Top 7 Power Automate Alternatives for Process Automation in '24

RPA is one of the most common automation tools used in modern enterprises. More than 90% of C-level executives report some level of intelligent automation exists within their organizations and RPA will achieve “near universal adoption” in the next 5 years if the current trend continues.

For businesses that are embarking on a process automation journey, selecting the right vendor can be challenging and time-consuming. This is because RPA tools come in different types and have varying features.

Technical buyers shortlisting RPA vendors will probably come across Microsoft Power Automate, which is one of the most popular tools within the RPA and intelligent automation landscape. 

In this article, we’ll examine the potential drawbacks of Microsoft Power Automate according to user reviews and explore top alternatives to help tech buyers in their decision.

Users looking for alternatives to power automate tend to fall into two categories; please select yours to see relevant alternatives for your business:

• If you are considering using Power Automate but are undecided, please check out the alternatives that offer similar RPA tools which are mostly used for UI automation.
• If your business is already using Power Automate, having issues due to its limitations when it comes to orchestrating backend jobs, and needs to upgrade to a more capable solution, please see the solutions that offer workload automation capabilities. These solutions focus on automating batch jobs, API operations, and file transfers. They can also orchestrate other automation solutions, such as RPA bots.

RPA Tools with similar capabilities to Power Automate

*Ratings are based on G2. Vendors are ranked according to their rating.

Shortcomings of Microsoft Power Automate

Microsoft Power Automate, formerly Microsoft Flow, is an RPA tool part of the Microsoft Power Platform family of products. In addition to building traditional RPA bots to automate repetitive tasks, Microsoft Power Automate:

• Enables integrating AI capabilities to RPA bots to automate processes that are complex and involve unstructured data,
• Provides process mining capabilities for a better understanding of business processes and for identifying processes to automate.

Solutions that provide these features are typically called intelligent automation or cognitive automation tools, and all the alternatives we examine below deliver these features as well.

According to user reviews that we have aggregated from public sources, some negative aspects of Power Automate in terms of:

• Ease of use: It is not as easy to use as and has a steeper learning curve compared to other tools that we consider in this article. As you can see in Figures 1 & 3, it has the lowest score for “Ease of Use” and “Ease of Bot Creation” among all other solutions in G2.
• User interface: The user interface can be more user-friendly. Users rate its “Visual Editor” as the lowest among the five tools (Figure 3).
• Integrations: It has good integrations within the Microsoft ecosystem but doesn’t integrate as well with applications outside of the ecosystem, as a user highlights in his review on G2 in Figure 2.
• Support: Customer support is slow and its “Quality of Support” has the lowest rating among the five tools, as seen in Figure 1. Moreover, it has the lowest rating in terms of the “Quality of Peer User Community” (Figure 4).
• Pricing: Its pricing plans are criticized for being confusing and non-transparent. We also identified this tool as providing the most complex pricing model in this market. Read more on RPA pricing for a detailed analysis of pricing of different RPA tools.

RPA Alternatives Analyzed

IBM Robotic Process Automation

IBM is one of the few companies with a single platform for both business and IT automation and has solution capabilities that range from robotic process automation (RPA), to process mining and virtualization.

The following diagram provides an overview of Cloud Pak for Business Automation, IBM’s AI-enabled solution integrating RPA, process mining, and NLP capabilities.

Source: IBM

According to user reviews, IBM RPA:

• Ease of use: It is an easy-to-use tool with a low-code/no-code bot creation feature. It also has both cloud-based and on-premises offerings. IBM RPA has the highest rating in terms of “Ease of Use”, “Ease of Setup”, and “Ease of Automation Building” as seen in Figures 1 and 3.
• User interface: It has a simple and easy-to-navigate user interface. Its “Visual Editor” is by far the highest rated among the five tools as seen in Figure 3.
• Integrations: It can integrate with third-party applications in addition to its seamless integration with IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation. IBM RPA has the highest rating in terms of “Integration and Deployment” as seen in Figure 4.
• Support: It has fast and effective technical support as well as a community of users and developers. It has the highest rating compared to other tools in terms of “Quality of Support” as seen in Figure 1.
• Pricing: For concurrent execution with attended and unattended bots included, the platform starter pack starts at USD 840.00 per month.

UiPath

UiPath Automation Platform is one of the most popular RPA tools based on the number of user reviews on review platforms. User opinion on UiPath in terms of:

• Ease of use: It has a gentle learning curve with its online training courses and user community. It also has mobile apps for iOS and Android to track and manage processes, similar to Microsoft Power Automate. UiPath is rated the second among the five tools in terms of “Ease of Use” and “Ease of Bot Creation” as seen in Figures 1 & 3.
• User interface: It has an intuitive and user-friendly interface. Its “Visual Editor” is rated as the second best among the five tools (Figure 2).
• Integrations: It has good integrations with third-party applications through out-of-the-box connectors and with connectors in its bot marketplace.
• Support: It has mixed reviews in terms of technical support, but it has an active user base that provides community support. As seen in Figure 3, it has the highest ratings in terms of the “Quality of Peer User Community”.
• Pricing: Price for 1 developer & 30 users (1 attended + 1 unattended) is 1380$ per month. Check our article on RPA pricing for a more detailed analysis.

