UiPath Platform Reviews

I have worked with most of the UiPath use cases. From 2017 to now, I have delivered more than 400 bots. I have worked in healthcare, energy, shipping, and other industries.

When it comes to manual processes, especially IDP and the combination of IDP and automation, the journey has been a bit difficult and challenging, but it has been worth it. Most other automation is straightforward. We take input from multiple platforms, put it into another platform, and so on. But with IDP, we have to read the document, validate the data, and then integrate it with the automation tool in UiPath.

I started integrating IDP and automation before UiPath Document Understanding and the Action Center were available. What I used to do was automate the process and then create a layout in ABBYY. I would then integrate the ABBYY layout into UiPath, evaluate the data, and then automate the rest. I did this in 2018 and 2019.

Now that we have our own Document Understanding and Action Center platform, I don't have to rely on any third-party tools for IDP. The combination of automation and IDP within a single platform has made a big impact on many businesses. It has helped them to reduce their annual efforts in data entry, reading documents, and correcting small errors in data extraction and copy-pasting.

I have seen the best results when IDP is combined with automation. It has reduced manual efforts by at least 80 percent. Automation is always helpful, but the combination of IDP and automation is even more effective.

In one example, we were able to deploy more than 700 bots for a single organization in the manufacturing industry. They had around 25 servers just to run the bots, but now they are running multiple bots on a single server. They are saving millions of dollars per month by using UiPath.

Overall, I think the combination of IDP and automation is a huge game-changer for businesses. It is helping them to save time, money, and resources.

Most of the elements we have right now as activities with this do not require us to work with the norm of 100 lines of code or anything like that. It is just drag and drop, so anyone can use UiPath from scratch and be approved within a couple of months. The platform itself is very easy to learn and use. I don't think there were any challenges at any point with respect to this.

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation. We have many back-end processes that run without any manual intervention. We simply schedule the bots, and they run flawlessly. We also have a bot that generates reports for us. As a result, we have had end-to-end automation in place for almost a year now. We are very pleased with how it is working, and we believe it is a valuable feature.

The UiPath User Community is great. I am proud to be a part of the community, where I have earned the Community Moderator badge, the Bylaw badge, and the MM VPA badge. I have witnessed the incredible journey of the community, from a group of people who didn't know each other to a community that meets in person at least once a month. The quality of the answers in the forum is amazing. I have seen a few companies create internal competitions to see who can answer the most questions in the forums and receive prizes. These small gestures from the community make a big impact. I would say that the community has played a major role in the growth and deployment of UiPath. UiPath has never failed to surprise and value the community members. The company has never disappointed us, and it continues to support our efforts.

When we join the UiPath Community and become an MVP, we gain direct access to the company's product engineers. We can provide our feedback and reviews for every product and release, and we also have beta access to all products when we are eligible as an MVP. Every review, opinion, and idea that we provide to the product managers is taken seriously and reviewed. If it is valid, the product managers implement it. I think this is the best thing about being a part of the UiPath team, both as a team member and as an individual. I really like the core UiPath team very much.

We have UiPath both on-premises and in the cloud. I think we were able to make significant savings when we upgraded to the cloud, especially in terms of infrastructure costs, deployment, and upgrades. The dynamic nature of cloud computing has helped us to reduce costs and save time.

We often use the UiPath Academy courses. I believe that 80 to 90 percent of my team uses the Academy, and it is the main platform where we have learned to use UiPath. I recommend that everyone take the Academy courses. For anyone who wants to learn UiPath, the Academy is the best place because it has everything we need to know.

UiPath accelerates our digital transformation and reduces costs. We did not need to upgrade to expensive or complex applications to accelerate our digital transformation.

UiPath has reduced up to 70 percent of the human errors.

UiPath has helped free up staff time. We have citizen developers from UiPath who are using UiPath Studio X to save almost 70 percent of their daily time on email automation. Especially when it comes to process mining, they don't have to do the same update task; the processing is ready, and everything is ready to be given to the developers. Even the developers are saving time when using the RA framework for SAP or ERP applications, such as by creating and using libraries of common screens, selectors, and steps. This saves them at least 50 percent of their time, so they can focus more on research and development and new features.

Document Understanding and Action Center have added significant value to UiPath, especially for the IDP process.

There are a few businesses that are failing to generate their ROI. I think that's where UiPath needs to educate businesses so that they can choose the right product for them, whether that's the entire automation solution suite or just the individual products that they need. I think that educating businesses about this will help them a lot and make it easier for them to succeed.

When integrating with third-party tools, UiPath gives us the freedom to write our own code and integrate it. However, if we could get a repository of at least a few of the layouts for the GUI or AI Center, where we would only need to make minor changes, that would be helpful. For example, the files have a template that extracts all the information. I would just like to change a few things, but I don't want all of that. I know we can just hide it, but that won't help because processing the whole document extraction will still take the same amount of time. If we could get those codes in any of the repositories where we could make small changes to the existing code and then import them into our processes, that would be helpful. We do have all the code. We do have all the activities, but none of them are accessible or modifiable. We have to use them as is, or we have to create our own. Those are the only two options we have. If we could get the codes in the report that we want, and then we could make the changes and use them in our own code, I think that would help us more.

