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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
6.9
Number of Reviews
660
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 (1st), AI Procurement & Supply Chain (1st)
IBM Robotic Process Automat...
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
8th
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) (19th), Workload Automation (24th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category, the mindshare of Automation Anywhere is 5.5%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is 2.0%, down from 3.0% 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 Anywhere5.5%
IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)2.0%
VisualCron1.2%
Other91.3%
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

"Automation Anywhere RPA has enabled a lot of our employees to have their valuable time freed up to do other things, ranging from the Treasury department, the Revenue department, General and Cost Accounting."
"Looking at overall feasibility from features to costing perspective, I strongly feel Automation Anywhere offers a lot of features and scalability and is a very good tool overall and people who have not tried should give a try and put some hands-on."
"One of the things I appreciate the most about Automation Anywhere is that it's in the cloud, so when we are on-site on a project, we collect a lot of data, hand it to this bot, and it runs the function; by the time we reach our destination, whether we move from San Francisco to New York, it's equivalent to 20 people's work in six hours, utilizing quite a few attended or unattended bots."
"Overall, Automation Anywhere is a very user-friendly and easy-to-use tool, and if clients are looking to implement automation into their business, I would definitely recommend Automation Anywhere over other tools because it is well-suited for their purposes and can be easily utilized."
"Since it has capabilities to integrate with third-party applications easily, it makes the life of an automation engineer very easy."
"When anybody talks about Robotic Process Automation, Automation Anywhere is the first thing that comes to my mind."
"For business professionals, it automates repetitive tasks and enhances efficiency and cost savings."
"The saving of efforts within my project has been to the tune of 20% as of now and I am sure that it will improve as we explore the tool more and automate many more processes."
"The initial setup is very easy."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to automate mundane tasks. This improves efficiency, reliability, etc. You can form critical operations which can be highly automated."
"I like the integration with Watson and the possibility to have an intelligent reading of all the customers' documents."
"Integrating the tool with SAP, EBS, or other ERPs is easy."
"I am satisfied with the technical support."
"It is a good tool for automation."
"The analytics and reporting tools in IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) are the best compared to all other RPAs because all other RPAs only use dashboards while IBM is the only one to have a reporting tool that includes dashboards."
"One of the most impactful features of IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has been its one-time setup capability."
"Support is AAA+, fast, and very detailed."
"What I like about VisualCron is that like its name, it's a very visual tool. In my previous company, there were a lot of scripts for all kinds of services, and through VisualCron, you get to group all flows and get a nice visual overview. VisualCron also has an alerting feature, so you receive alerts from it. VisualCron makes everything clearer and easier to maintain. Every other solution that I was looking for almost always needed a programmer, but with VisualCron, you can do what you need to do without programming skills, so this is another valuable feature of the tool."
"We don't have to do any coding. We just plug and play and it works."
"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."
"VisualCron has enabled us to efficiently automate and maintain many tasks with minimal effort from our internal IT resources."
"It helped us reduce manual steps."
"'ve only had a few cases where I've had to request support in the past 12 years of use, but the support response time and resolution were was extremely quick."
"What I found most beneficial from VisualCron is that you can directly connect it with different databases, user accounts, and credentials. You can run queries from one machine to another using the credentials, unlike PowerShell, that's run by the machine itself. With VisualCron, you can directly ask other machines and run requests through user credentials. Suppose you have an AWS or Azure environment. In that case, you can maintain the connection between on-premises and cloud-based machines, which is the type of setup in the organization I'm working for. You can directly call some of the services via VisualCron on your local on-premises machine, and I found that an excellent feature of the tool."
 

Cons

"Enhancing the support tiers might be beneficial, and pricing has been a primary challenge, with a need for cheaper options and more tiered support."
"When you are hosting the application, that is when it is a little more complicated to set up. You need to talk to the IT department, as you are actually outside of their firewall, then you are coming back inside their cloud."
"Built-in HTML features are lagging in this solution, whereas in UiPath, they are very good."
"In the A2019 community edition, while running its taking time to run RPA bots and having few bugs related to IQ Bot server connectivity and other things."
"Verbose logging of bot compiling and deployment from the control room. Events occurring during compiling, pre-processing the bots should be logged in the control room or bot launcher logs."
"Vertical connecting lines would be appropriate within the code, and a collapse/expand feature for code blocks would be ideal."
"IQ Bot is bad and needs a lot of tweaking."
"While it is easy to develop automation, deploying and running them requires some technical knowledge."
"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."
"Needs better integration with artificial intelligence or with machine-learning."
"We would like a decreased need for customer support."
"The scalability of the solution can be challenging."
"This RPA should be under the umbrella of BPM. This is what the future should be."
"The pricing of IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) could be improved."
"IBM RPA is an unstable solution."
"One of the things I would definitely like to see is more of the machine-learning and cognitive capabilities."
"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."
"I've mentioned before that it would be great to see a move away from SQLCE and XML configuration files."
"I would like for VisualCron to expand audit log to show who changed job variables that are initialized per job run."
"I want to improve the UI in VisualCron, as it's not as user-friendly, particularly when setting up the task scheduler. If you're familiar with the tool, then no problem, but if not, you'll have a problem typing text because sometimes, the cursor points to other places, so there's an issue with text box alignment in VisualCron. That was painful for me when I was just a VisualCron novice, but when you become used to it, there won't be a problem."
"The documentation is a bit weak."
"There are some conditions in the mail trigger, but you can only use them as an "AND" condition, not as an "OR" condition. This is an improvement that could be useful. For example, some people put "invoice" in the subject and others put "invoice" in the body. If I want to make a trigger for everybody whose sending invoices, I have to make two jobs for this now."
"Our suggestion to make it better and more manageable in terms of GDPR: Implement it in a very partnership way."
"VisualCron seems to operate like an efficient machine when it comes to improvements and enhancements and new features. I always appreciate the quick response I get when bringing up an issue or coming up with suggestions. I've mentioned before that it would be great to see a move away from SQLCE and XML configuration files."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The cost is at the highest end of the spectrum."
"Annual licensing costs would be about $100,000."
"The ROI is really good. We have saved time and money."
"Regarding the price, licensing, and maintenance, Automation Anywhere provides its customers with its best and affordable value."
"It's very good in terms of cost and pricing."
"The solution itself is free unless we want to add the support option but we have to pay for the bots we use."
"The Automation Anywhere license is affordable and not complex."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The product has a yearly licensing fee."
"The pricing is reasonable for this solution."
"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."
"I rate the pricing ten out of ten. So, the pricing is very good for me."
"IBM RPA is cheaper than other tools."
"The license is paid annually."
"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."
"The pricing is extremely fair, and because of that I recommend purchasing multiple instances to split out the processing load across multiple application servers."
"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."
"ROI is one month."
"ROI is 95 percent."
"The price is a bit high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
25%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business157
Midsize Enterprise83
Large Enterprise553
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: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.