Automation Anywhere vs IBM Datacap comparison

Automation Anywhere and IBM are both solutions in the Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) category. Automation Anywhere is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.3, while IBM is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.0. Additionally, 95% of Automation Anywhere users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of IBM users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Automation Anywhere and IBM Datacap based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Automation Anywhere vs. IBM Datacap Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Automation Anywhere vs. IBM Datacap

April 2025

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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

Featured Reviews

Anabel Marco

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

Can automate several processes with only one bot and is easy to implement, administer, and use

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. We can automate several processes with only one bot, so it's much cheaper than other products where you need to buy additional licenses. We need a good value for our automation. The other solutions might be more robust, but Automate is perfect for us because we're not a large enterprise.

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Vatsal Mehta

Co-Founder & CEO at HEDEHI Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

Accommodates diverse use cases and effectively meets customer requirements

AI agents need further improvements. AI agent technology in agentic process automation is still evolving. We have only scratched the surface, and there are many potential use cases yet to be explored. As technology advances, I believe it will enable us to implement more comprehensive automation solutions. Document Automation has issues related to speed. When I compare Document Automation with IQ Bot, IQ Bot is faster than Document Automation. My understanding is that they are still evolving Document Automation, and this issue of slowness will be resolved in the upcoming .35 version, so we are good with that. They are working on signature identification and validations for handwritten documents. Currently, we are able to extract data out of scanned but digital images, but there is still scope for improvement for handwritten documents.

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DeekshithShetty

Software Development Senior Specialist at NTT Data

High-accuracy document processing with easy integration and good image enhancement

The OCR extractions are very good, almost 100% accurate now. The integration with other tools is very easy, with inbuilt actions to configure and directly export to multiple depositories. It is also good at image enhancement, including the removal of lines, which is helpful in processing and automation and ensures very little user intervention, thus saving time.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It gives us a central place to schedule tasks and run them distributed."

"Fortra's Automate has effectively replaced the workload of an entire employee, saving us significant time and money."

"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 have found the pricing to be very reasonable."

"This tool has machine learning and voice recognition and computer vision, which are both quite useful aspects. These aren't available in other tools. It's a good addition to this tool and it gives the solution an edge on the market."

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

"The ability to connect to websites and pull data is the solution's most valuable feature."

"The licensing of the product is very good. You only need to license it once and then you have it forever."

More Automate pros

"The Object Cloning command is the most useful feature. Through the use of this command, between 30% and 40% of the process automation is complete."

"Automation Anywhere was easier to learn for the developers. It has a lot of out of box features when it comes to SAP, Excel, and others."

"I love the Bot Store. I encourage a lot of my staff to use it, because it changes the game and the time that it takes to build automation. It has a lot of reusable things that you can use off the bat."

"The automation of data entry is the most valuable feature for us."

"With the help of Bot, it has increased the productivity of the current process and we do not need to spend more time on error resolution and rectification."

"Automation Anywhere's image reader is the most valuable feature."

"Automation Anywhere has improved my organization by automating many rule-based and nonjudgmental processes in domains like telecommunications, human resources, financial services, and daily or monthly reporting."

"We can access it anywhere. E.g., I can access dashboard from my Control Room on my mobile app using Automation Anywhere."

More Automation Anywhere pros

"It's a platform, not a configured application, so you can do what you want with it."

"The installation of the solution is very simple."

"One of the valuable features of Datacap is the user experience. One thing that IBM did a few years ago was they standardized all of their ECM products on Content Navigator, including Datacap. If you're an IBM ECM customer you have FileNet, you have Datacap, you have StoredIQ and you have a consistent user experience, user interface."

"At the forefront of my thoughts, the standout feature of this intelligent product is its remarkable capability. This project we're currently engaged in revolves around streamlining workflows within both our company and the customer's company. It entails handling information from various documents with diverse formats and types, even when they contain the same data. The ability to connect this information with the appropriate database and recognize it irrespective of the format or source is an extremely valuable feature. Moreover, leveraging machine learning is crucial since our customer deals with an extensive archive of over five million documents. Machine learning can significantly alleviate the backlog by becoming well-versed in various scenarios they might encounter during their work once we've completed our application."

"There's something that's very unique about IBM DataCap. It provides me with a good solution for extracting, reading the QR codes, and scanning them. In this stage, we are working in a UIT phase before implementing this protocol in all our branches. From my initial observation, IBM DataCap is good, it is not working too fast, but in a good manner for us."

"The standout feature of this intelligent product is its remarkable capability."

"The solution automates manual data entry."

"Both Datacap Studio and Datacap Navigator are great features."

