Automate vs VisualCron comparison

Fortra and SMA Technologies are both solutions in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category. Fortra is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.9, while SMA Technologies is ranked #16 with an average rating of 9.0. Fortra holds a 2.0% mindshare in RPA, compared to SMA Technologies’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Fortra users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of SMA Technologies users who would recommend it.

Automate

Read 29 Automate reviews

2,406 Views
1,588 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

VisualCron

Read 11 VisualCron reviews

1,594 Views
701 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Automate

VisualCron

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 8, 2025

Automate and VisualCron are competitors in the automation software market. Automate appears to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive support for advanced integrations and flexible pricing tailored for enterprise needs.

Features: Automate offers a drag-and-drop interface, API ease of use, and integrates well with services like Microsoft Azure and SAP, providing terminal emulation and OCR capabilities. VisualCron excels in job scheduling, minimal coding requirements, and seamless database integration, appealing to users from various technical backgrounds.

Room for Improvement: Automate could enhance web automation features and improve global workflow visibility. VisualCron's interface is seen as cluttered and could benefit from a streamlined UI. Both solutions need better community support and technical documentation. Automate is encouraged to refine its OCR capabilities, while VisualCron needs more robust CRM integration options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Automate provides versatile on-premises and cloud deployment options, with more consistent and readily available technical support for smooth deployment. VisualCron is straightforward but faces criticism for its complex user interface and slower support responses.

Pricing and ROI: Automate offers a competitive per bot pricing model allowing multiple processes at cost efficiency, which, combined with the option for unlimited tasks, makes it attractive for business scaling. VisualCron's pricing is fair, but Automate's flexible structure and rapid ROI reports, highlighting significant labor savings, give it a financial edge.

To learn more, read our detailed Automate vs. VisualCron Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Automate vs. VisualCron

July 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 866,324 peers since 2012

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

Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

5th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VisualCron

Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

16th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Managed File Transfer (MFT) (16th), Workload Automation (16th)

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category, the mindshare of Automate is 2.0%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VisualCron is 1.0%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Automate	2.0%
VisualCron	1.0%
Other	97.0%

Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Featured Reviews

Anabel Marco

Account Director at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

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.

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Sourav-Dutta

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…

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We use it for specific cases, mainly secure file transfers, which are vital for us. And it works for us."

"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 peace of mind I have using Automate for scheduling tasks allows me to focus on other responsibilities without worrying about operational issues."

"We have found the pricing to be very reasonable."

"I would recommend Automate because it has made my work much easier."

"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."

"Overall, the whole product is really nice and provides significant benefits."

"I find the ease of use from a programming perspective very valuable."

More Automate pros

"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."

"It has improved our organization with more automation within the business departments and less administration and development in the IT department. Usually, as the IT department, we are the bottleneck for many requirements within the business. With this tool, the business departments are able to perform many task themselves."

"I love VisualCron because we previously spent a lot of time writing Power switches to connect to SQL Server. VisualCron makes it easier to execute services or connect to FileZilla by only adding the credentials to the master credentials stored in the solution."

"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 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."

"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."

"'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."

More VisualCron pros

Cons

"While this solution is continually improving, as it is now, the user interface could use improvement when I compare it to a product like UiPath."

"I would prefer not having to log in to update a ticket; being able to respond via email would be beneficial."

"There is a lack of good development for artificial intelligence, such as machine learning."

"I would like to see some better web automation, a wizard like the one in the product WinAutomation would be very nice."

"Some challenges include the system being too loaded or delayed in taking instructions and responding quickly as needed."

"They do not encrypt passwords, so this is an issue with HIPAA compliance."

"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."

"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."

More Automate cons

"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."

"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."

"Our suggestion to make it better and more manageable in terms of GDPR: Implement it in a very partnership way."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More VisualCron cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"From a distributor's perspective, one of the biggest selling points of Automate is its price point."

"I like the way this solution is priced because you can buy a license, or you can buy the software outright."

"Compared to other products, the pricing model for this solution is much more convenient, flexible, and adaptable to the Portuguese reality."

"Once you buy the software, you just pay for the support for backend help."

"I'm only involved in running the product and maintaining the systems, so I can't speak to the cost."

"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."

"The cost is a bit high for a small business like ours, but we manage with Fortra's Automate."

"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."

More Automate pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

"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 95 percent."

