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IBM Datacap vs Pega Robotic Process Automation 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

Automate
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (5th)
IBM Datacap
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (7th)
Pega Robotic Process Automa...
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
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.
DeekshithShetty - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
VISHNU VARDHAN CHENNURU - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Fortra's Automate has effectively replaced the workload of an entire employee, saving us significant time and money."
"Overall, the whole product is really nice and provides significant benefits."
"The ability to connect to websites and pull data is the solution's most valuable feature."
"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 most valuable features of Fortra's Automate include its FTP functionality and file manipulation capabilities."
"The solution is continuously adding more integrations to help with workflows and bot and task creation."
"The most valuable features for my client are timing and scheduling."
"Web scraping is quite good since it offers a lot of possibilities."
"It's a platform, not a configured application, so you can do what you want with it."
"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."
"The solution offers many features that are beneficial for customers."
"It's resiliency. There are multiple ways of identifying what you are looking for. There are multiple export formats."
"It is the best solution for scanning purposes."
"Very scalable and stable data capture and extraction solution that's very simple to install."
"I work for an insurance company, and we use Datacap for document processing."
"It reduces human error and saves time."
"The solution's automation handling capability has positively impacted the overall automation process in my experience."
"The solution's ability to create adapters quickly is its most valuable feature."
"The tech support is highly available and there is plenty of online training available."
"The platform's most valuable feature is the ability to perform most tasks reliably. It efficiently integrates with other systems and automates various tasks."
"It is really flexible in what it can do."
"It is a scalable solution."
"Its stability has been good."
"The most valuable aspect for myself was access to the .net framework. If I couldn't figure something out using the objects that they had provided, I could bring in the .net objects and do so using similar logic that I would in a .net or C sharp coding language. Having that familiarity was helpful."
 

Cons

"The interface could be more user-friendly and easier to navigate."
"I would like to see some better web automation, a wizard like the one in the product WinAutomation would be very nice."
"I find that most important features are strong, however, there is a lack of good development for artificial intelligence, such as machine learning."
"The solution has a very weak knowledge base."
"I would prefer not having to log in to update a ticket; being able to respond via email would be beneficial."
"The OCR for Hebrew text needs to be improved."
"The technical support could be better. We suffer from language barriers, as we are in Argentina."
"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."
"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."
"It can take some time to implement."
"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."
"The user interfaces for exception processing can be tweaked. I commonly find that we try to tweak and customize some of those components to more of what the industry standard is. The product is still trying to play catch-up a little bit in those areas."
"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."
"I would like to see integration of Watson AI technology into Datacap."
"Going forward, IBM needs to ensure that the output is perfect (as it can make the product) while staying true to platform's core."
"I've faced some bugs or issues. They should do deeper testing of the product before releasing it because some of the bugs that I found were a bit simple. I understand that it is a massive product, and some of the functionalities can get overlooked."
"In this modern world, in this automation space, if Pega could provide more options that are user-friendly and provide a way to quickly develop an automation solution that is drag-and-drop with a minimal coding approach, then it would be great for automation."
"Pega Robotic Process Automation can improve the OGR area. You don't have a feature to read documents in computer voices."
"The OCR capabilities of the solution could be improved."
"I have faced many scenarios in the business workflow, where a few applications run on the Citrix environment. That could be a critical part of the process without which business won't be able to accept the automation solution. Because of one small bottleneck, you will lose a very good candidate for process automation."
"It is still a niche skill and resources are scarce in the market unless big IT companies are involved."
"The orchestration needs to be better."
"They have tied the deployment with the Pega BPM product, the robot manager. You need to have the BPM installed."
"The development experience needs to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It comes with a package that costs approximately $20,000 USD per year."
"The cost is a bit high for a small business like ours, but we manage with Fortra's Automate."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Compared to other products, the pricing model for this solution is much more convenient, flexible, and adaptable to the Portuguese reality."
"Pricing needs to stay competitive."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"I would rate the product's pricing a nine out of ten."
"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."
"​I was not involved in licensing and pricing, but it is worth the cost​."
"Pega Robotic Process Automation is an expensive solution."
"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 is pretty costly."
"The licensing cost is too high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Government
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Insurance Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
31%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
6%
 

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.
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...
What do you like most about IBM Datacap?
The installation of the solution is very simple.
What needs improvement with IBM Datacap?
When a client's requirement is not available in Datacap, out-of-the-box actions should be simpler to implement and no...
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.
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.
What needs improvement with Pega Robotic Process Automation?
The solution's configuration and settings could be more comprehensive.
 

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate
Datacap
Pega RPA, OpenSpan
 

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
Turkcell, PowerSouth Energy Cooperative, Central Nacional Unimed, Conqord Oil
eBay Enterprise, M&I Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Datacap vs. Pega Robotic Process Automation and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.