More IBM Datacap pros

Cons

"I currently have three bugs open with them that I don't know if they are addressed in the new release."

"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."

"Error messages should be better. For error status, there should be better documentation because a lot of times, error messages that you get are quite vague. For example, you get a message saying that the workflow has run into an unknown status, which is vague. It just tells you that it failed, but you don't know how or why it failed. It makes debugging difficult."

"It's possible that they could use a stronger community for seeking guidance and help."

"Some companies have asked for voice integration. This is likely part of the roadmap."

"The documentation is not that great."

"I would like the updates to be easier to deploy. Integration with Amazon S3 is somewhat lacking."

More Automate cons

"They sell every different functionality in too many separate packages, making the procurement process complicated as it requires paying additional licensing for more features."

"They can further improve the AI. It is already at a certain level, but it can be improved."

"If you want to use Chrome then there are three or four additional steps that need to be completed."

"Automation Anywhere can include database commands like insert row, bold row, etc commands in 11.x"

"I would like the support to be faster. Their response time is one to two days. Their customer care could be faster."

"Excel automation or the activities for Excel is an area of improvement."

"The product's technical support could use improvement."

"They should make the product smarter. The bot we use right now is kind of fundamentally basic loop-based. We really want to see a little bit more advanced capability, that way we can undertake more comprehensive tasks."

More Automation Anywhere cons

"They have to stop focusing on new development and stabilize the latest release. It is not stable."

"Datacap has performance issues when processing large volumes of documents. We're doing 18,000 pages daily. Scanning takes almost 20-30 minutes, but it normally takes one or two minutes. We informed IBM and opened a ticket for that. They forwarded the issue to developers but didn't give a specific timeline for it to be resolved. Version 8.1 is already at the end of support."

"When a client's requirement is not available in Datacap, out-of-the-box actions should be simpler to implement and not very complex."

"Currently, when you are entering invoices, you have to enter multiple rows. In Captiva the multiple rows will be dynamically added. This would be a beneficial feature for IBM to add."

"The user interfaces for exception processing can be tweaked. I commonly find that we try to tweak and customize some of those components to more of what the industry standard is. The product is still trying to play catch-up a little bit in those areas."

"I've faced some bugs or issues. They should do deeper testing of the product before releasing it because some of the bugs that I found were a bit simple. I understand that it is a massive product, and some of the functionalities can get overlooked."

"Speed of OCR is one issue. It's a challenge because we have customers that have millions and millions of pages that they want this solution to crank through. In order to do that you have to have a large infrastructure in place, and that directly impacts licensing based on the core count."

"Its weaknesses are primarily tied to the lack of available resources and expertise in the market to effectively support and provide solutions and services to each customer for seamless implementation."

More IBM Datacap cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 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."

"It has gone up in price. The price of Fortra's Automate has increased since we first started using it. It does a lot but also costs a lot. It was a lot more affordable before Fortra owned the software."

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

"It comes with a package that costs approximately $20,000 USD per year."

"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."

"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."

More Automate pricing and cost advice

"It is reasonable and affordable. If you consider the tasks that we can get done using this, the pricing is reasonable and affordable."

"We're on a license package with Automation Anywhere (AA), paid yearly. What would be better is for them to have different packages for different types of organization."

"I find the license pricing to be competitive and reflective of the pricing models throughout the RPA space, and I believe there is a lot of value in continuing to maintain the free community edition platform."

"It is the most economically friendly and it provides you with a lot of functions."

"As our team size increases, we may get some more licenses for the tool."

"If you are looking into Automation Anywhere, get the Community Edition and play with it."

"The solution's pricing is pretty decent."

"The pricing and licensing of Automation Anywhere plays an important rule in the Indian market because in the Indian market $10,000 USD is too much. Hence, the pricing tends to go down depending on the customer relationship with the partner: A starter pack is $10,000 and an enterprise pack is $100,000. If you go through an implementation partner, you can get good deals. They can save some money."

More Automation Anywhere pricing and cost advice

"This solution offers seamless integration with other enterprise products, which is my area of responsibility, focusing on government sector projects. Larger enterprise projects don't pose problems. It might be suitable for small businesses as well."

"You save a lot of time and money, but the benefit is you have people who are able to run the systems, check to see if there are any errors at all, and there are a lot less errors than a human system."

"This solution is the most expensive in the market."

"It is an expensive solution."

"In Egypt, we have exchange rates that change year to year, and currently, we're facing an increase in the exchange rate between our Egyptian pound and the dollar. Since we have been using IBM DataCap two years ago we had a good price, it was not expensive. However, I cannot say now if it is expensive or not because of the exchange rate. Additionally, I don't have the data of other competitors and I don't know the prices."

