IBM Datacap vs IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) comparison

IBM Datacap and IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) are both solutions in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category. Additionally, 89% of IBM Datacap users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Datacap and IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) 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 IBM Datacap vs. IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Datacap vs. IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

June 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 862,499 peers since 2012

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.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

GeorgeTzifas

Chief Operating Officer at Anyrobotics RPA Experts

Provides smart AI tools and easy to use

I would like to have more flexibility in connecting the platform with third-party systems. It is easy to connect IBM RPA with other IBM products, but it is complicated when connecting to non-IBM systems. So, I would like IBM RPA to be even more flexible in connecting to third-party systems.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"I find the ease of use from a programming perspective very valuable."

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

"The ability to connect to websites and pull data is the solution's most valuable feature."

"The solution is continuously adding more integrations to help with workflows and bot and task creation."

"The product effectively handles all the tasks we require."

"It gives us a central place to schedule tasks and run them distributed."

"This product is quite easy to install, learn, and use, with our new employees being able to start using it in projects for clients after only two weeks of internal training."

More Automate pros

"I work for an insurance company, and we use Datacap for document processing."

"The installation of the solution is very simple."

"It is the best solution for scanning purposes."

"The OCR extractions are very good, almost 100% accurate now."

"The solution automates manual data entry."

"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..."

"While we are doing indexing, we tag the document type. It's programmed inside of Datacap to automatically detect the document based on a given template. It auto-indexes that document, which means that it automatically tags the correct document type to the scanned document."

"The most valuable feature is its ability to capture data, which changes all the time into different formats."

More IBM Datacap pros

"IBM Robotic Process Automation has greatly improved the organization by improving the speed of performance, as the speed of the robot is estimated to be 20 times faster than the human being."

"It is easy to use. We have enabled our resources who don't have a background in automation to be certified and trained, then implement this product within a very short period of time, as it is very user-friendly."

"If you have a business process, and once you have automated that process, you have a readily available workflow in place."

"The solution is very user-friendly."

"I think simplicity is key. One of the things that we've noticed is how our developers have been able to quickly adopt the platform; but not only the developers or the techy people, also the business."

"It's user-friendly; even non-technical people can program bots using drag-and-drop functionalities."

"The solution's ease of use is its most valuable aspect."

"We can connect with different database types, and they have included a different package for a terminal connection to, for example, AS400. When it comes to UI development, it's not using the drivers or anything. It's not a selector-based development like UiPath."

More IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

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

"I currently have three bugs open with them that I don't know if they are addressed in the new release."

"I find that most important features are strong, however, there is a lack of good development for artificial intelligence, such as machine learning."

"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."

"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."

"Regarding customer support, I face challenges sometimes. They're not always available, and you may need to wait for assistance, but overall their support is acceptable."

More Automate cons

"Recognition between certain numbers and letters could be improved. Sometimes this solution misreads five with an "S" for Singapore."

"They have to stop focusing on new development and stabilize the latest release. It is not stable."

"Third-party integration could be improved; it's very slow."

"The technical support is horrible. They have downsized the support teams too much. They've outsourced some of them along with some of the development, and they're just stretched too thin."

"I would like to see integration of Watson AI technology into Datacap."

"There should be an increase in the capacity of the workflows. Datacap is a little limited in this aspect. So, you cannot really implement all the possibilities."

"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."

"The reading efficiency of the solution needs to be improved."

More IBM Datacap cons

"We are looking to see how it can connect with various interfaces seamlessly, through APIs."

"We would like more focus on understanding AI and how it can be used to manage exception handling."

"The product must be promoted more."

"IBM Robotic Process Automation should be more stable."

"Stability could be better."

"My impression of the support experience is lower than middle. I would rank it as that. They need to improve their support by having more experienced level one support."

"Extensibility is the key, especially in terms of the Recorders feature that we have. That should be browser independent. Enhance it because some people have Chrome, some have Internet Explorer, etc. Also, integration with PDFs: Not just the ability to read information from PDFs but the ability to write information from PDFs, make it secure, sign it, etc. Finally, if they can allow a token exchange inside the tool itself, that would help."