I have been using UiPath for seven years. I started my journey in December 2016 and we started delivering projects to clients in 2017. I have been impressed with the evaluation of the UiPath products from 2017 to 2023. The features that we have been receiving in recent years are very good.

When I started as an automation engineer in 2017, people at companies like Sony and other networks and large companies were scared to share their processes and credentials due to security concerns. I have seen this challenge firsthand. However, now, companies of all sizes, including national banks, are looking at automation.

I have seen an incredible journey from 2017 to 2023. I am happy to have been a part of it.

UiPath is stable.

UiPath is scalable. We are able to upgrade anything.

Whenever we have a challenge or similar issue, in rare cases, such as when there are multiple questions assigned to a support ticket, there may be a slight delay in technical support responding.

Positive

The initial deployment is straightforward.

The deployment time depends on the complexity of the project, ranging from six weeks to four months. For a very simple UiPath automation project with multiple applications, we can complete the development, UAT, and deployment within six weeks. However, if the project involves IDP, validation, and other complex features, it may take three to four months to complete.

The number of people required for deployment depends on the complexity. I always suggest having proper planning. I would not let any of the junior developers deploy to production at any time. I would always have two different teams. This is my preference. Instead of having junior developers deploy to production with only one person, even if they are capable of doing it, I would suggest not giving access to everyone to deploy to production. Instead, they should reach out to the production support team, and the production support team should do a code review before the deployment. Once the code is reviewed, the production support team can publish the package to production.

I have seen organizations that have been able to generate an ROI of almost 100 percent, as well as organizations that have struggled to generate even a 10 percent ROI. Some companies are very good at knowing what licenses they have bought and how to use them, but I have also seen companies that have a whole suite of automation tools that they are not using, including process mining and test suites. They are still paying for all of these tools, but they are struggling to generate an ROI.

The main complaint I receive about UiPath is the pricing. Many people purchase the entire suite, which can be expensive, even though they don't need all of the features. The pricing is also somewhat opaque for businesses of all sizes. Unless a company is a UiPath partner, it is difficult to customize the solution to pay only for the features that are needed.

I would rate UiPath eight out of ten. We have experienced some automation processes that did not turn out as expected, especially with legacy applications, which can be challenging.

I have not seen any challenges with UiPath upgrades, but there are a few things to keep in mind. Consider a client with an on-premise deployment. The developers have returned their code, which is very old. After two or three years, the client is finally upgrading. During this time, a few activities may have changed drastically or been removed from UiPath because they have been merged into other activities. In these cases, we need to do some maintenance to ensure that the upgrade is successful. We need to check that everything is ready and that the upgrade looks good. This may take some time, but it is the only maintenance that is required.

I've worked in two organizations where I have used UiPath. The first organization was in banking and we used UiPath to help automate banking and financial forms. The second organization, the one I am currently working for, is a technology company with several sub-companies that include banking/financial, the hotel sector, and some overseas organizations. In this organization, we automate tasks that are repetitive, as well as reconciliations.

The main advantage is that we've synchronized our process across 70 sub-branches covering the entire island of Sri Lanka. Previously, we had three or four employees manually inputting the user entries for the various branches. We eliminated those positions so that data entry is now done by robots and performed in the head office.

We have multiple robots directing all of the data to the robot platform in the head office. We saw value within six months. That's how long it took to eliminate the positions. We stopped recruiting people who had previously done that task. More tasks remain, but the main use case was realized within six months.

The APIs are helpful in our workflow. We have a separate application for the government sector, and the Sri Lankan government provides that API. It's a matter of due diligence because we get the customer information, like the national identity card number. We use the API to exchange that information.

We get quick information about existing loans, including how they perform and whether the borrower is paying on time. If they are red, it means that the payments aren't being made in that period of time. That is the kind of information that is exchanged with the API. We can process 20 or 30 users every minute through the API on average.

Previously, our staff onboarding involved a large number of hard-copy documents—around 50. We have automated what was a long manual process, using automation to go through the documents to create a customized onboarding process, one that includes the government regulatory platforms that we are required to use. We used to have to store those documents in an archive, taking up our storage capacity. With UiPath's OCR platform, we get the information we need to do the task. That has resulted in huge savings for the organization, including environmental savings in terms of trees used for paper. It has also saved a lot of the human effort involved in verifying data in those documents.

In our previous process, the documentation was written entirely by humans, including data entry. That data entry was a critical point but there was a lot of human error. That has been reduced by 85 to 90 percent. In my current organization, we have automated about 70 processes and the amount of employee time saved depends on the process. For example, one of our automated processes has saved eight hours for one FTE, while another has saved 10 FTEs two hours each.

And we have done an end-to-end automation for an insurance platform, for renewals. There is no human touch at all.

UiPath has also helped us to reduce our on-prem footprint, compared to our previous platform. In our previous model, we worried a lot about our data. But with UiPath in the cloud, could our entire database be somewhere else, meaning not in our custody? A few years back, UiPath introduced governance and audit platforms, and that's when we felt that it was okay and that we didn't need on-prem platforms anymore. It was okay, at that point, to go for a cloud platform. We are migrating our on-prem platform to the cloud now.

UiPath Orchestrator is incredibly useful. It's the main dashboard platform we use. Orchestrator provides a single platform where we can connect with legacy systems and manage all the bots. 

