation methods might face hurdles."

"I would like the updates to be easier to deploy. Integration with Amazon S3 is somewhat lacking."

"The OCR for Hebrew text needs to be improved."

"The product also has a limited use case in some respects."

"We really need a free development environment for customers. Building and testing automation on production isn't ideal."

More Automate cons

"The CL command poses an issue during the process of data conversion, accuracy, data loss and the assessment of certain data as false."

"The only challenge that we have faced with BotFarm is that there is no continuous deployment. The whole world is moving to the DevOps model, but BotFarm is still not on the DevOps model. It should have integration with the DevOps model. The migration of the bots or bots pipeline is currently purely manual."

"Its UI could be made better. It should also be more flexible. Currently, it is more rigid, and a little more flexibility is required. Their technical support should also be better. We are not very happy with their technical support. Its price is also quite high as of now. They should improve its price. Its setup should also be made easier. It is quite complex to set it up. Even though we were able to set it up a little fast because we had done something similar earlier, but it has a very complex setup. It is extremely resource-hungry. If they can make it a little light on resources, that would also be useful."

"The OCR command needs to improve. This feature is used to convert the extracted data from an image file. While converting this file I was facing a lot of issues with the data because it was getting lost and some of the data which was extracted was mismatched. The data loss was rated as a nine and the data accuracy was a massive decrease and was up to 80%."

"When somebody is just learning this product it can be difficult for them to understand, so improvements to the user interface would be helpful."

"The tool must execute remedial actions to resolve problems before they cause significant incidents."

"I would like to see more process mining features to give us insight into them before we develop automation."

"Sometimes I feel like it doesn't work properly and we are not able to provide the dexterity needed."

More BotFarm cons

"The solution's scalability needs improvement."

"I give the scalability of the solution a six out of ten."

"Going forward, IBM needs to ensure that the output is perfect (as it can make the product) while staying true to platform's core."

"I've faced some bugs or issues. They should do deeper testing of the product before releasing it because some of the bugs that I found were a bit simple. I understand that it is a massive product, and some of the functionalities can get overlooked."

"When I scan a document in Datacap that has a watermark or the document is a little distorted, the image output is poor. It either becomes completely black, or there is so much distortion that we cannot read the numbers or the addresses mentioned in the POD. When we scan a document, we expect the output to be at least 95 percent accurate."

"It can take some time to implement."

"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."

More IBM Datacap cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"It comes with a package that costs approximately $20,000 USD per year."

"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 cost is a bit high for a small business like ours, but we manage with Fortra's Automate."

"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."

"I'm only involved in running the product and maintaining the systems, so I can't speak to the cost."

"Compared to other products, the pricing model for this solution is much more convenient, flexible, and adaptable to the Portuguese reality."

More Automate pricing and cost advice

"The license of this solution is on an annual basis. The price is fair. However, what we did initially was a POC, but now we are looking at moving from a POC to expanding it out further. I would appreciate some kind of discount."

"Licenses are paid on a yearly basis and the cost is quite high."

"It is too expensive and not worth the price."

"I am very happy with the pricing."

"Automation Anywhere is more reasonable than Blue Prism and UiPath in terms of cost."

"We are on an annual license for the solution and is priced well."

"We pay approximately $15,000 USD per year."

"An unattended bot license costs around $5,000, whereas an attended bot license costs roughly $1,500."

More BotFarm pricing and cost advice

"This solution is the most expensive in the market."

"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 is an expensive solution."

"IBM could offer more competitive pricing. This would allow them to attain more users. Some of our clients are considering moving to a different solution called Encapture which is similar but offers more competitive pricing."

"You save a lot of time and money, but the benefit is you have people who are able to run the systems, check to see if there are any errors at all, and there are a lot less errors than a human system."

"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."

"Pricing needs to stay competitive."

"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."

More IBM Datacap pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

Computer Software Company

27%

Financial Services Firm

27%

Real Estate/Law Firm

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

17%

Government

14%

Computer Software Company

12%

Insurance Company

10%

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.

See all answers

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...

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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...

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What do you like most about BotFarm?

The product has increased efficiency and reduced the time spent on tasks.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BotFarm?

The product is slightly expensive. In comparison to competitor tools like UiPath, BotFarm's cost is greater. Our orga...

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What needs improvement with BotFarm?

The solution can improve the accuracy of hand-written data reading. In some situations, the data needs to be hand-wri...

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What do you like most about IBM Datacap?

The installation of the solution is very simple.

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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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Datacap?