"We were using the User Value Unit licensing, which means we get charged per active user of the system, and if I'm not mistaken, we also had it for the rule runner service. They had a PVU license model, which is a processor value unit. For each process that we have in our system, we pay a certain amount of money. We found the pricing to be quite steep. It was really an expensive solution in comparison to Kofax, which had a different licensing model and was actually cheaper overall because they charge per page and not per user and per process."

"Pricing depends on how much we use it. We pay per bulk quantity. We pay as you go. Therefore, it sort of depends on our usage of it."

More IBM Datacap pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

16%

Government

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

Insurance Company

10%

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

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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.

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM Datacap?

The installation of the solution is very simple.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Datacap?

This solution is the most expensive in the market.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Datacap?

When a client's requirement is not available in Datacap, out-of-the-box actions should be simpler to implement and no...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Power Automate vs Automate

Compared 38% of the time

UiPath Platform vs Automate

Compared 35% of the time

Blue Prism vs Automate

Compared 8% of the time

VisualCron vs Automate

Compared 6% of the time

MOVEit vs Automate

Compared 5% of the time

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Microsoft Power Automate vs Automation Anywhere

Compared 28% of the time

UiPath Platform vs Automation Anywhere

Compared 22% of the time

Blue Prism vs Automation Anywhere

Compared 11% of the time

Python RPA vs Automation Anywhere

Compared 6% of the time

Tricentis Tosca vs Automation Anywhere

Compared 4% of the time

More Automation Anywhere Competitors

ABBYY Vantage vs IBM Datacap

Compared 33% of the time

Amazon Textract vs IBM Datacap

Compared 18% of the time

Microsoft Power Automate vs IBM Datacap

Compared 16% of the time

Tungsten TotalAgility vs IBM Datacap

Compared 12% of the time

More IBM Datacap Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Automate

May 2025

Download Automate product report

Buyer's Guide

Automation Anywhere

May 2025

Download Automation Anywhere product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Datacap

May 2025

Download IBM Datacap product report

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise

Datacap

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

Automation Anywhere offers a robust automation platform known for its user-friendly interface, flexible scalability, and advanced automation capabilities. It's designed to streamline operations across industries by automating manual and repetitive tasks.

Automation Anywhere empowers organizations with its easy-to-use platform that simplifies automation processes through its drag-and-drop functionality. With features like MetaBot and IQ Bot, it provides advanced automation solutions. The platform seamlessly integrates with business applications, ensuring efficient operation and data protection through security features like the credential vault. Despite its strengths, there is room for improvement in integration with source control systems and third-party applications. Enhancing UI friendliness, IDE capabilities, and licensing flexibility, along with improved support in the Citrix environment, are needed. Better OCR accuracy, AI functionalities, and Excel integration would enhance user experiences.

What are Automation Anywhere's key features?

Ease of Use: Offers a user-friendly platform that allows straightforward automation of processes for non-technical users.
Advanced Bots: Includes MetaBot and IQ Bot for complex automation tasks.
Integration: Seamlessly integrates with business applications for smooth operations.
Security: Features like credential vault ensure robust data protection.
Scalability: Provides flexibility and scalability for expanding automation needs.

What benefits and ROI should users look for?

Efficiency: Automates repetitive tasks, enhancing process efficiency.
Accuracy: Improves accuracy in operations like finance and HR.
Scalability: Offers scalable solutions for growing enterprises.
Cost Reduction: Reduces operational costs by streamlining processes.
Flexibility: Adapts to various industry requirements allowing broad implementation.

In the finance sector, Automation Anywhere is used for tasks like accounts payable, accounts receivable, and invoice processing. In HR, it's implemented for onboarding, payroll, and attendance verification. Its deployment also extends to supply chain, compliance, and customer service, providing streamlined operations by automating complex business processes.

Automation Anywhere

IBM Datacap helps you streamline the capture, recognition and classification of business documents and extract important information. Datacap supports multiple-channel capture by processing paper documents on scanners, mobile devices, multi-function peripherals and fax. It uses natural language processing, text analytics and machine learning technologies, like those in IBM Watson, to automatically identify, classify and extract content from unstructured or variable documents. The software can reduce labor and paper costs, deliver meaningful information and support faster decision making.

IBM

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

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics

Turkcell, PowerSouth Energy Cooperative, Central Nacional Unimed, Conqord Oil

Buyer's Guide

Automation Anywhere vs. IBM Datacap

April 2025

Free Report: Automation Anywhere vs. IBM Datacap

Find out what your peers are saying about Automation Anywhere vs. IBM Datacap and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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