Orchestrator lets us see the entire process across various department units so that they can see the separate tenants and units. The application can multi-task to handle processes even when we have a long queue. If the queue is piling up, we can assign multiple robots to clear the queue quickly. We can find the ETA for the queues and everything inside Orchestrator.

The Studio and development boards are also helpful.

The UiPath community staff is the best I have ever seen. I have worked in several communities, not only in RPA platforms but for other tools, but the UiPath community is the best. I am an active member of the community. If someone has a question, we always look after it there and are very happy to help them.

The UiPath Academy is very useful as well. My colleagues and I are always going through the new features that are available for our automation and new developments. We always keep in touch with the Academy.

Previous Orchestrator versions were very user-friendly for the admins and the users, but the new Orchestrator is a bit advanced. If they could reduce its complexity, to something more like what it used to be like, it would be better.

Also, if they can improve the performance of robots, that would be good. 

I have been using UiPath for more than five years.

There are no issues with the stability.

It is scalable and very easy to scale but, again, that comes back to the pricing.

UiPath scales easily, but scaling for the cloud and on-premises versions is different. For the on-premises solution, we need to add new licenses to scale up. But it's easy in terms of scalability on our end.

Support can be divided into two tiers: enterprise users and community users. Enterprise users like us get high priority because we are dealing with live operations and customers. When we raise a ticket, we have options like critical and onsite support. They reply in one or two hours, or in less than 30 minutes if it's critical. Their technical support is very helpful and the ticketing platform is very good.

We also get a fast response for non-technical customer service issues.

I hope their support can be developed because when there is a difficult case, sometimes it seems that it's a new issue for them as well. I have experienced that. That should be improved a bit. Overall, support is very good, but there is room for a bit of improvement.

Positive

We didn't have an automation solution previously. As a developer, there are lots of costs in our country associated with switching to automation. There weren't other solutions that could integrate our entire operation like UiPath. I don't think it was possible to select another one.

As a user and an administrator, I can manage the entire server from the main controller. I know everything that UiPath is doing. I also can't think of another solution that has the same broad user community.

UiPath runs Orchestrator and the application in the cloud, but our robots work on-prem in our data center.

In my previous organization, I deployed UiPath, but when I got there I didn't even know what UiPath was. Fortunately, they have nice documentation on the UiPath website, step-by-step. I followed that and was able to deploy things. Since then, I have helped several organizations, via the UiPath community, to deploy Orchestrator within two or three hours. If they have completed the relevant prerequisites, it can be done in that amount of time for a standard installation.

We had a detailed plan in place that progressed in phases. In phase one, we eliminated the data entry function in the main office and the branches. In phase two we would optimize our existing processes. Once all the automation is finished in the head office, we optimize those head office processes.

We have seen significant cost savings throughout the company. Before we started to use UiPath in 2019, we had three or four people doing data entry in every branch. It has eliminated human data entry and also frees up our cashiers because the cashier cannot go anywhere when the queue is long.

We calculated what we have spent for our entire RPA platform and what our ROI is. Our calculations showed that after one and a half years, we had recouped our entire spend on the RPA platform. That included the entire robot cost, servers, the software license, et cetera. That means we had ROI after 18 months.

When it comes to unattended robots, the cost for us in Sri Lanka is huge. It's tricky for us to convince management when they think about the price. We have to prove the value with evidence. We explain that we will save this or that amount, so please help us with this tool. 

Maybe for Middle Eastern or other countries, the price of that robot is not a big deal, but roughly $10,000 for an unattended robot is a very big deal for us. 

They are switching their licensing from a legacy mode to flex licensing. With that kind of license, they have given up a certain fee, which is okay, but the robot cost is high. Orchestrator is now free on the cloud platform, but we need UiPath Studio, the developer platform, as well as attended and unattended robots, and those are the things we pay for. The unattended robots are the highest priced. On a scale where one represents the most expensive and 10 is cheapest, I would rate UiPath at about two.

We have looked at several automation platforms. We have done several demos and looked at the price of Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism. But they are more complex than UiPath.

If you consider other applications, like Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere, the UiPath platform is better because it's user-friendly, making it easy to get tasks done. Even for a beginning developer, it's easy to catch up with all the stuff in UiPath.

UiPath has noticed that I'm an active contributor, so they contacted me to get feedback and invite me to build the community. If I check my LinkedIn profile, I can see all the things I've done in the UiPath community. I don't see that with the Automation Anywhere platform.

If I don't know how to do something, I can watch one video and learn everything I need to know. If we post a question on the forum, we get an answer in one or two minutes from another user.

We are a platinum partner of UiPath. We work exclusively for UiPath and do implementations. We provide solutions using UiPath products.

One of the use cases was for a client from the manufacturing industry for onboarding apprentices. We did this project in India. They were onboarding 300 to 400 apprentices. Their insurance and other things were done manually, which was time-consuming. It used to take them a week to complete the whole process, which was a problem in case an accident or incident happened in the first week. They wanted to do automation to ensure that on the first day itself, after the employees are onboarded, the insurance and other tasks are completed.

RPA as a technology has many benefits. UiPath comes with all those benefits. In addition, you also get flexibility, the availability of resources and new features, the ability to scale up, and an excellent partner ecosystem with UiPath.

