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IBM Cloud Pak for Automation vs Workato 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
643
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)
IBM Cloud Pak for Automation
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (38th), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (28th)
Workato
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (3rd)
 

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.
SYEDMUJTABA - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President - Digital Automation Services at Techvista Systems
Effectively handles parallel instances effectively
I find it quite straightforward, perhaps around 8.5 out of 10 in terms of ease. When we upgraded from the old version of IBM BPM to the new one within IBM Cloud Pak for Automation, we didn't encounter any major issues. There were some minor ones, but they were easy to overcome.The migration process was part of our deployment strategy. We had a plan to migrate two processes per week from on-premises to the cloud. The migration involved taking the instances and migrating them to the new environment. There is an inbuilt feature in IBM Cloud Pak for Automation that facilitates the migration process, although I personally haven't conducted it myself; it's managed by my team. Overall, the setup process was relatively smooth.
AP
Technical Consultant at IST Technology
Data processing efficiency increases with workflow automation but could improve on handling high volume data
The most valuable feature of Workato is that billing is based on task actions; whatever actions we take on the Workato platform will determine the task consumption and billing for each workflow. More optimized workflows lead to less billing for clients. Furthermore, they have introduced a Copilot feature for automation, helping build recipes and code with simple prompts. Additionally, they are developing AI solutions for clients. These are some top features, along with various others implemented per client specifications, such as CICD implementation and runtime connection changes. The benefits of using Workato for our customers include automating business workflows and data integration. By addressing their manual efforts, which are time-consuming and prone to errors, Workato helps clients reduce costs while increasing productivity. We implement solutions that enable seamless data integration between different systems, minimizing time-consuming manual processes. A positive impact we see is cost reduction, as manual efforts are significantly lowered. For example, in production support teams, manual processes are streamlined through CICD implementation, allowing for a seamless integration of different environments with minimal errors and faster deployment.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"With automation, you can reduce that effort to half an hour or an hour, so it will improve your efficiency and save you a lot of time, so you can improve your time in other work."
"We automated one process that was running with 109 people and reduced it down to 69 with automation."
"Our return on investment is high."
"Simply tagging variables used in the bot, can provide automated real-time dashboards that are presentable to management showing them a complete view of how the bots are performing."
"The best features are the ease of use, the short learning curve, and the good support from our local partner."
"The core RPA service that it provides and the stability that it has in maintaining that as a cloud service solution is a key enabler for us. Its stability is good, and the low-code/no-code setup that it has is very user-efficient."
"The simplicity of the tool is a plus point, as it does not require one to be from coding background to work on it."
"Automation is very important if you want to grow your business to the next level because of the transparency, speed, and scalability for any organization."
"I believe two significant features of IBM Cloud Pak for Automation are the focus on SLA management and the capability to handle parallel instances effectively. Parallel instances, for instance, are valuable when dealing with a large number of users, enabling tasks to be performed concurrently for efficient system operation. The SLA aspect is crucial for tracking and ensuring timely completion of tasks. Additionally, the cloud compatibility of IBM BAW allows for seamless migration from on-premises to the cloud. This version also includes a business rule management system for storing and managing business rules effectively."
"What this product allows us to do is to move from on-prem instances where we are running independent instances of FileNet, Datacap, and ODM. It allows us to leverage container-based resiliency and availability modeling so that we have some visibility across the CP4BA ecosystem. We're now migrating all of our data to be in the Cloud Object Storage, and we can now use some of the features of Azure in terms of how we store and retrieve content for our members and our providers."
"Allowed us to work around a product limitation in our CRM to send emails from our Marketing Automation platform."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"Personally, I enjoy using Workato, and my company feels that it results in significant time savings since it is easy to understand and allows new team members to onboard quickly."
"The recipe-driven automation in Workato is very impressive; for the same client project, we extracted purchase orders from emails and pushed them into the file system, and the automation worked as expected without any issues with the Workato email connector."
"The delivery time has drastically improved using Workato because of its low-code feature and pre-built connectors which are very easy to use compared to MuleSoft."
"I absolutely think it is worth the money to have Workato as a tool."
"Workato is low code, intuitive, and easy to use."
"Workato allows us to streamline our operations by replacing multiple legacy systems with a single integrated platform."
 

