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VisualCron vs WorkFusion 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

Automate
Sponsored
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VisualCron
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
19th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Managed File Transfer (MFT) (15th), Workload Automation (16th)
WorkFusion
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
8th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (14th), Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category, the mindshare of Automate is 1.6%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VisualCron is 0.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WorkFusion is 1.6%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
 

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.
Sourav-Dutta - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
Shamus Cardon - PeerSpot reviewer
It has improved our accuracy since we are eliminating the human error element. There could be better version control through their web platform.
We only have our engineering team writing code and developing business processes since it is very technical. In terms of data extraction and training the ML models, we deployed that to our accounts payable department, which has fewer technical users than our engineering team. After a handful of training sessions, they were able to get in there and use it with decent accuracy. It could be better, but it is definitely better than nothing. One of the big upgrades that I know is happening in version 10 is an improvement to their tagging interface. That is definitely something that I am excited about to sort of reinvigorate our more non-technical users in information extraction from our documents. There could be better version control through their web platform. That is something that could be improved on. Integration from the IDE, e.g., from WorkFusion Studio directly into Control Tower, would be nice to have too.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We have tried other RPA solutions like UiPath or Automation Anywhere. They are fantastic products but complex, and it's hard to understand everything. It would be best if you had a skilled developer or several. Automate is easy to implement, administer, and use. It's appropriate for us because our cases are simple and easy to automate. We don't need complicated tools with many features; We prefer to get a significant ROI quickly."
"The most valuable features for my client are timing and scheduling."
"The best feature of Automate is its ease of use, which is a major selling point."
"We have found the pricing to be very reasonable."
"The most valuable features of Fortra's Automate include its FTP functionality and file manipulation capabilities."
"I would rate the technical support as a nine out of ten because it is quite fast and courteous."
"We use it for specific cases, mainly secure file transfers, which are vital for us. And it works for us."
"Compared to other vendors, it's the scheduling tool because a lot of vendors want to charge you extra for their enterprise-level license to have a scheduling tool built in to give you the ability to set up regular schedules to run and do certain data checks."
"We don't have to do any coding. We just plug and play and it works."
"The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%."
"VisualCron is a very powerful program to automate different steps in your business processes. We use it to automate replacing files and inform departments about the replacement."
"'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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It helped us reduce manual steps."
"The customer support is very responsive."
"Their robots have increased the rate of efficiency by two to five times in our organization. There is still a human element to code out the package running the robots. You can't just click something and have it run. However, once that has been done, you can parallelize it 10 or 100 times in a fairly straightforward manner."
"If you compare it to its competitors in the market, it is more Java-native."
"The most valuable features are the recorder because it's user-friendly and the integration with other tools Excel."
"The cognitive features of this solution are good."
"It is useful that WorkFusion provides the entire infrastructure, which allows me to focus on writing code without worrying about maintenance."
"The Robotic Desktop Automation Express component allows us to do rapid development outside the normal, time-consuming processes."
"The Control Tower enables us to create and use workflows. It helps us run processes. There are a lot of small features, but the Control Tower is a very good feature, wherein we can create bots and schedule them as well as create different instances of them to run in different regions."
 

Cons

"The OCR for Hebrew text needs to be improved."
"The documentation is not that great."
"I would like the updates to be easier to deploy. Integration with Amazon S3 is somewhat lacking."
"The interface could be more user-friendly and easier to navigate."
"The documentation for errors needs improvement as many of the error messages we receive are very vague."
"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."
"The workflow for variables could be better. The input and output of task-level variables could be made a little clearer in terms of passing those around from one task to another upon success, etc. Things like that could be a little easier potentially."
"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."
"Our suggestion to make it better and more manageable in terms of GDPR: Implement it in a very partnership way."
"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."
"VisualCron's command console is a little bit difficult to understand and needs to improve."
"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."
"The documentation is a bit weak."
"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."
"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."
"WorkFusion comes packed with certain libraries and .jars. At times, you understand that you're using a system in which a library or .jar is outdated and you need to upgrade it... They need to better manage quickly making changes in WorkFusion to accommodate a situation where other technologies are not supporting the platform."
"The user experience could be better both from an RPA perspective and from a business perspective."
"The solution is not user-friendly, this is something they should improve."
"There could be better version control through their web platform. That is something that could be improved on. Integration from the IDE, e.g., from WorkFusion Studio directly into Control Tower, would be nice to have too."
"The product could do more to expand its 'codeless' coding options by adding drag-and-drop assistance in building bots for non-technical users."
"So far, we have developed only one automation using machine learning. The results were less than optimal. Part of this could be because of the use case that was selected. Overall, our experience was suboptimal. WorkFusion was an outstanding partner in terms of providing their experts for free to help us on that particular use case, but we still have a lot of things to figure out in terms of how to use its machine learning capability."
"I would also like for it to be NLP-based."
"There is enhanced functionality I would like to see, things that would further enhance the user experience, deliver greater efficiencies, and further mitigate risk."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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."
"Compared to other products, the pricing model for this solution is much more convenient, flexible, and adaptable to the Portuguese reality."
"I like the way this solution is priced because you can buy a license, or you can buy the software outright."
"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."
"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."
"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 95 percent."
"The overall cost could come down a bit in terms of maintaining the servers. Because it can handle complicated things in big use cases, the infrastructure is also correspondingly big. It would be nice to bring that cost down."
"We have a good deal from WorkFusion. We have an unlimited global licensing deal with WorkFusion. For us, it is a no-worry solution. We can go ahead and use it as much as possible anywhere we need it. If WorkFusion has a different kind of a deal for licensing with others, then their business decisions need to be evaluated based on that."
"It is not the most expensive solution, but it is also not the cheapest."
"Find it online."
"They have a very expensive license compared to any other automation tool. For instance, at $50,000 - $60,000, you can bring in an Automation Anywhere solution. For this solution, you need at least $250,000 to get something going."
"The pricing is fair because WorkFusion's out-of-the-box solution is appealing."
"As a first-time customer who wants to engage with WorkFusion, not working for my company, then I would want to do a PoC. The cost is prohibitive because they will ask me to get infrastructure with six or seven servers. Then, you must buy a WorkFusion license to do a PoC, which is expensive. I would then have to set up a team to build the PoC and see the benefits. That is very prohibitive."
"The solution was not the cheapest, but it was also not the most expensive. Workfusion was very open to negotiating pricing and to working within the objectives of our firm."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
27%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Insurance Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
29%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
7%
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 VisualCron?
The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%.
What needs improvement with VisualCron?
The documentation is a bit weak. The tool must provide a better set of documentation.
What do you like most about WorkFusion?
If you compare it to its competitors in the market, it is more Java-native.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WorkFusion?
WorkFusion is cheaper than Kofax, but I cannot compare it to UiPath ( /products/uipath-reviews ) without exact pricin...
What needs improvement with WorkFusion?
In low-code automation, most parts are not customizable, particularly when Excel is involved, which increases complex...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate
No data available
No data available
 

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
7 Eleven, ABB Sécheron SA, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Amazon Europe Core, Apple, Assa Abloy, Aston Martin, Banco Santander, BMW (Australia)
Deutsche Bank, Amerant Bank, Bank of Asia, Scotiabank, Bank of Montreal, LPL Financial, Carter Bank & Trust, Selective Insurance, HPE, Canadian Tire, Standard Bank, Humana, New York-Presbyterian, Houston Methodist, Six Financial, State Street
Find out what your peers are saying about VisualCron vs. WorkFusion and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.