As a tool, UiPath is becoming a hyper-automation platform. Every six months, they add something new to the platform. If you want new features, you can subscribe to those. From just an RPA tool, it is becoming an intelligent automation platform. They bring everything into the same platform. When you subscribe to Office 365, you get the entire package from Microsoft. UiPath also does the same thing. They bring automation, process mining, and all other things into the same platform. You can pick and subscribe to whatever you want. You can scale up as you want.

At this point in time, everybody is looking for intelligent automation solutions. UiPath has something known as AI Center that consists of multiple machine learning models. Solutions that have the intelligence to automatically understand and make decisions are the demand of the hour. For example, earlier, invoice processing was template-based. It was done using ABBYY and other OCR tools. UiPath now has a product for document understanding that supports the customers in extracting the details of the invoices without templates. It has a machine-learning model. I have been using their AI Center or document understanding module since 2019. It matures every year. For example, in 2019, if we loaded 15 to 20 invoices, it extracted only 20% of the data, whereas now, it extracts more than 80% of the data because over time, the model has got trained, and it gives better results. 

As a company, they are growing very fast. They are acquiring multiple companies. If they do not have competency in any field, they either partner with other firms or acquire them. They have recently added a communication mining product. It is something that is going to help the BPO industry a lot where call centers have many people taking the calls and rerouting them. Putting a machine learning model or a communication mining product on top of it will definitely help to reduce the effort. It will help with cost reduction and optimization of the existing operations. All the new features that they are adding are aligned with the usage of the platform as an intelligent automation platform.

UiPath also has benefits in terms of resources for implementing automation. If a customer wants to build a COE, they need to onboard resources and train them. UiPath is the easiest in terms of finding resources. For Pega Automation or SAP automation, you may not be able to find as many resources in the market as UiPath.

When clients want to automate a manual process, their expectation is that once automated, they do not want anybody to look into that process. It should run without any human intervention, but sometimes, there are scenarios where human intelligence is required to make a decision or trigger something. For example, if you do automation on a portal, there might be a captcha or multi-factor authentication where you enforce a human to come into the picture. Generally, everybody is looking for automation that runs without any human intervention. If 10 to 15 people do an activity, usually, the customer expectation is that none of those people should have to look into it, but realistically, only about 80% of those employees can be used for other tasks. 20% are still needed to monitor the system. 

UiPath speeds up digital transformation. RPA is normally the first step of digital transformation because it is the technology that you can add with minimal investment. The rest of the things require much more than what is required for RPA. Digital transformation starts with identifying the right candidate for automation and putting a process or a bot to do the processing. After that, you can build AI on top to make decisions. This digital transformation does not require expensive or complex application upgrades or IT application support. If any of the processes require upgrading the existing system or additional licenses, we normally do not recommend RPA for that. We can do automation using API calls and other methods.

UiPath saves time. RPA technology is generally adopted for the reduction in FTEs and time. The time savings vary based on different engagements.

UiPath is much easier to learn than other tools. Its interface is not that complicated. It is very user-friendly. Among all other similar tools, UiPath is the one that came out last. It came out in 2016 or 2017. They had the opportunity to understand what are the best features of other tools. They also knew how to put it together so that people pick it up faster. UiPath's founders are from a technical background, so there is a developer-oriented approach, which is another benefit of this solution. In the RPA market, if you want to hire resources, you will get more UiPath developers than any other technology. If any customer wants to adopt UiPath as a tool and build a team, there are more options for UiPath. You get a bigger resource pool to select from. For other tools, you will not find that many resources. This is something that we have seen while hiring people.

UiPath Community is one of the main differentiators from other tools. You can easily compare the number of subscribers of UiPath Community or UiPath forums with Stack Overflow, but Stack Overflow is not just one tool. You have everything there. You have Java, you have Python, and you have .NET. From a technical perspective, queries related to different technologies are there. In UiPath Community, you get the same level of support. I have seen developers solving puzzles and tricky questions. About 90% of questions get answered in the community. The way UiPath promotes its community is also not unique. It is not like anybody else. I have not noticed anything similar to the MVP programs that they run in other tools. They promote people who contribute more to the forum. Anybody who is giving a solution gets marked and evaluated based on the support provided in the forum. They give them exposure on the platform. They mention their MVPs for each year, which is motivating many people. I do not think anybody else is doing that. I have a team of 120 people. I see the motivation in the team to spend an hour or half an hour on a daily basis to see if any questions are there to which they can respond to have an opportunity to get into the MVP segment. UiPath is doing a lot to ensure that there are more active users in the community and people give good suggestions and solutions.

The UiPath Academy is one of the best self-training portals. They have two types of portals. One is for everybody. Anybody can subscribe and log into it and start taking courses without paying anything. They also have another portal for partners, which has more details. They do not have static material. They update the material every six months. When they have a release, they update the information. UiPath Academy is a very good platform for self-training purposes. They also have other training programs such as instructor-led training. UiPath's training and support mechanism is excellent.

Their technical support should be improved. Their support has deteriorated with the increase in the number of customers. That is one area of improvement.

They should give the flexibility to customers to reduce the number of licenses. UiPath does not want you to reduce the number of licenses. It is not easy to reduce the number of licenses even though there is a provision to do that. It would be good to give flexibility to customers to upscale and downscale whenever they want.

