IBM Datacap vs Pega Robotic Process Automation comparison

IBM and Pega are both solutions in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category. Additionally, 89% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of Pega users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM Datacap vs. Pega Robotic Process Automation

June 2025

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Helped 859,129 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.

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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.

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VISHNU VARDHAN CHENNURU

Application Development Team Lead at Accenture

Great for UI creation, helpful support services, and reliable

Excel connectors need to be improved as there are a few connectors in Excel areas. The recording is not at best in Pega Robotics. They could look into it. The interactions with some applications, like Windows and web applications, are a little slow. They need to improve their speed. It should be normal, to open it with other tools. However, right now, it's a little hard. Users should feel they can develop easily. It will sometimes hang while interacting with third-party applications. Instead of adapters, if we had direct interaction of the applications with API and had scripts, that would be better. We have only CSharp supported right now. We'd like to have Python supported. If it was, it would be easier for us and make the solution more flexible. Currently, we are adding three different configuration files, however, if I had the option, I'd prefer to make a single configuration file and then differentiate it in all three environments. It can be difficult to create logic in automation. It's hard than if we used other RPA tools. If they could add more toolbox options, that would be ideal. They need to do what they can to help us reduce complexity in the automation and combine things under, for example, a single control.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Automate increases efficiency and eliminates errors during documentation and invoicing processes."

"The most valuable features of Fortra's Automate include its FTP functionality and file manipulation capabilities."

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

"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."

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

"A great feature that you seldom see in these kind of systems is the ability to use a database as trigger to launch a task. This is something I asked for a few years ago and that was added."

"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."

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

More Automate pros

"It is very easy to develop this software. It is low code, and if you can't find the things you need on it, you can develop custom actions with more complex code underneath. They sync well, which is very useful for automating a lot of processes. It is a really valuable feature for the clients because we can ingest information and automate plenty of processes for them. The operators don't have to waste that much time on tasks. With Datacap, they can be automated."

"One of the valuable features of Datacap is the user experience. One thing that IBM did a few years ago was they standardized all of their ECM products on Content Navigator, including Datacap. If you're an IBM ECM customer you have FileNet, you have Datacap, you have StoredIQ and you have a consistent user experience, user interface."

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

"It is highly extensible, which we found to be most valuable. It is a very extensible solution because it is based on configurable rule sets. We were able to amend and adjust the solution and very easily add custom code and custom components. It does require some programming experience, but we found that not to be an issue. We liked its extensibility."

"At the forefront of my thoughts, the standout feature of this intelligent product is its remarkable capability. This project we're currently engaged in revolves around streamlining workflows within both our company and the customer's company. It entails handling information from various documents with diverse formats and types, even when they contain the same data. The ability to connect this information with the appropriate database and recognize it irrespective of the format or source is an extremely valuable feature. Moreover, leveraging machine learning is crucial since our customer deals with an extensive archive of over five million documents. Machine learning can significantly alleviate the backlog by becoming well-versed in various scenarios they might encounter during their work once we've completed our application."

"The second thing that I like about Datacap is the fingerprint capture which is easy to configure on Datacap. From the form of the document, if a document is redundant in the same department, we can configure the capture based on the form of the documents"

"There's something that's very unique about IBM DataCap. It provides me with a good solution for extracting, reading the QR codes, and scanning them. In this stage, we are working in a UIT phase before implementing this protocol in all our branches. From my initial observation, IBM DataCap is good, it is not working too fast, but in a good manner for us."

"Very scalable and stable data capture and extraction solution that's very simple to install."

More IBM Datacap pros

"Pega is also broadening its landscape by building on top of PRPC (CRM, EPC, etc.), and with a cloud offering available, it is a genuine contender to compete with Salesforce."

"I am impressed with the tool's recording feature."

"It is a scalable solution."

"The platform's most valuable feature is the ability to perform most tasks reliably. It efficiently integrates with other systems and automates various tasks."

"The feature I like best in Pega Robotic Process Automation is that I'm able to add external DLL section codes. I can inject the JavaScript, and I can write VB.NET, C#.NET, and DLL codes, then inject those codes into the existing process. Mainly, from a development perspective, I like that feature a lot, so if anything is not supported by Pega Robotic Process Automation, then I can build that either in JavaScript or in .NET, then use those functions within the IP."

"The solution's automation handling capability has positively impacted the overall automation process in my experience."

"User-friendly, easy to understand and has many features including the ability to track."

"We have a very large operational team and we are able to avoid mistakes and ensure accuracy and speed using Pega."

More Pega Robotic Process Automation pros

Cons

"It's possible that they could use a stronger community for seeking guidance and help."

"Some challenges include the system being too loaded or delayed in taking instructions and responding quickly as needed."

"Fortra's Automate is not as reliable as I would like it to be."

"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 solution has a very weak knowledge base."

"The OCR for Hebrew text needs to be improved."

"I would prefer not having to log in to update a ticket; being able to respond via email would be beneficial."

"I would like the updates to be easier to deploy. Integration with Amazon S3 is somewhat lacking."

More Automate cons

"I would like to see the product have the ability to process more documents in parallel. Right now, it is a single queue. Therefore, if you want to really test the load and stress test it, having multiple instances and the ability to scale it up would be great."

"I give the scalability of the solution a six out of ten."