Automation Anywhere

Automation Anywhere is another popular tool in the RPA landscape and running a close second in terms of the number of reviews. End users’ sentiment about:

• Ease of use: It is easy to create bots with drag-and-drop functionality and pre-built templates but has a relatively steep learning curve for further functionalities. It has mobile apps for iOS and Android to track and manage processes. It is rated higher than Power Automate in terms of “Ease of Use” but rated lower in terms of “Ease of Setup” and “Ease of Admin”, as seen in Figure 1.
• User interface: Its interface is intuitive, modern, and easy to understand for both beginners and experienced users. Its “Visual Editor” is rated higher than Power Automate as seen in Figure 3.
• Integrations: The tools offers a bot store that offers plug-and-play integrations. However, some users say integrating it with some common apps such as Gmail can be difficult. It is rated the same with Power Automate in terms of “Ease of Integration using Standard APIs and Tools” (Figure 4).
• Support: There are mixed reviews regarding the speed of customer support, but the tool is rated the second best in terms of the “Quality of Peer User Community” as seen in Figure 4.
• Pricing: Price for 1 developer & 30 users (1 attended + 1 unattended) is $875 per month. Check our article on RPA pricing for a more detailed analysis.

SS&C Blue Prism

Founded in 2001 and acquired by SS&C in March 2022, Blue Prism is the oldest RPA vendor. It is another top player in the RPA vendor landscape, and the company is credited to have coined the term “Robotic Process Automation”. Business users say that:

• Ease of use: It has a drag-and-drop bot builder and process visualization features. This makes it easy to create, launch, and manage bots for non-technical users. However, some users report that it can have a steep learning curve for further functionalities. It is rated higher than Power Automate in terms of “Ease of Use” but lower in terms of “Ease of Setup” and “Ease of Admin” (Figure 1).
• User interface: It has a simple user interface but users highlight that it can be improved with new features. Nevertheless, it’s rated higher than Power Automate in most factors that facilitate automation creation (Figure 3).
• Integrations: Its integration with third-party apps, especially with developer tools such as Git or Docker, is not perfect. Power Automate is rated slightly higher than Blue Prism in terms of “Ease of Integration using Standard APIs and Tools” (Figure 4).
• Support: Its customer support is helpful, but users say it doesn’t have a huge and active user community like other tools. As seen in Figure 4 it has a slightly better score than Power Automate on the “Quality of Peer User Community”.
• Pricing: We couldn’t find any information about their pricing, but the company says that it has outcome-based pricing where customers pay for the usage of digital workers in production.

Alternative software with workload automation capabilities

*Ratings are based on G2 and Capterra. Vendors are ranked according to their ratings, except ActiveBatch, sponsor of AiMultiple.

ActiveBatch

ActiveBatch is an IT workload automation software designed to reduce the need for human intervention. Its user-friendly interface streamlines the management of repetitive tasks, particularly in job scheduling, which traditionally required significant time and resources. The software’s pre-built job functions enhance the efficiency of automating complex IT activities, offering flexible task management with real-time visibility and control.

For Robotic Process Automation (RPA), ActiveBatch’s job scheduling and workload automation capabilities allow for integration with various applications, databases, platforms, and technologies, essential for automating rule-based tasks in RPA. By minimizing reliance on custom scripting and providing numerous pre-built integrations, ActiveBatch enables IT organizations to concentrate more on strategic RPA projects.

Stonebranch

Stonebranch Workload Automation (WLA) is a solution designed to orchestrate and automate complex IT processes. It differs from simpler automation tools like RPA (Robotic Process Automation) by its ability to handle logic-based decision-making and manage more intricate workflows.

RPA is known for its efficiency in handling simple, repetitive tasks, but it struggles with logic-based decision-making or handling complex processes. This limitation is addressed by Stonebranch Workload Automation (WLA), which can orchestrate and automate more complex and logic-driven tasks.

Fortra’s JAMS

Fortra’s JAMS is a comprehensive enterprise workload automation solution and job scheduler, designed to streamline and manage complex IT processes. It provides a centralized platform for managing scheduled jobs, ensuring their execution is consistent, reliable, and efficient.

JAMS offers extensive API and integration capabilities, allowing for interaction with the jobs and scheduler. This includes REST API endpoints, a .NET API class library, and PowerShell Module Cmdlets, facilitating integrations and programmatic actions related to workload automation.

Further reading

You may also be interested in our other articles on RPA and intelligent automation software:

• Top 6 Intelligent Automation Tools & Solutions
• 7 Steps to Select the Best RPA Tool & Vendor
• Technical Buyer’s 11 Point RPA Checklist: In-Depth Guide
• Top 6 Open Source RPA Providers

Also, feel free to check our data-driven lists of RPA software and intelligent automation solutions. If you have other questions, we can help:

Transparency statement: AIMultiple works with B2B tech vendors including IBM mentioned in this article.