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Ephesoft Transact vs VisualCron comparison

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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
28
Ranking in other categories
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (5th)
Ephesoft Transact
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (19th)
VisualCron
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Managed File Transfer (MFT) (16th), Workload Automation (16th), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (17th)
 

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.
YS
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.
Sourav-Dutta - PeerSpot reviewer
It's user-friendly, and I didn't need long to understand the process
We use VisualCron for all our automation needs, like connecting to FileZilla, calling APIs, generating PGP keys, creating encryption files with the PGP key login to Azure, etc. It can automatically log in to SQL Server and execute SQL script jobs in bulk. We had 2,000-3,000 users at my previous…

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."
"The ability to connect to websites and pull data is the solution's most valuable feature."
"I would recommend Automate because it has made my work much easier."
"I actually quite liked the no-coding functionality."
"Fortra's Automate has effectively replaced the workload of an entire employee, saving us significant time and money."
"I find it very user-friendly. Our IT department and other departments can seamlessly collaborate without requiring extensive training. As a business department, we particularly value this aspect, as our team doesn't consist of many IT users. However, we couldn't solely rely on a drag-and-drop approach to implement and utilize the solution within our departments."
"We have found the pricing to be very reasonable."
"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."
"Transact's best feature is its ease of customization."
"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."
"VisualCron is a very powerful program to automate different steps in your business processes. We use it to automate replacing files and inform departments about the replacement."
"The ability to clone jobs to shorten the time it takes to implement a process has been invaluable, but its flexibility also gives us the ability to create a job that can handle a multifaceted process with a complex workflow."
"The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%."
"It helped us reduce manual steps."
"It has improved our organization with more automation within the business departments and less administration and development in the IT department. Usually, as the IT department, we are the bottleneck for many requirements within the business. With this tool, the business departments are able to perform many task themselves."
"We don't have to do any coding. We just plug and play and it works."
"'ve only had a few cases where I've had to request support in the past 12 years of use, but the support response time and resolution were was extremely quick."
"The most valuable feature of VisualCron is its ability to schedule interactive jobs so that you can have interdependencies within the job and interdependencies of a job on another job, and so on."
 

Cons

"I would like the updates to be easier to deploy. Integration with Amazon S3 is somewhat lacking."
"We really need a free development environment for customers. Building and testing automation on production isn't ideal."
"The solution has a very weak knowledge base."
"Some companies have asked for voice integration. This is likely part of the roadmap."
"Some challenges include the system being too loaded or delayed in taking instructions and responding quickly as needed."
"I would like the updates to be easier to deploy. Integration with Amazon S3 is somewhat lacking."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It's not easy to train."
"Transact could be improved by removing Java and making its pricing more accessible for smaller customers."
"VisualCron seems to operate like an efficient machine when it comes to improvements and enhancements and new features. I always appreciate the quick response I get when bringing up an issue or coming up with suggestions. I've mentioned before that it would be great to see a move away from SQLCE and XML configuration files."
"There are some conditions in the mail trigger, but you can only use them as an "AND" condition, not as an "OR" condition. This is an improvement that could be useful. For example, some people put "invoice" in the subject and others put "invoice" in the body. If I want to make a trigger for everybody whose sending invoices, I have to make two jobs for this now."
"An area for improvement in VisualCron is its cluttered interface. It isn't always easy to find all functionalities, so what VisualCron needs is a user interface expert who can improve the interface. There's a learning curve in terms of finding what you need from the interface of VisualCron. The technical support for VisualCron also needs improvement in terms of response time. Currently, there's no live support or hotline you can call to get quick answers, so this is what I'd like to see in the next version of VisualCron. A less cluttered and more streamlined interface, where you don't need to hunt for some of the features, is also what I'd like to see in the next VisualCron update."
"I would like for VisualCron to expand audit log to show who changed job variables that are initialized per job run."
"The documentation is a bit weak."
"VisualCron is software, and you will experience performance degradation when you scale up. VisualCron takes too much memory or CPU power. We have to increase the hardware resources of a specific server or system."
"I want to improve the UI in VisualCron, as it's not as user-friendly, particularly when setting up the task scheduler. If you're familiar with the tool, then no problem, but if not, you'll have a problem typing text because sometimes, the cursor points to other places, so there's an issue with text box alignment in VisualCron. That was painful for me when I was just a VisualCron novice, but when you become used to it, there won't be a problem."
"The only problem I face when I use the tool is that it doesn't contain much documentation or it doesn't have many video tutorials on its features."
 

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 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."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"The price is a bit high."
"The pricing is extremely fair, and because of that I recommend purchasing multiple instances to split out the processing load across multiple application servers."
"ROI is 95 percent."
"VisualCron is correctly priced because it wasn't very cheap, and it wasn't overly expensive, so the price for it was set correctly. When my previous company bought VisualCron, it was €800 per server per year. On a scale of one to five, I would rate the pricing for VisualCron a five because it was just right. The tool was affordable, and it has one of the most competitive pricing in the market."
"We are fine with a rather cheap setup. Licensing with VisualCron is fair. You have a simple one-year licence in different sizes. There isn't a licensing jungle with hundreds of options and opt-ins."
"ROI is one month."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
5%
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Retailer
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
28%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Insurance Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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...
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Earn 20 points
What do you like most about VisualCron?
The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%.
What needs improvement with VisualCron?
The documentation is a bit weak. The tool must provide a better set of documentation.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate
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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
Honda Logistics, Washington State Health Care Authority
7 Eleven, ABB Sécheron SA, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Amazon Europe Core, Apple, Assa Abloy, Aston Martin, Banco Santander, BMW (Australia)
Find out what your peers are saying about Ephesoft Transact vs. VisualCron and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.