"IBM’s support should improve response time."

More IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) 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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

More Automate pricing and cost advice

"In Egypt, we have exchange rates that change year to year, and currently, we're facing an increase in the exchange rate between our Egyptian pound and the dollar. Since we have been using IBM DataCap two years ago we had a good price, it was not expensive. However, I cannot say now if it is expensive or not because of the exchange rate. Additionally, I don't have the data of other competitors and I don't know the prices."

"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."

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

"It varies, and it depends on the client's requirements and negotiations. Nowadays, Datacap is also included in the IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation."

"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."

"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."

"If you want IBM Datacap on cloud, which is a service run by IBM, the price can be quite expensive, but if you want to just purchase the licenses and own those yourself, then the price is very competitive."

More IBM Datacap pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is reasonable."

"There is a free trial for one month, so you can use it to run your payloads or proof of concept. After that, you can pay for the license on a monthly or annual basis."

"I rate the pricing ten out of ten. So, the pricing is very good for me."

"The pricing is reasonable for this solution."

"The product has a yearly licensing fee."

"IBM licensing is annual and based on Virtual Processor Cores (VPC). This provides flexibility as part of the containerization environment."

"IBM RPA is cheaper than other tools."

"The product is reasonably priced compared to other tools."

More IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

862,499 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Performing Arts

Financial Services Firm

17%

Government

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Insurance Company

11%

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Insurance Company

Government

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?

The main purpose is for automation. That has been the purpose why I have been using it so far.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortra Automate?

Regarding pricing, it is very friendly. I would not say that it is really cheap or very expensive, but it fits within...

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM Datacap?

The installation of the solution is very simple.

See all answers

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

What do you like most about IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?

Integrating the tool with SAP, EBS, or other ERPs is easy.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?

To improve IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for the next release, there should be more integration with external ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?

My customers' main use cases for IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) are especially in the banking industry, particu...

See all answers

Comparisons

UiPath Platform vs Automate

Compared 32% of the time

Microsoft Power Automate vs Automate

Compared 30% of the time

Blue Prism vs Automate

Compared 9% of the time

Automation Anywhere vs Automate

Compared 8% of the time

VisualCron vs Automate

Compared 6% of the time

More Automate Competitors

ABBYY Vantage vs IBM Datacap

Compared 34% of the time

Amazon Textract vs IBM Datacap

Compared 19% of the time

OpenText Capture vs IBM Datacap

Compared 14% of the time

Tungsten TotalAgility vs IBM Datacap

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft Power Automate vs IBM Datacap

Compared 13% of the time

More IBM Datacap Competitors

Microsoft Power Automate vs IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Compared 74% of the time

UiPath Platform vs IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Compared 9% of the time

Automation Anywhere vs IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Compared 7% of the time

Blue Prism vs IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Compared 6% of the time

Nintex RPA vs IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Compared 3% of the time

More IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Automate

July 2025

Download Automate product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Datacap

July 2025

Download IBM Datacap product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

July 2025

IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) report

Download IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) product report

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate

Datacap

IBM RPA

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

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

IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a technology that encompasses the use of smart robots in any process requiring efficiency, consistency and speed, with no risk of mistakes. In a nutshell, RPA simulates a human user working.

Today, it is possible to automate processes through the use of digital robots, or bots, which execute pre-programed, repetitive tasks in a safe and mistake free manner. There are literally thousands of opportunities for Robotic Process Automation to make an impact on your organization today, including: automatic invoice emission, system integration, information reconciliation, report generation, intelligent email management to lead generation, and many others.

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

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

The Hanover Insurance Group

Buyer's Guide

IBM Datacap vs. IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

June 2025

Free Report: IBM Datacap vs. IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Datacap vs. IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

862,499 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our IBM Datacap vs. IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) report.

See our list of best Robotic Process Automation (RPA) vendors.

We monitor all Robotic Process Automation (RPA) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.