"The price is a bit high."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Performing Arts

Computer Software Company

27%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Insurance Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	4

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	5

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.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for HelpSystems AutoMate?

The main purpose is for automation. That has been the purpose why I have been using it so far.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortra Automate?

Regarding pricing, it is very friendly. I would not say that it is really cheap or very expensive, but it fits within our budget.

See all answers

What do you like most about VisualCron?

The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VisualCron?

The price is a bit high. However, it is okay.

See all answers

What needs improvement with VisualCron?

The documentation is a bit weak. The tool must provide a better set of documentation.

See all answers

Comparisons

UiPath Platform vs Automate

Compared 27% of the time

Microsoft Power Automate vs Automate

Compared 24% of the time

Redwood Software - Finance Automation Edition vs Automate

Compared 11% of the time

Blue Prism vs Automate

Compared 9% of the time

MOVEit vs Automate

Compared 6% of the time

More Automate Competitors

Microsoft Power Automate vs VisualCron

Compared 38% of the time

Control-M vs VisualCron

Compared 22% of the time

OpCon vs VisualCron

Compared 9% of the time

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs VisualCron

Compared 7% of the time

JAMS vs VisualCron

Compared 6% of the time

More VisualCron Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Automate

August 2025

Download Automate product report

Buyer's Guide

VisualCron

August 2025

Download VisualCron product report

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate

No data available

Overview

Automate offers a user-friendly solution with a drag-and-drop interface for efficient task automation and integration with major platforms like SAP and Azure, making it ideal for quick deployment with minimal coding and training.

Automate provides powerful features for businesses seeking efficient automation, offering compatibility with databases, email integration, and cloud platforms. Its simple interface supports both beginners and experienced users, simplifying tasks like invoice processing, HR automation, and data transformation. Cost-effective pricing and flexible licensing enhance its appeal while integration capabilities and scheduling tools ensure smooth workflow automation.

What are Automate's Key Features?

Drag-and-Drop Interface: Simplifies automation with intuitive design.
Integration Capabilities: Connects with platforms like SAP and Azure for seamless data flow.
Database and FTP Triggers: Enhances automation potential through direct data interaction.
Efficient Scheduling: Automates tasks with precise timing and control.
Web Scraping: Automates data extraction for quick analysis and reporting.

What Benefits and ROI Should Users Expect?

Rapid Deployment: Minimizes coding efforts for quick implementation.
Cost-Effectiveness: Offers flexible pricing models to suit budget constraints.
Operational Efficiency: Reduces manual workloads and enhances productivity.
Comprehensive Integration: Facilitates improved data management across systems.
Scalability: Adapts to growing business needs with ease.

In industries such as healthcare, banking, and logistics, Automate is used for tasks like invoice payment automation, data transformation, and task automation. This leads to streamlined processes and reduced manual workload, illustrating its value in enhancing operational efficiency through diversified workflows.

Fortra

VisualCron offers task automation through a visual interface, eliminating the need for programming skills. With capabilities like alerting and variable usage, users benefit from integration with databases, timely task execution, and cross-platform operations.

VisualCron empowers users by simplifying complex workflows. It allows seamless task automation through features like interactive scheduling and role-based operations. Users appreciate its integration capabilities, replacing multiple tools with a comprehensive automation solution. The support system ensures quick assistance, making it a reliable choice for workflow visualization and task execution. However, areas like error handling and interface design require enhancements for improved user experience.

What are the key features of VisualCron?

Visual Interface: Users automate tasks without needing programming skills.
Integration: Connects with databases and multiple systems to streamline operations.
Alerting: Notifies users about tasks and system statuses.
Task Scheduling: Allows interactive management of automated tasks.
Credentials Management: Enables cross-platform operations securely.

What benefits can users expect when evaluating VisualCron?

Increased Efficiency: Reduces the time spent on manual processes.
Cost Reduction: Eliminates the need for multiple tools by consolidating functionalities.
Enhanced Support: Offers robust post-sales support for quicker assistance.
Streamlined Workflows: Simplifies complex task automation.

Organizations leverage VisualCron in industries like finance and logistics to automate tasks such as encryption and secure file transfers. It's also integral in managing data operations, facilitating communications between systems, and executing SQL jobs, enhancing operational efficiency across sectors.

SMA Technologies

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)

Buyer's Guide

Automate vs. VisualCron

July 2025

Free Report: Automate vs. VisualCron

Find out what your peers are saying about Automate vs. VisualCron and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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