For low-code development, they already have something called UiPath Apps, but it needs improvement. Generally, to build a small workflow, we use Microsoft Power Apps. Even though UiPath has a local platform, it is not comparable to the Microsoft Power Apps platform. If they invest a bit more in that, for creating workflows, we can use UiPath Apps rather than opting for a third-party tool.

I have been working with UiPath since 2018.

Nowadays, all RPA vendors are trying to bring in something new every six months, but they don't get adequate time for doing the testing. As a result, there are multiple bugs. They should stabilize the release, do proper testing, and then only launch it. Otherwise, we need to wait for the next release for a bug to be fixed. Similarly, the training material for all established products from all the vendors is good, but with constant new releases, it is a challenge to get the latest material. They should release the training material before they start selling the product so that everybody is well aware of the features and the issues.

With the cloud model, you can subscribe to whatever you want and scale up as you want. You also get the flexibility of a monthly subscription from the cloud. If you want to run automation for one month or a certain period, options are available.

If a customer is subscribed to the UiPath Cloud and wants to add more processes, they just need to ensure that they have their infrastructure on-prem for only putting the robots. The load on the Orchestrator is handled by UiPath. You do not have to worry about that, so scalability is handled by UiPath. These are no issues, but for on-premises, all these things have to be handled manually. You have to increase the storage, but from the product perspective, there is no challenge in scaling up. Today, if we run 100 processes, and tomorrow, if we need to run 1,000 processes, we just need to procure the licenses and additional hardware.

Their support could be better. As the company grew, the number of customers increased, and their support deteriorated. When you raise a ticket, rather than addressing the concern of the client, they just want to close the ticket. It has gone to that stage. This could be because of the number of customers. It was not like this earlier.

We have been working with them for a long time. We know what questions we need to ask. Our concern mainly comes when a client contacts UiPath's customer service. Rather than asking them for additional details, they give a response saying that a particular feature is not supported and close the case. I would rate them a six out of ten at this point in time. 

Neutral

I have worked on other platforms, but at this point in time, I am predominantly working on UiPath. I have worked with Blue Prism. I also have some experience with Automation Anywhere and WorkFusion.

I have worked with the on-prem and cloud deployments. In earlier versions, the cloud model was not there. UiPath has a product called Orchestrator, which is an application web server. In on-prem installations, you had to put this application web server on a Windows Server. It then orchestrated the entire automation. You also had to install Developer SDK, called UiPath Studio, on a Windows machine. You had to connect that Windows machine to the Orchestrator tool. For running the process, you needed a bot. You installed that bot on another virtual machine or Windows machine. These were the three mandatory components earlier in 2018.

After that, they brought in the concept of cloud subscription. With the cloud subscription, they install the Orchestrator itself and give a public endpoint to the customer. The benefit is that customers do not need to install Orchestrator on their premises. They can directly connect to the Orchestrator that is hosted on their cloud platform. Of course, they have the authentication and all those things. With the cloud model, there is no requirement of installing their application server inside the environment. UiPath Studio and the bots still remain in the client environment. 

Previously, anybody with Windows experience could do the installation. Our developers used to do the installation, but since machine learning came into the picture, the platform changed because Windows was not able to do the processing. Machine learning requires resources, so they converted the platform from Windows to Linux. If you now want to install Orchestrator with the machine learning model and all other things, it is not a Windows installation. It is a Linux installation, so earlier, somebody with basic Windows skills could do the installation for machine learning models and other things on-prem, but now, this cannot be done by a normal developer. Somebody with Linux experience is required for installation. However, they offer a cloud subscription where you do not need to install anything on Linux. You can directly access the endpoint and start using it. They also offer a disaster recovery tool. UiPath provides something known as HA for on-prem installation. It is a multi-node installation. This HA tool is also installed on Linux, so previously all tools were on Windows, but all the new products or tools are on Linux. They require Linux expertise for on-prem installation as well as knowledge regarding firewalls, etc. You need an infrastructure engineer for that.

UiPath provides training for different roles. They have training for developers, business analysts, solution architects, and infrastructure engineers. These are the four main roles for which they provide training, and these are the four roles that are manually required for implementing the UiPath product.

In terms of maintenance, UiPath updates the product every six months. They have two main releases. They have a spring release and a fall release. They have .6 and .10 releases. If I am installing the 2023.6 release now, they will provide support only for three years, which will be till June of 2026. After that, they will not support it, so customers need to upgrade their environment once every three years. For the on-prem setup, when you do the upgrade, you need to bring down the environment because robots are there. Once they are upgraded, you need to ensure that everything is running properly. It requires the infrastructure team and the application development team to ensure that everything is working fine. It is normally a one-month activity, but it can vary depending on the number of processes. It requires at least two weeks. In the cloud model, product upgrades happen automatically. Orchestrator is hosted in UiPath Cloud, and they upgrade it. There are no issues. You just need to take care of UiPath Studio and the robots in the machine. That can be easily handled by the application development or support team. In terms of support, the number of people required depends on the complexity and the criticality of processes. If you have automated a banking application, you may require somebody for monitoring around the clock.

They have been increasing the price. The explanation that they provide is that they are adding more features. This works perfectly fine for customers who are looking for new intelligent automations, but there is another set of customers who use UiPath for vanilla, plain automations. Offering them something that is not required and asking them to pay more puts a burden on them. That seems to be a problem for the customers. Many of them have mentioned this concern because it is increasing the prices of automation every year, which is not acceptable to all customers.

