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Fortra's Automate vs Microsoft Copilot Studio 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
Ranking in Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
644
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), AI Legal & Compliance (1st), AI Finance & Accounting (1st), AI Procurement & Supply Chain (1st)
Fortra's Automate
Ranking in Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (4th)
Microsoft Copilot Studio
Ranking in Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies
20th
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Chatbot Development Platforms (3rd), AI Agent Builders (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.
Anthony Tuhame - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Manager at Everseen
Automation has reduced night-time server checks and now manages reporting and cloud monitoring
The downsides I normally mention about Fortra's Automate are about reports and deep analytics. While Fortra's Automate can manage our servers, it can give you a problem report that says what happened, but it doesn't give you a clear picture of why it happened or how many times your servers went offline. This pushes us to get another third-party tool. We have to generate those simple reports from Fortra's Automate and push them to another software in Tableau. We use Tableau for analytics to analyze that data and understand what the trends are, what the instance is telling us, and what the clear problem is. It lacks that deep analytics feature. Additionally, I am not impressed with the interface, as it feels outdated and it has taken a long time to see any updates or changes. I believe those are the two downsides, but the customer support is adequate.
Shrikant Pillay. - PeerSpot reviewer
Architect at kyndryl
Has helped automate repetitive tasks and streamline content summarization across teams
For analytics, I prefer using the Power BI platform instead of Microsoft Copilot Studio. When it comes to analytics, though it gives the right insight, the visuals are not of great quality, or sometimes they don't appear at all. For instance, when creating charts of sales on a quarter-on-quarter basis or month-on-month basis in a bar graph or pie chart, Microsoft Copilot Studio doesn't perform adequately. Anything requiring image creation or graphs and plots is not optimal. The graphing features are missing in Microsoft Copilot Studio. Although image creation is available, it lags at times, similar to any other LLM module. When creating content based on graphs or CIO presentations, these features are not developed to a great extent.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Automation Anywhere's image reader is the most valuable feature."
"By implementing the Automation Anywhere robot, we have reduced the FTE count and it was able to process 800 invoices per day with 100% accuracy."
"Most clients prefer Automation Anywhere because it is easy to implement. You don't need to know rocket science to learn this solution. If you know logic, that is sufficient. Automation Anywhere is more user-friendly."
"Automation Anywhere helped us to reduce the work time on data operations."
"Document automation has notably reduced manual effort."
"Automation Anywhere helped me achieve my automation goals as it reduced turnaround time, cost, human intervention, and increased overall satisfaction levels for our customers."
"We are having a very good experience with this product."
"My clients have seen ROI, as what would take them two to three days in work is now taking them two to three hours."
"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."
"Automate's best feature is that we do not need to write any code; we can create our jobs using the drag and drop option available, and any technical member without coding expertise can use this tool."
"Customers of AutoMate will realize their ROI within 90 to 120 days from their go-live date."
"We are still in the process of rolling it to production and tweaking it (our AD groups are a mess), but the improvements are priceless. Having users ID's created the same way every time without human error is the best part. We don't need to worry about why groups were not added, user rights not set to folders or missing a private folder being created, typos or just even knowing when things are done and logged."
"Fortra's Automate performs the job effectively and has the capability to alert us of any issues."
"Automate increases efficiency and eliminates errors during documentation and invoicing processes."
"Fortra's Automate can check if our servers are working, so I don't need to wake up at 3:00 AM to check server status."
"The licensing of the product is very good; you only need to license it once and then you have it forever, which makes the product quite affordable."
"The integration part in Microsoft Copilot Studio is something I really appreciate because it's very easy to integrate with anything, and the main reason we chose this Studio is its simplicity in developing and building workflows and interconnecting things, especially when it comes to public cloud; life is quite easy."
"We have achieved approximately 60 to 70% productivity gain using Microsoft Copilot Studio."
"The use case involves intelligent code assistance, UI, UX, and integration parts."
"Microsoft Copilot Studio has helped enhance my development process quite a lot."
"Starting with Microsoft Copilot Studio for product projects, especially for POC and MVP, accelerates the creation and demonstration to clients, helping them interact with and understand the solution before discussing further improvements."
 

Cons

"Not all data is good quality. This presents a challenge for automation, which is important."
"Automation Anywhere should add a couple of commands which will help most developers not to always use a script, a good example is in String operations."
"We are having trouble creating a reliable and stable situation in our environment."
"MetaBot still needs to be optimized, though Version 11.3 did integrate all the commands into it. We are not able to see all the lines of code which are executed in MetaBot."
"The dashboard has room for improvement."
"Most of the time, I find that our internal team finds the solution; the support team isn't able to provide a perfect solution."
"For me at the very beginning when I started working with that, the technical setup was extremely complicated and extremely problematic, and we spent half a year to really make the software work."
"The solution could improve the integration with some web applications. It was difficult to manage them."
"It's possible that they could use a stronger community for seeking guidance and help."
"While this solution is continually improving, as it is now, the user interface could use improvement when I compare it to a product like UiPath."
"The vendor is currently working on a solution that allows us to automatically create a process that is based on a document that we receive via email."
"The user interface could be slightly enhanced to make it more modern."
"There are newer AWS services such as Lambda or Security Hub that security analysts use to detect malicious traffic or alerts, but the integration is not available for these, so we still rely on custom scripting because there are no options for drag-and-drop with these newer services."
"I would prefer not having to log in to update a ticket; being able to respond via email would be beneficial."
"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."
"The technical support could be better. We suffer from language barriers, as we are in Argentina."
"I feel that the pricing and licensing methods of Microsoft Copilot Studio are not very conducive."
"The price for Microsoft Copilot Studio can definitely be improved, as small organizations find it very difficult to manage the subscription."
"For analytics, I prefer using the Power BI platform instead of Microsoft Copilot Studio."
"While Microsoft Copilot Studio can create documents and add information, it does not do so accurately, and this is an area that needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When I started working on it, it was difficult to obtain a trial version (barrier to entry). Now, they have a Community Edition, which may make it easy to get started."
"The licensing cost is approximately $4,000 USD, which is a seed license."
"It's a bit expensive compared to other RPA tools on the market."
"It is expensive. I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten in terms of pricing."
"The pricing is a bit higher."
"I do not know the price, but I am told that it is cheaper than UiPath."
"The licensing fees are approximately $10,000 USD for between five and ten users."
"The pricing is reasonable and one can achieve ROI faster when compared to other tools."
"Compared to other products, the pricing model for this solution is much more convenient, flexible, and adaptable to the Portuguese reality."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It comes with a package that costs approximately $20,000 USD per year."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
14%
University
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business154
Midsize Enterprise82
Large Enterprise538
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Large Enterprise9
 

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.
What is your primary use case for HelpSystems AutoMate?
Fortra's Automate has two or three use cases in this scenario. The feature I appreciate most is the drag and drop opt...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortra Automate?
Regarding the pricing of Fortra's Automate, for a startup or mid-market company, I would say it is not cheap and is d...
What needs improvement with Fortra Automate?
One thing I dislike about Fortra's Automate is that it does not perform well with OCR software, which is optical char...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Copilot Studio?
While Microsoft Copilot Studio can create documents and add information, it does not do so accurately, and this is an...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Copilot Studio?
Microsoft Copilot Studio is implemented for different scenarios, including straightforward and common scenarios. Howe...
What advice do you have for others considering Microsoft Copilot Studio?
The predictive analytics features in Microsoft Copilot Studio are rated at the highest level because there is the abi...
 

Also Known As

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

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
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
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortra's Automate vs. Microsoft Copilot Studio and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.