Fortra's Automate vs VisualCron comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Fortra's Automate and VisualCron 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 Fortra's Automate vs. VisualCron Report (Updated: May 2024).
772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The pricing is excellent. I would give them perfect marks in that regard.""It gives us a central place to schedule tasks and run them distributed.""We have found the pricing to be very reasonable.""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 most valuable features for my client are timing and scheduling.""I like the interface; it makes managing automation easy. We can set different schedules and templates for each task.""Fortra's Automate performs the job effectively and has the capability to alert us of any issues.""The best feature of Automate is its ease of use, which is a major selling point."

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"The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%.""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.""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.""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.""It helped us reduce manual steps.""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."

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Cons
"It would be an improvement if Automate had better stability tools, whether by recommending a certain amount of memory because it can be a memory hog at times.""It's possible that they could use a stronger community for seeking guidance and help.""The documentation for errors needs improvement as many of the error messages we receive are very vague.""The OCR for Hebrew text needs to be improved.""The interface could be more user-friendly and easier to navigate.""Fortra's Automate is not as reliable as I would like it to be.""Sometimes when we communicate with the ERP system and there is an issue, we are not always aware of the specifics of Automate and the source of the problem.""We really need a free development environment for customers. Building and testing automation on production isn't ideal."

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"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.""I would like for VisualCron to expand audit log to show who changed job variables that are initialized per job run.""The documentation is a bit weak.""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 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.""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."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "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."
  • "It comes with a package that costs approximately $20,000 USD per year."
  • "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."
  • "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."
  • "The cost is a bit high for a small business like ours, but we manage with Fortra's Automate."
  • "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."
  • More Fortra's Automate Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "ROI is 95 percent."
  • "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."
  • "ROI is one month."
  • "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."
  • "The price is a bit high."
  • More VisualCron Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:We use it for specific cases, mainly secure file transfers, which are vital for us. And it works for us.
    Top Answer:I'm only involved in running the product and maintaining the systems, so I can't speak to the cost.
    Top Answer:There is room for improvement regarding cloud functionality; there are a few missing features, and the logging could be better, especially air logging. We can go into logging events and create our own… more »
    Top Answer:The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%.
    Top Answer:The documentation is a bit weak. The tool must provide a better set of documentation.
    Ranking
    Views
    1,959
    Comparisons
    998
    Reviews
    10
    Average Words per Review
    1,398
    Rating
    8.5
    Views
    959
    Comparisons
    543
    Reviews
    5
    Average Words per Review
    750
    Rating
    8.0
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    HelpSystems Automate, Automate
    Learn More
    Fortra
    Video Not Available
    Overview

    Automate is an easy-to-use RPA software solution that boosts your productivity by transforming virtually any business or IT process. Get scalable automation capabilities whether you need a solution for one department, a small business, or an enterprise-wide Center of Excellence (CoE) initiative—Automate is built and priced right for employee-driven automation for any organization.

    Automate allows you to get up and running fast with no-code automation for both GUI and back-end functionalities. Form-based development lets you quickly build bots and leverage over 600 pre-built automation actions. Powerful out-of-the-box API and native integrations bring together the applications that keep your business running. And with the Automate Recorder, easily build, update, and deploy robust, UI-driven automation. Plus, bots can be deployed as attended or unattended with concurrent execution of tasks—no restrictions.

    A Key Part of Fortra (the new face of HelpSystems) Automate is proud to be part of Fortra’s comprehensive portfolio. Fortra simplifies today’s complex business landscape by bringing complementary products together to solve problems in innovative ways. These integrated, scalable solutions address the many challenges you face in streamlining your operations. With the help of Automate robotic process automation and other solutions, Fortra is your relentless ally, here for you every step of the way on your automation journey.

    VisualCron combines many features into one product. Through scheduling you can set your Jobs to run on a specific time or event. The Tasks in each Job automate scripts and eliminate human errors. Through various Tasks you can integrate different systems through file transfer and conversion.

    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)
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company14%
    Security Firm14%
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Insurance Company14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company14%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Healthcare Company9%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm25%
    Logistics Company13%
    Pharma/Biotech Company13%
    Recruiting/Hr Firm13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Healthcare Company7%
    Insurance Company7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business55%
    Midsize Enterprise25%
    Large Enterprise20%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business28%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise55%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business40%
    Midsize Enterprise10%
    Large Enterprise50%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise56%
    Buyer's Guide
    Fortra's Automate vs. VisualCron
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Fortra's Automate vs. VisualCron and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Fortra's Automate is ranked 5th in Robotic Process Automation (RPA) with 21 reviews while VisualCron is ranked 14th in Robotic Process Automation (RPA) with 11 reviews. Fortra's Automate is rated 8.2, while VisualCron is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of Fortra's Automate writes "Can automate several processes with only one bot and is easy to implement, administer, and use". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VisualCron writes "It's user-friendly, and I didn't need long to understand the process". Fortra's Automate is most compared with Microsoft Power Automate, UiPath, MOVEit, Automation Anywhere (AA) and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, whereas VisualCron is most compared with Microsoft Power Automate, Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, Stonebranch and OpCon. See our Fortra's Automate vs. VisualCron report.

    See our list of best Robotic Process Automation (RPA) vendors.

    We monitor all Robotic Process Automation (RPA) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.