As a company, they try to move from on-prem to the cloud. They give cloud subscriptions unless a customer specifically requests an on-prem solution. With the on-prem solution, you will not get the latest features automatically. You need to update it on a periodic basis. There is an overhead in terms of maintenance. In their new licensing model, they charge the same for the on-prem product and the cloud product. For an on-prem installation, you have the infrastructure cost in addition to the licensing cost. By going for the cloud version, you can easily skip the infrastructure cost.

When you start your RPA journey, you should never start with just one process. You should have a pipeline in your mind in terms of the number of processes. You can start small, but you need to have a roadmap of what you are going to do by the end of the year. If you automate only one process, you will not get value from this product. Tools such as UiPath and Automation Anywhere are capable of doing so many complicated tasks. They charge you so that you can do all those things. If you do just a small task with that, your cost and your outcome will not match, and you will not appreciate the platform. That is why I recommend having a roadmap. You should also go for a tool for which you are able to get support when you get stuck. There is no question that UiPath is the easiest one.

RPA as a technology is going to be like Microsoft Excel. Soon, everybody's system will have bots to automate activities. It could be for extracting data from the internet for your analysis or for your project. It will be used for all redundant activities or rule-based processing where you have to extract the data and follow some steps. In five or ten years, it is going to be a mandatory technology. 

Overall, I would rate UiPath an eight out of ten. I am not completely happy with the way they bring out new versions or features in a half-cooked state. Stability or reliability is critical when you are launching something new.

It depends on the task that is assigned to me, but mainly, I'm using it for PDF automation and Java API-related automation. It is being used for extractions of PDFs and automation of the APIs to get a better and more rapid response.

UiPath helps a lot in everything related to automation. We have lots of tasks, and we need to get accurate results. Our experience of automating using UiPath has been good. It is easy to get good information or good output from the data.

Its AI capabilities are very helpful for automating more processes. If we want to extract something, we can easily use it. Its AI capabilities make it easy to automate a process and get accurate results.

It works well with all languages, such as Python, Java, C++, etc. It also works with APIs. It is helpful to understand the APIs to extract the data. 

It enables us to implement end-to-end automation. 

It has improved productivity and reliability and saved a lot of time. It has also reduced human error. It has reduced human error by 30% to 50%, and it has freed up employee time by 40% to 60% depending on the task or use case of an employee.

It has reduced our on-premises footprint a little bit.

It is a very easy and stable product. 

It saves a lot of time. It increases our productivity, and it also helps with project reliability and scalability.

The courses available on UiPath Academy are helpful if we want to go deep into the UiPath scripts or tools. UiPath Academy is also helpful when we want to learn something new that is available in the new versions or improve our skills and knowledge.

The user interface needs a little bit of improvement in terms of performance. Sometimes, it slows down, but it depends on the OS that you have. If you are running it on Microsoft Windows, it is slower than on macOS or Linux.

I've been using UiPath for the last two to three years.

It is very stable. I would rate it a 10 out of 10 in terms of reliability. The tool is very secure. If a user wants to run it on a Mac, it works flawlessly.

It is very scalable. I would rate it a 10 out of 10 for scalability.

We are using it for multiple departments. We have IT consultancy and IT services, as well as product teams. In my company, there are about 5K people. Some of them are end-users, some are developers, some are admins, and some are testers.

For any issues, we can take the help of the UiPath customer support and the UiPath community.

When we have some issues with the deployment tasks and automation tasks, customer support helps a lot, and they always try to resolve issues in a short time. Their technical support is incredible. They are always ready to help with customer queries and they try to resolve them within hours, not days. Sometimes, they resolve them within 30 minutes, but it also depends on the issue or priority. I would rate them a 10 out of 10.

Positive

This is the first tool that I have been using for the last two to three years.

It depends on the project size. If the project is complex, it takes time. In my opinion, it is straightforward if you know how to use it. If you don't know how to use this tool, it is very difficult. On average, it takes half an hour to one hour.

In terms of maintenance, it requires some maintenance, which is taken care of by the admin side. They have to make sure that it is up to date.

It is very cost-effective, and it gives an ROI. It saves a lot of time as well as money. It helps to build client relationships and improve customer feedback. There is a 20% to 30% saving on costs. It has saved $5,000 to $6,000 per year.

The time savings depend on the task and the size of the process. We can save 10% to 50%.

Its price is moderate. It is neither very expensive nor very cheap. Everything is good in terms of pricing.

I would recommend it to every developer or software engineer who wants to work on the automation review task. 

Overall, I would rate UiPath a 10 out of 10.

We adopted UiPath to leverage its generative AI capabilities for rule-based automation. This technology enhances the resilience of our automated processes, ensuring continued functionality even when underlying systems or data undergo changes that would typically disrupt traditional automation.

Our business challenges necessitated a combined approach of AI and automation. While automation initially streamlined processes, its rigidity proved limiting when faced with changing information. AI, with its learning and adaptive capabilities, addressed this by recognizing patterns and adjusting to variations. This synergy allows the AI to handle similar changes without requiring new automation, ultimately achieving the same outcome with increased flexibility and efficiency.

Our automations are now AI-centric, and this focus will expand significantly within the company as our organization refines its AI strategy.