Cons

"The availability of material in terms of more technical documentation could be improved, particularly in-depth information about how things can be done."
"It would be helpful if we could start running a process from a particular step."
"The Recorder action in the A2019 Community edition is not supported."
"I am not technically inclined, and it involves many steps for a process to function properly. It requires a lot of work initially to design and develop a process. I find it somewhat challenging. If you take time to understand it, it's not too difficult, but it seems complicated at the beginning if you're not a technical person."
"I don't find a lot outside of the internal community forum."
"There is room for improvement in terms of costs and procurement considerations."
"Operationally, there's room for improvement, especially in the area of high-availability and deployment."
"The basic features are acceptable, but advanced tools often require deeper technical expertise, which can slow adoption. Additionally, some users experience delays in customer support for complex issues."
"Upgrading to the new platform while trying to modernize is always challenging because it is like you have a moving target."
"I believe there is room for improvement in the user interface, particularly in the Process Portal that customers use to view and manage their tasks. The UI of the Process Portal needs enhancement. Additionally, in the next release, I would like to see improved compatibility with Angular, allowing for direct integration with front-end systems. It would be beneficial to have built-in GUI features based on Angular within the system, rather than developing separate applications externally. This, in turn, would provide a more seamless and enhanced front-end experience."
"One of the challenges we're having is finding vendors who have experience in developing on the cloud. We can find developers on the old platform, but it is leading-edge technology. So, we are having some challenges, and IBM is assisting us to find vendor partners. To be able to leverage all the capabilities of the new platform, we have to upgrade our existing ecosystem of FileNet applications. Upgrading to the new platform while trying to modernize is always challenging because it is like you have a moving target."
"In Workato, there are some limitations regarding very high transactional data in file formats. For instance, we have a 90-minute job timeout, and queues larger than 10,000 size will be purged."
"My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was a bit challenging in the past because the client I was working for did not have an unlimited license to use unlimited tasks and could not create many different processes and flows in Workato."
"I would say customer support is good, but I cannot classify it as very good as my personal experience varies."
"Currently, Workato is a low-code platform without native programming capabilities. I would appreciate having a dedicated programming language for tasks like transformations and functional programming."
"The Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) capabilities could be improved."
"The data flow and debugging processes need improvement, especially for tracing issues. Additionally, Workato struggles with scalability when handling high volumes of data, such as terabytes, requiring chunking for initial data loads."
"Workato's Extract, transform, and load (ETL) and extract, load, and transform (ELT) are not very strong and could be improved for very complex transformations."
"One area for improvement is the CI/CD pipeline, which lacks a version control system similar to GitHub for easier deployment."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cloud-based version comes at an increased cost, although our clients are happy with the new features and have not complained about the pricing."
"As our team size increases, we may get some more licenses for the tool."
"Automation Anywhere falls within a mid-range price point when compared to other RPA tools on the market."
"We have seen the tangible benefits of taking monotonous work off people's plates, creating capacity, and cost reductions."
"The pricing and licensing of Automation Anywhere plays an important rule in the Indian market because in the Indian market $10,000 USD is too much. Hence, the pricing tends to go down depending on the customer relationship with the partner: A starter pack is $10,000 and an enterprise pack is $100,000. If you go through an implementation partner, you can get good deals. They can save some money."
"Automation Anywhere's pricing falls within the mid-range, but the long-term benefits outweigh the initial investment."
"The setup cost depends on multiple factors, so you need to get details before choosing."
"There are some additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees. There are a couple of add-ons we've looked at: The IQ Bot for OCR and machine-learning were add-ons, as well as the Bot Insights - the analytics."
"Its cost is almost the same or comparable to what we pay with FileNet, but I'm not sure what we pay a year. A good part of CP4BA is the CPU-based licensing model. When we're dealing with 50,000 dentists, for example, if we were to use Salesforce, we would be hit with the licensing of 50,000 dentists, whereas when we build out in CP4BA, it is just based on our CPU usage, not on individual licenses."
"IBM Cloud Pak for Automation is relatively expensive, especially considering it is designed for long-living processes, not for normal automation needs. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the pricing at around 9. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees, but IBM has multiple pricing models that make it expensive in its own way. Different plans are available, but overall, the experience suggests it is a costly solution."
"Speaking about price, I would say that it's market-related. Also, there are costs in addition to the standard license fees since different add-ons depend on what you require."
"On a scale of one to ten, the pricing is around a six. We have a consumption model and the pricing is higher. If you are using any kind of ML-based approach, machine learning, or some advanced analytics, you may have to pay more."
"Workato is an expensive solution."
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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%
Wholesaler/Distributor
9%
Construction Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business154
Midsize Enterprise82
Large Enterprise538
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise7
 

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.
Ask a question
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What needs improvement with Workato?
In Workato, there are some limitations regarding very high transactional data in file formats. For instance, we have ...
What is your primary use case for Workato?
The usual use cases for Workato include real-time data processing from either SFTP or SAS, and we have implemented mu...
What advice do you have for others considering Workato?
I have been working with clients for Workato implementation, focusing on consulting and implementing solutions for th...
 

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)
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Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
Information Not Available
Panera Bread, Berkshire Hathaway, Salesforce, Box, Splunk, ComScore, IBM, Complex Media, Microsoft, Home Depot, Cisco, News Corp, Braille Institute
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cloud Pak for Automation vs. Workato and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.