IBM needs to improve on scanning and reading accuracy for unstructured documents. Additionally, an important missing ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Blue Prism vs Automate

Compared 9% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

VisualCron vs Automate

Compared 6% of the time

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Automation Anywhere vs BotFarm

Compared 100% of the time

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ABBYY Vantage vs IBM Datacap

Compared 32% of the time

Amazon Textract vs IBM Datacap

Compared 18% of the time

Microsoft Power Automate vs IBM Datacap

Compared 13% of the time

Tungsten TotalAgility vs IBM Datacap

Compared 11% of the time

OpenText Capture vs IBM Datacap

Compared 11% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Automate

June 2025

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Buyer's Guide

BotFarm

June 2025

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Buyer's Guide

IBM Datacap

June 2025

Download IBM Datacap product report

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate

No data available

Datacap

Overview

Automate offers a user-friendly solution with a drag-and-drop interface for efficient task automation and integration with major platforms like SAP and Azure, making it ideal for quick deployment with minimal coding and training.

Automate provides powerful features for businesses seeking efficient automation, offering compatibility with databases, email integration, and cloud platforms. Its simple interface supports both beginners and experienced users, simplifying tasks like invoice processing, HR automation, and data transformation. Cost-effective pricing and flexible licensing enhance its appeal while integration capabilities and scheduling tools ensure smooth workflow automation.

What are Automate's Key Features?

Drag-and-Drop Interface: Simplifies automation with intuitive design.
Integration Capabilities: Connects with platforms like SAP and Azure for seamless data flow.
Database and FTP Triggers: Enhances automation potential through direct data interaction.
Efficient Scheduling: Automates tasks with precise timing and control.
Web Scraping: Automates data extraction for quick analysis and reporting.

What Benefits and ROI Should Users Expect?

Rapid Deployment: Minimizes coding efforts for quick implementation.
Cost-Effectiveness: Offers flexible pricing models to suit budget constraints.
Operational Efficiency: Reduces manual workloads and enhances productivity.
Comprehensive Integration: Facilitates improved data management across systems.
Scalability: Adapts to growing business needs with ease.

In industries such as healthcare, banking, and logistics, Automate is used for tasks like invoice payment automation, data transformation, and task automation. This leads to streamlined processes and reduced manual workload, illustrating its value in enhancing operational efficiency through diversified workflows.

Fortra

BotFarm is an enterprise-level robotic process automation (RPA) solution. What is unique about BotFarm is that users can buy RPA processes based on demand and not be confined to a license or a strict capacity structure. BotFarm, a robust product of Automation Anywhere, is the only RPA solution that allows users to buy only the products they need when they need them. BotFarm allows users to launch all the robots they need to get tasks completed sooner and more efficiently than many other products in the marketplace today. This consumption-based business model will result in significant savings and increase an organization's overall profitability.

BotFarm Benefits

Scalable: The flexible nature of the solution makes it very easy to scale when needed.
User-friendly: The UI is simple to use and understand. Users do not have to be tech-savvy to deploy bots.
Improves efficiency: BotFarm will increase process integrity by reducing human error and the need for continuous manual human effort or interaction.
Integration: BotFarm integrates well with many third-party solutions.

BotFarm Features

No code/low code solutions: Users can easily create and deploy bots to perform undesirable, mundane tasks, freeing IT staff to work on more productive, complicated tasks.
IQ Bots: Easily extrapolate data from any document, such as resumes, invoices, and legal documents, to ensure data is correctly correlated and grouped together and that overall data integrity is never compromised.
Fast: Deployed bots can complete tasks significantly faster than any human component, and with less error.
Cost-effective: Users only pay for the bots they actually need, and create as they go. This innovative process will save your organization time and money while increasing overall productivity and profitability. BotFarm has a very good ROI and is a stable, secure, and scalable solution.

Reviews from Real Users

Akshay P., Associate Systems Analyst at NSEiT Limited, relates, “It is very easy, simple. You're working on a notepad, and you don't need to know programming to work on this. The dashboards are quite good, especially on the latest versions.”

A Digital Strategy Manager at an energy/utilities company shares, “The scalability is the solution's most valuable aspect. The reason Bot Farm is used is to have only one license available whenever you have a spike in the transactions. That is a core feature. That is something which we are using to the maximum. It's working well due to the fact that the solution use case is quite structured.”

A Senior RPA Developer at a tech services company tells us, “The solution is great to automate any repetitive tasks, which you might do on a daily basis. For example, the organization may need to be generating invoices or extracting data from PDF files daily. It is very versatile in what you can automate. This has improved my organization by cutting down on repetitive tasks that now can be automated.”

Automation Anywhere

IBM Datacap helps you streamline the capture, recognition and classification of business documents and extract important information. Datacap supports multiple-channel capture by processing paper documents on scanners, mobile devices, multi-function peripherals and fax. It uses natural language processing, text analytics and machine learning technologies, like those in IBM Watson, to automatically identify, classify and extract content from unstructured or variable documents. The software can reduce labor and paper costs, deliver meaningful information and support faster decision making.

IBM

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

Cisco, CocaCola Bottlers Japan, Macy's, Whirlpool, Unilever

Turkcell, PowerSouth Energy Cooperative, Central Nacional Unimed, Conqord Oil

Buyer's Guide

BotFarm vs. IBM Datacap

June 2025

Free Report: BotFarm vs. IBM Datacap

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