"Its weaknesses are primarily tied to the lack of available resources and expertise in the market to effectively support and provide solutions and services to each customer for seamless implementation. Expertise in this specific product is rare throughout the market. One key reason is the product's limited downloads. Additionally, archiving solutions are often perceived as complex and challenging, dissuading many companies from venturing into this domain. Consequently, partners who specialize in archiving solutions are always seeking straightforward, uncomplicated options that are easy to manage and meet customer expectations."

"There are times when external features impact services. For example, Windows patching or antivirus updates can affect production-level services."

"We have page requirements where some values must be copied on each page. For example, say I need to scan a bunch of documents, and the name will be a field on every page. We don't have a default functionality in Datacap to copy the field value on the first page to all the pages. That feature would make the documents easy to prepare."

"Reporting and analytics seem to often be something of an afterthought. With Datacap, they've started building out some dashboards, but one thing we hear from our clients a lot is, "Well, gee, we really love reports. What Datacap has is not really helpful. We'd like something better. We'd like more dashboards." That's one area where we've seen some feedback that the product could do better."

"Currently, when you are entering invoices, you have to enter multiple rows. In Captiva the multiple rows will be dynamically added. This would be a beneficial feature for IBM to add."

More IBM Datacap cons

"Pega Robotic Process Automation scalability is too low."

"I would like to see an enhanced auditing feature included."

"Rule versioning and deployment to enable parallel development could still be improved"

"There have been some scenarios where the bot was not able to replace some of the controls and could not recognize and personalize the task we wanted to automate."

"In Pega, the UI has to be improved because that is the most challenging area that most of our customers ask for because we have to depend on some other React JS or some other tool to bring that kind of UI experience. So, there is a lot of room for improvement in terms of UI and UX."

"I would like to improve the tool's integration features and stability."

"It's difficult not knowing when alerts will arrive."

"The OCR capabilities of the solution could be improved."

More Pega Robotic Process Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

"I'm only involved in running the product and maintaining the systems, so I can't speak to the cost."

"From a distributor's perspective, one of the biggest selling points of Automate is its price point."

"Once you buy the software, you just pay for the support for backend help."

"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."

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

More Automate pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

"We were using the User Value Unit licensing, which means we get charged per active user of the system, and if I'm not mistaken, we also had it for the rule runner service. They had a PVU license model, which is a processor value unit. For each process that we have in our system, we pay a certain amount of money. We found the pricing to be quite steep. It was really an expensive solution in comparison to Kofax, which had a different licensing model and was actually cheaper overall because they charge per page and not per user and per process."

"It is an expensive solution."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More IBM Datacap pricing and cost advice

"The licensing cost is too high."

"In terms of Pega Robotic Process Automation pricing, I would rate it a five out of five because the solution has a good price. Pricing is not very high, though I'm unsure of the exact cost, based on my experience, the price for Pega Robotic Process Automation is less than Blue Prism because I worked with a few clients that have both solutions and my clients prefer Pega Robotic Process Automation over Blue Prism particularly because of the licensing costs."

"Pega is as competitive as the basic players such as UiPath or Automation Anywhere. UiPath is the most expensive, but Pega is at par with Automation Anywhere."

"Pega Robotic Process Automation is an expensive solution."

"I would rate the product's pricing a nine out of ten."

"Pega is pretty costly."

"I was not involved in licensing and pricing, but it is worth the cost."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

Financial Services Firm

17%

Government

14%

Computer Software Company

12%

Insurance Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

29%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing 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?

I am a consultant and I am making a lot of processes in human resources, payroll, certifications, trainings, web scra...

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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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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 Pega Robotic Process Automation?

The solution's automation handling capability has positively impacted the overall automation process in my experience.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pega Robotic Process Automation?

I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with ten being expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pega Robotic Process Automation?

The solution's configuration and settings could be more comprehensive.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 34% of the time

Microsoft Power Automate vs Automate

Compared 33% 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

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ABBYY Vantage vs IBM Datacap

Compared 32% of the time

Amazon Textract vs IBM Datacap

Compared 18% of the time

Microsoft Power Automate vs IBM Datacap

Compared 13% of the time

Tungsten TotalAgility vs IBM Datacap

Compared 11% of the time

OpenText Capture vs IBM Datacap

Compared 11% of the time

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Microsoft Power Automate vs Pega Robotic Process Automation

Compared 46% of the time

UiPath Platform vs Pega Robotic Process Automation

Compared 37% of the time

Blue Prism vs Pega Robotic Process Automation

Compared 10% of the time

Automation Anywhere vs Pega Robotic Process Automation

Compared 6% of the time

IPsoft 1RPA vs Pega Robotic Process Automation

Compared 2% of the time

More Pega Robotic Process Automation Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Automate

June 2025

Download Automate product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Datacap

June 2025

Download IBM Datacap product report

Buyer's Guide

Pega Robotic Process Automation

June 2025

Download Pega Robotic Process Automation product report

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate

Datacap

Pega RPA, OpenSpan

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

With Pega Robotic Process Automation (RPA), organizations can automate the mundane, tedious, time-consuming, manual work that is hampering productivity and efficiency. Whether adjudicating claims, onboarding customers or employees, reconciling financials, updating customer information in systems record, Pega RPA can manage the work across your enterprise.

Pega

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

eBay Enterprise, M&I Bank

Buyer's Guide

IBM Datacap vs. Pega Robotic Process Automation

June 2025

Free Report: IBM Datacap vs. Pega Robotic Process Automation

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

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