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Ephesoft Transact vs Fortra's Automate 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

Automation Anywhere
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
660
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (2nd), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (2nd), Process Mining (1st), Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (1st), Agentic Automation (1st), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (2nd), AI Legal & Compliance (1st), AI Finance & Accounting (1st), AI Procurement & Supply Chain (1st)
Ephesoft Transact
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (16th)
Fortra's Automate
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (4th), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (6th)
 

Featured Reviews

Venkat Sivaprakash - PeerSpot reviewer
Management Consultant at Accenture
Has significantly improved document-driven workflows and reduced processing time across finance and HR functions
Automation Anywhere has evolved significantly and upgraded itself to provide agentic AI and AI-based automation solutions for document automation. The product has matured considerably over time. We can create workflows that can call an API. We can include prompts in particular workflows for ChatGPT-related functions, connecting to an LLM and RAG to perform tasks. For document automation, modern features are available to train documents, ensuring high accuracy and repeatability over time. The system is very easy to use. I recently completed a course in document automation, typically designed for people involved in coding and technical aspects. Though I understand coding comprehensively, I don't do actual coding. The course was very accessible. Currently, extensive coding isn't necessary due to the hybrid model incorporating GenAI aspects, low-code, no-code capabilities, APIs, and numerous pre-built objects in Automation Anywhere. The features include GenAI-driven prompting methods and workflow creation capabilities. In these workflows, we can create decision boxes and call APIs without coding. We simply pull objects, drop them, connect them, and add minimal coding when needed. The most crucial aspect isn't coding but rather sizing the automation and fleshing out the details. Automation Co-pilot takes notes and performs automated analysis. It can extract details from videos, summarize conversations, and provide detailed information. During calls, it identifies instructions and performs tasks such as preparing reports and reconciliation. Automation Anywhere can also connect with Microsoft Co-pilot. Through Co-pilot, real-time operations can be executed, allowing direct interaction between vendors and automation through this component.
it_user1648179 - PeerSpot reviewer
OCR Developer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
A stable and scalable smart content acquisition and data classification solution with a useful inject feature
I would advise potential users that Ephesoft Transact is an easy tool to handle. The UI isn't complex, and even if everything isn't handled at the UI level, they can work with the script. You can also handle issues with scripts. I believe Ephesoft Transact is one of the best tools because the UI is an easy one. The UI-level design makes it easy to handle the development and the superior Ephesoft support system. They will give you quick support to resolve issues and provide training materials. They will train the developer, and after training the developers, they will also support them. That's a good good thing that I saw. Initially, when I joined this project, I also had less knowledge. But with the help of this support system and the training material, I now have superior knowledge. On a scale from one to ten, I would give Ephesoft Transact a nine.
Jane Rachma Kiniti - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Project Manager at Labo des histoires
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We are getting approximately two hundred percent return on investment from Automation Anywhere throughout our automation journey, including RPA and our current Agentic Process Automation implementation, which is definitely a very good ROI we are receiving from Automation Anywhere."
"The IQ Bot is the most valuable feature and a significant market differentiator."
"Because of this product's features, I would rate Automation Anywhere as a game changer."
"It saves time."
"There are multiple levels of cloning. In case screen cloning doesn't work, you can do object-based cloning or keystroke-level cloning, depending upon what parameters are available to you and what is the level of information that you capture. You can traverse between object cloning, which is the lowest form of cloning to a stroke-based cloning, which is like taking care of each keystroke-level which is made by the agent."
"When anybody talks about Robotic Process Automation, Automation Anywhere is the first thing that comes to my mind."
"The most valuable features for us are the Image Recognition and Object Cloning. We used this feature to automate our web-based tasks with repetitive actions or complex conditions. These features are very easy to use and do not require you to have deep knowledge in programming to understand since it has a drop and drag feature used to control it."
"Automation Anywhere has a drag-and-drop feature eliminating the need for extensive coding."
"Transact's best feature is its ease of customization."
"I believe Ephesoft Transact is one of the best tools because the UI is an easy one."
"I have found the keyword extraction to be helpful."
"I like the inject feature. With desktop injects, we're doing all these things and extracting these things. Its stable, scalable, and technical support is good."
"Fortra's Automate positively impacts my organization by reducing costs, errors, and time because I can create any automation for saving time."
"Fortra's Automate performs the job effectively and has the capability to alert us of any issues."
"The solution is continuously adding more integrations to help with workflows and bot and task creation."
"We've automated all the vendor processes so that we don't have to manually load any files."
"I would recommend Automate because it has made my work much easier."
"I like the interface; it makes managing automation easy. We can set different schedules and templates for each task."
"The key benefit of Fortra's Automate is that it is quite effective with the automation of repetitive IT and business workflows, which is the primary use case we feel is perfect for Fortra's Automate, and it significantly reduces manual intervention."
"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."
 

