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IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) vs VisualCron comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 4, 2024

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 Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
666
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (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 (2nd), AI Procurement & Supply Chain (1st)
IBM Robotic Process Automat...
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VisualCron
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
29th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Managed File Transfer (MFT) (20th), Workload Automation (25th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category, the mindshare of Automation Anywhere is 5.2%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is 2.0%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VisualCron is 1.2%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Automation Anywhere5.2%
IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)2.0%
VisualCron1.2%
Other91.6%
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
 

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.
MA
Business Solutions Manager at valleysoft
Has improved analytics and reporting but needs better integration and support
To improve IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for the next release, there should be more integration with external systems, and more integration with IBM's data and AI platforms is needed. There is an AI part in IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for Machine Learning, but IBM has another platform specifically for data and AI, which is integrated right now. More features are hoped for in the future.
Sourav-Dutta - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead - Database Administrator at SMART ENERGY SYSTEMS LLC
It's user-friendly, and I didn't need long to understand the process
We use VisualCron for all our automation needs, like connecting to FileZilla, calling APIs, generating PGP keys, creating encryption files with the PGP key login to Azure, etc. It can automatically log in to SQL Server and execute SQL script jobs in bulk. We had 2,000-3,000 users at my previous…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"UI and document automation are two features I like. Document automation is helpful because it simplifies extracting and putting data into different ERP systems. I have three or four use cases for document automation. I also like the recorder objects feature, which was called object learning in the previous version, and screen scraping."
"The AI Agent of Automation Anywhere is very powerful and very good, with accurate, reliable, and faster responses, and it is able to understand the context so that from the next time onwards it delivers exactly what I expect."
"What I appreciate the most about Automation Anywhere is its ease of use."
"Automation Anywhere is one of the most popular RPA vendors offering powerful and user-friendly RPA capabilities to automate the business processes that are performed by humans. AA is a web-based management system that includes a control to run end-to-end automated business tasks for companies."
"We have been able to reduce our number of FTEs."
"I definitely find that it has helped increase productivity."
"Automation Anywhere helped our organization to get our training and implementation needs successful by providing both community edition and partner edition. Automation Anywhere seamlessly handed off exceptions to employees from Automation Anywhere bots."
"Automation Anywhere is easy to use and user-friendly due to its intuitive interface and straightforward implementation architecture, making it accessible even for those without a technical background."
"If you have a business process, and once you have automated that process, you have a readily available workflow in place."
"The feature I found most valuable is the TCO."
"Speed is definitely the key here, and in six weeks you can actually take a robotic solution and move it all the way into production while keeping your existing systems and teams working the way they are right now."
"I like the integration with Watson and the possibility to have an intelligent reading of all the customers' documents."
"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."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The quality is great! It's very strong and has a very strong platform."
"IBM Robotic Process Automation is very easy to use."
"Support is AAA+, fast, and very detailed."
"The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%."
"It helped us reduce manual steps."
"Using the Windows Task Scheduler means you have to do some coding while using VisualCron means the tool takes care of the coding from the backend; you're just using the visual interface of VisualCron, creating the logic, and telling the tool what actions need to be performed, so VisualCron would take care of everything on the backend for you, which helps you manage time better."
"VisualCron makes everything clearer and easier to maintain."
"The ability to clone jobs to shorten the time it takes to implement a process has been invaluable, but its flexibility also gives us the ability to create a job that can handle a multifaceted process with a complex workflow."
"The most valuable feature of VisualCron is its ability to schedule interactive jobs so that you can have interdependencies within the job and interdependencies of a job on another job, and so on."
"VisualCronv is currently handling so many different critical processes for our company, it's become a key factor in our livelihood and success."
 