Our company is developing a new AI automation strategy focused on employee engagement, partnering with Microsoft Copilot and utilizing ChatGPT for automation. While our AI policy is still being developed, we plan to carefully consider how to best leverage UiPath's AI capabilities, with a strong emphasis on security, once the policy is in place.

UiPath has helped save our staff time to focus on other tasks. 

UiPath's most valuable feature is Insights, which provides invaluable data on time savings and AI model performance.

UiPath should prioritize improving its updates and user-friendliness, particularly for new team members. Streamlining updates and simplifying the interface would enhance the onboarding experience and overall productivity.

I have been using UiPath for two and a half years.

In terms of what we use UiPath for, the stability has been great. 

We utilize both cloud-based and on-premises automation solutions. Our infrastructure began with two servers and has gradually expanded to four. UiPath has proven to be a scalable platform, provided we maintain the necessary licenses.

UiPath's support is generally good, augmented by the assistance of a Technical Account Manager who helps escalate requests when needed. However, resolving issues without a TAM would be significantly more challenging.

Positive

Prior to my joining the team, the organization utilized Automation Anywhere.

The initial deployment was complex.

We collaborated with UiPath's service provider for the implementation, leveraging their expertise for the intake process and initial setup. Our experience thus far has been positive.

I would rate UiPath seven out of ten.

I recommend UiPath due to its robust user community, which provides valuable feedback that contributes to the continuous improvement and development of the product with new features.

We have been using the RPA functionality in UiPath mostly for cash management. Our biggest use case is submitting wires and payments.

We aim to reduce routine tasks and allow people more time to do more important things. We were mainly looking at time savings for employees, and we may not have gotten all of the time savings that we wanted, but we definitely have found some. In addition to saving time, we also hope to mitigate risks for some of the tasks we've implemented and reduce human error in some of these processes, 

In bot development, we have had a lot of conversations about what we want bots to do, how to process exceptions, who exceptions go to, and who needs to be aware. Once the bot goes live, we have to keep the chats and lines of communication open to ensure everything's working.

The most valuable features are UI, web, and Excel automation, as well as the ability to package all of these in one software suite.

Setting up the infrastructure with different virtual desktops and making the connections stable in our environment present challenges. More direction on cleaning up these issues would be useful.

I have been using UiPath for about two years.

We've had some stability issues, but we're unsure whether UiPath caused them or if it was our company's older internal infrastructure. We haven't had any downtime caused by UiPath.

UiPath has been able to scale as our environment grows and keeps up with demand.

I rate UiPath support eight out of 10. We receive good support from UiPath when we need it.

Positive

Personally, I did not use a different solution before UiPath, but some departments at the corporation have used other RPA tools, and some still do. We chose UiPath because we worked with some consulting firms that were familiar with the development capabilities of the solution. They could help with the initial development of the bots. We like the direction of the tool.

We worked with consulting firms familiar with the development capabilities of UiPath to assist with the development of bots.

We have seen a return on investment due to time savings with high-value employees. However, as we continue to make new things, it's hard to determine the exact return at this point.

I am not involved in the purchasing, but people have been generally happy with the pricing so far. Some pieces we use now may not provide expected value, and we might remove those in the future.

I rate UiPath nine out of 10.

We're a financial institution, and we started using UiPath for small, simple processes and day-to-day tasks, such as adding and removing users and updating information, but we're also exploring opportunities to automate lending processes.

We typically evaluate a process first to see if it's appropriate for automation. Sometimes, we've identified bad processes and needed to update documentation before we can implement them.

UiPath has allowed our employees to focus more on servicing our members rather than being bogged down by mundane tasks. In the last year, we have saved about 6,500 hours for our users, equating to the time of two full-time employees.

With UiPath, we've saved costs, increased productivity, and reduced stress on our employees. It has saved our employees time. They're thinking more about their processes instead of just doing what they're told. It places more onus on employee creativity.

I primarily work with task capture, which has been valuable. We have created a template for ourselves and reused it for all these processes. Other departments also use it for their procedures, even if the process is not automated.

We struggle to demo our processes. For whatever reason, we can't get the bot to run so that someone can watch it simultaneously. We press the button, and it shows that it's done rather than showing how the bot works. 

We started using UiPath with a partner two years ago and transitioned to handling everything in-house last year.

The stability of UiPath is good. We do not encounter issues with logging in or frequent service failures.

I rate UiPath support nine out of 10. Their customer service is good. They are always willing to help us and address our concerns. 

Positive

We initially used a UiPath partner but have since moved operations in-house. Our in-house experience has been better.

We have seen a return on investment. The 6,500 hundred hours we saved using UiPath translates to a savings of about $56,000 per year.

I rate UiPath 10 out of 10.

I piloted the introduction of UiPath to my team with two projects. The first, domain monitoring, automated our ten-plus Pega applications' quarterly security and health checks. We designed an architecture that could be mapped across all domains, streamlining the process to run weekly instead of quarterly. This provided timely reports on application health via Webex. The second project was a more straightforward test suite automation for another UI-based application. These two successful pilot projects showcased the capabilities of UiPath, with the domain monitoring still in use today.

Building automation with UiPath is straightforward, but it's essential to be familiar with the target application and have a basic understanding of coding and if-else statements. This knowledge will help troubleshoot any unexpected errors. Overall, I'd rate the ease of building automation with UiPath an eight out of ten.