Cons

"PDF extraction and cognitive automation need improvement."
"The initial setup was not that great. The road was very up and down. We struggled. A lot of the features were not compatible with applications which we are using. That was the reason. This was the initial days, we are talking about 2016 to 2017. The buzz was not as much as we are having now."
"Regarding the UI, once you're on some of the screens there are fixed dialogues, they are a set size, so there's a lot of horizontal scrolls and vertical scrolls. If I want to do something that is purely business-related and is somewhat complex to write or is nuanced, I sometimes have trouble implementing that inside of the Automation Anywhere script."
"When a bot is in production, sometimes the keystrokes will not work. I am not sure why, and we have tried to contact technical support. They said that they don't have an answer for this. It happens in the the remote environment when we are deploying a bot into AWS machines. So, technical support said this happens in AWS machines sometimes: If the bot is running and the machine is locked, then at that time, the key strokes will not work. They have provided that solution, but we are trying to avoid keystrokes now."
"In the 10.7 version, the back-end port for the MetaBot password has looping. This has been a type of limitation."
"One thing with the bot that we are always struggling with is the memory management."
"Sometimes, the bot struggles to initiate on the cloud, even when everything appears in place. This issue occasionally requires uninstalling and reinstalling a component on my PC, although I cannot recall the specific component involved."
"The inclusion of word packages would help us to extract data from Word and automate word-related activities easily."
"Transact could be improved by removing Java and making its pricing more accessible for smaller customers."
"It's not easy to train."
"Their email service and extraction could be better. We get the input via email, and these emails contain different types of documents like Excel, PDF, or they may contain different content in the email body. Due to this variation, sometimes the email service crashes, and emails aren't redirected to Ephesoft Transact. Ephesoft has provided us with new hotfixes. Whatever flaws we found in the 2019.2 version, they have already updated it in the new version, 20.1.05, and it's already released. Drawbacks like not capturing the handwritten fields are now sorted."
"Their email service and extraction could be better. We get the input via email, and these emails contain different types of documents like Excel, PDF, or they may contain different content in the email body."
"I wish Fortra's Automate could shorten the time it takes to debug complex workflows because they tend to take much longer than expected."
"The OCR for Hebrew text needs to be improved."
"Automate could simplify the UI for creating a workflow for automation. As a technical person, I can understand it easily. However, there are few activities in the software that our HR department cannot understand."
"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."
"Fortra's Automate is not as reliable as I would like it to be."
"Sometimes when we communicate with the ERP system and there is an issue, we are not always aware of the specifics of Automate and the source of the problem."
"It's possible that they could use a stronger community for seeking guidance and help."
"Currently, there are many instances where I see empty logs, indicating that, while tasks are scheduled, commands are not executing successfully."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our advice is that anybody interested in this product should negotiate product bundles in order to reduce the cost of installation and setup."
"It is not cheap, with costs ranging between 700 to 800 dollars per month. While Power Automate is cheaper at 15 dollars per month, Automation Anywhere offers superior features, user-friendliness, and smoothness."
"The licensing cost of Automation Anywhere is better than UiPath and Blue Prism."
"The price for Automation Anywhere is reasonable."
"We have seen the tangible benefits of taking monotonous work off people's plates, creating capacity, and cost reductions."
"Automation Anywhere is expensive."
"It's an ideal pricing model to customize the components based on everyone's needs."
"I don't agree with the IQ Bot licensing costs, which depends on the consumption of the document rather than per bot or user. This is confusing for me, because most of the cases for us in a possible future scenario, there would be a lot of invalid data to be scanned to get to real data. E.g., we would have to supply approximately 100 pages of scanned data to extract two pages of original data. In these type of cases, the IQ Bot might be a costly venture."
"Transact's pricing could be better for smaller customers."
"Initially, when I got a licensed copy of Ephesoft Transact, it was for one year. After one year, we had to send an email to the Ephesoft team informing them that our license was going to expire. They updated it and provided one license in our file, and we had to update and install the folder. They have versions for one year and lifelong as well."
"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."
"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."
"It comes with a package that costs approximately $20,000 USD per year."
"The cost is a bit high for a small business like ours, but we manage with Fortra's Automate."
"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."
"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."
"From a distributor's perspective, one of the biggest selling points of Automate is its price point."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Construction Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
9%
Performing Arts
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business157
Midsize Enterprise82
Large Enterprise558
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It depends on your use case. Is it simply to automate a couple of processes? Is it to augment a human team? AA is ver...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
From my experience using AA tool, it depends on the applications that you want to automate, because there some applic...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It is a highly preferred RPA tool. You can check my Automation Anywhere Review to know more.
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What is your primary use case for HelpSystems AutoMate?
I use Fortra's Automate to automate our workflows and reports mainly. For example, we normally task it to generate an...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortra Automate?
When we installed Fortra's Automate, I was present. We use Automate Plus, and we are running about 20 bots or instanc...
What needs improvement with Fortra Automate?
The interface of Fortra's Automate is similar to GoAnywhere. I am not completely pleased with it, although it is intu...
 

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)
No data available
HelpSystems Automate, Automate
 

Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
Honda Logistics, Washington State Health Care Authority
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Ephesoft Transact vs. Fortra's Automate and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.