Cons

"Room for improvement is more on the IQ Bot side: How quickly we can adopt and deploy it?"
"Cloud was one of the features we wanted to see, because it makes it much easier. The second feature is ease of use in terms of agnostic operating system."
"Their bot runners could be made to handle multiple payloads at the same time because if I want to run multiple parallel operations, the number of bot runners that I have to buy just keeps increasing. It is adding to the cost. However, there is a possibility that we don't need that many bot runners, and we can run multiple operations in a bot runner. This would be a great addition to have."
"I would wish for a greater focus on citizen development, which is a priority for our company."
"Regarding the UI, once you're on some of the screens there are fixed dialogues, they are a set size, so there's a lot of horizontal scrolls and vertical scrolls. If I want to do something that is purely business-related and is somewhat complex to write or is nuanced, I sometimes have trouble implementing that inside of the Automation Anywhere script."
"I suggest increasing assistance from support personnel."
"Version 11 is a bit heavy. At times, it takes a toll on the computing resources."
"Integration with secondary environments needs to be improved or enabled."
"There are certain limitations in the solution for screen reading."
"The scalability of the solution can be challenging."
"IBM RPA is an unstable solution."
"I would like to improve the efficiency of this solution and the Surface Level Agreement."
"This solution is still evolving. It is going through the rounds right now."
"The product must be promoted more."
"One of the things I would definitely like to see is more of the machine-learning and cognitive capabilities. For example, now that we're starting to automate more and more tasks, there are some things that still require us to go back and modify the robots when we need to. But if we had more of the machine-learning integrated into it, I believe it would be easier to maintain, so that we wouldn't have to go back and adjust every time."
"We're based in Thailand, but the documentation is not in Thai, which makes it difficult for us. If they could translate all of their documentation into our language, we'd be very grateful."
"I want to improve the UI in VisualCron, as it's not as user-friendly, particularly when setting up the task scheduler."
"Our suggestion to make it better and more manageable in terms of GDPR: Implement it in a very partnership way."
"An area for improvement in VisualCron is its cluttered interface. It isn't always easy to find all functionalities, so what VisualCron needs is a user interface expert who can improve the interface. There's a learning curve in terms of finding what you need from the interface of VisualCron. The technical support for VisualCron also needs improvement in terms of response time. Currently, there's no live support or hotline you can call to get quick answers, so this is what I'd like to see in the next version of VisualCron. A less cluttered and more streamlined interface, where you don't need to hunt for some of the features, is also what I'd like to see in the next VisualCron update."
"VisualCron's command console is a little bit difficult to understand and needs to improve."
"The only problem I face when I use the tool is that it doesn't contain much documentation or it doesn't have many video tutorials on its features."
"Some preferences and permissions are not quite self-explanatory, but those are rather advanced features."
"I've mentioned before that it would be great to see a move away from SQLCE and XML configuration files."
"VisualCron is software, and you will experience performance degradation when you scale up. VisualCron takes too much memory or CPU power. We have to increase the hardware resources of a specific server or system."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I believe it is $10,000 for Bot Creator."
"Automation Anywhere is costlier than the general competition. That is aligned with the share of the market it has."
"It is cost-efficient in terms of licensing. I found their support good when I was working for the airline client. However, I hear from my managers here that the support price for Tier 3 or premium is a little higher. That is why we are not going for Automation Anywhere. Its price was okay for our client, but for us, it seems expensive."
"We save approximately 10,000 hours per year."
"The major reason that we selected Automation Anywhere was the licensing model."
"I don't know exactly what the pricing schemes are for the product as this type of negotiation is not my responsibility, but I think the basic pricing comes to $15,000."
"We are restricted to use one license on one PC. However, if my license is not working, I want to be able to use it somewhere else. This would be a nice improvement to the licensing, as other competitors in the market have better licensing terms."
"Pricing is affordable and I would recommend beginning with the Starter Package."
"The product has a yearly licensing fee."
"The pricing is reasonable for this solution."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"IBM licensing is annual and based on Virtual Processor Cores (VPC). This provides flexibility as part of the containerization environment."
"The product is reasonably priced compared to other tools."
"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."
"IBM RPA is cheaper than other tools."
"We are fine with a rather cheap setup. Licensing with VisualCron is fair. You have a simple one-year licence in different sizes. There isn't a licensing jungle with hundreds of options and opt-ins."
"ROI is one month."
"ROI is 95 percent."
"The pricing is extremely fair, and because of that I recommend purchasing multiple instances to split out the processing load across multiple application servers."
"The price is a bit high."
"VisualCron is correctly priced because it wasn't very cheap, and it wasn't overly expensive, so the price for it was set correctly. When my previous company bought VisualCron, it was €800 per server per year. On a scale of one to five, I would rate the pricing for VisualCron a five because it was just right. The tool was affordable, and it has one of the most competitive pricing in the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Construction Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business161
Midsize Enterprise85
Large Enterprise561
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
 

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 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 ...
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...
What advice do you have for others considering IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
I recommend starting with the Academy to check the features and compare them with other competitors to choose the bes...
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Also Known As

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

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
The Hanover Insurance Group
7 Eleven, ABB Sécheron SA, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Amazon Europe Core, Apple, Assa Abloy, Aston Martin, Banco Santander, BMW (Australia)
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) vs. VisualCron and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.