While working on the projects, we used two versions of UiPath: the enterprise and cloud versions. The orchestrator that comes with the enterprise version is different from the cloud version. The cloud version had better end-to-end automation, and the ease of use and accessibility were superior to those of the enterprise orchestrator, which is the on-premise version of UiPath. Although the enterprise version lacks a few features, the cloud version provides a complete solution.

I was impressed by UiPath's user community. We used an open-source library that someone else had built and generously shared with the UiPath community. It ideally suited our needs. The user community is also very responsive, and we readily receive answers to our questions.

We didn't see immediate benefits from UiPath because it was a new tool I was piloting. We had to prove to upper management that it saved significant time, and we eventually eliminated manual testing. It took until the project's end to demonstrate this, as management focuses on results, not processes. However, other teams adopted UiPath after completion, so benefits appeared after two or three months. It took time to get people on board, but they eventually embraced the idea.

UiPath has significantly improved our efficiency by automating domain and application monitoring, saving valuable time and working hours. These tasks were previously quite intensive and repetitive, demanding considerable focus and effort from our employees. With UiPath handling these processes, we've freed up our workforce to take on more engaging and strategic responsibilities.

My favorite aspect of UiPath is its user-friendly interface, as it's a no-code, low-code platform that eliminates the need for extensive coding. Its drag-and-drop functionality, coupled with UiPath's comprehensive library suite, simplifies automation tasks. For instance, the Microsoft Outlook and SharePoint libraries allow seamless integration with those platforms, streamlining processes like connecting to SharePoint in Microsoft 365. In essence, the combination of UiPath's robust infrastructure and versatile tools significantly enhances its usability and effectiveness.

I found the UiPath Academy courses to be a bit rigid in their curriculum. It was more beneficial for me to learn from the forums and YouTube videos. Their courses were tailored to particular roles, with a course on UiPath in data science being heavily focused on Excel. While it was a well-structured course, it didn't align with my job's limited use of Excel. Overall, their courses are well-built, but I found YouTube a more suitable learning platform for my needs.

UiPath Studio provides comprehensive tools and libraries for building automation, but it lacks a built-in feature to generate consolidated reports after automation runs, detailing successes, failures, and operational features. This absence of detailed logging information makes it difficult to troubleshoot issues and identify whether the problem lies within the application or the automation itself. While UiPath's orchestrator website provides some information, it's insufficient for demonstrating automation runs and accomplished features to stakeholders. Although a future release may address this, the lack of robust reporting capabilities remains a significant area for improvement. Additionally, UiPath's diverse suite of licenses can confuse end-users, making it challenging to determine the most suitable option. While the company has improved features, the increased number of licenses creates a knowledge gap between what's available and user understanding. Clearer explanations of each license would simplify decision-making for potential users and streamline adoption.

I have been using UiPath for one year.

Once we have the licensed version of UiPath, we don't anticipate issues with caching. We were using the 2021 Studio version because it was stable. Although the UiPath team suggested upgrading, I'm not certain about the reasons. I can't comment on the latest models, but the 2021 version was reliable.

The scalability of UiPath depends on the number of licenses. To deploy our automation, we need to utilize robots responsible for executing the automation we've built in a user-less environment. Scalability is directly proportional to the number of robots we have, which is, in turn, determined by the number of licenses. Therefore, more licenses translate to greater scalability.

The initial onboarding of UiPath was straightforward, but the only challenge we encountered was connecting UiPath Studio to the Orchestrator. UiPath Studio is where automations are built, while the Orchestrator is where they are deployed and run. This required some back-and-forth with the product team and my technical lead. However, this issue only arises during the initial setup. Once someone familiar with the process sets it up, it becomes easier. There were some challenges connecting and deploying the first automation, specifically between the Orchestrator and Studio.

Three people were involved in the deployment: my technical lead, who liaised with the product team to discuss progress and challenges; myself, responsible for building and deploying the automation; and one of my junior colleagues, who assisted me. In short, we had a three-person team.

We used UiPath and built and deployed that project, which ran successfully for approximately two quarters while I was away. However, the cost and licensing associated with UiPath became an issue. The license we were using offered excellent features specific to our needs, but it didn't provide much beyond that. It didn't make sense to continue spending much money on UiPath, even though it saved us time and money. The savings were essentially being reinvested back into purchasing the UiPath license. While UiPath licenses offer valuable features, they are expensive. For our single-use case, investing that much wasn't justifiable. We switched to Selenium, an open-source automation tool. Although it took additional time to deploy the same solution with Selenium, and it might not be a 100 percent match in functionality, it allowed us to save on costs.

The cost of UiPath is justified for organizations with many use cases but not for one or two use cases.

I give UiPath a seven out of ten.

The advice I'd like to give new UiPath users is to first understand their specific use case for UiPath. I've noticed some teams try to adopt UiPath by first figuring out a solution and then trying to retrofit it to their existing problems. Instead, I suggest thoroughly understanding the problem before creating a solution. Many teams see others using UiPath and assume it's a cool new tool they can simply apply to their existing issues. This approach rarely leads to optimal results. You might be able to build a solution, but it won't be the most efficient. For first-time users, I recommend understanding your problem, then exploring UiPath's capabilities to determine the best solution. There are plenty of resources available, like forums and YouTube, to help with the building process. Remember, understand the problem first, then build the solution.