Fortra (Automate)
Affordable RPA and workflow automation for mid-market organizations
Fortra Automate delivers enterprise scheduling and job automation at a price point accessible to mid-market IT teams, with pre-built integrations for every major ERP and file transfer protocol that UiPath and Automation Anywhere don't bother building.
SWOT Analysis
- Broad pre-built task library covering 600+ legacy systems, FTP, email, and ERP
- Strong workload automation for batch scheduling alongside RPA capabilities
- Competitive price point vs. UiPath and Automation Anywhere for mid-market
- File transfer and data movement automation built into core platform
- Low learning curve; bot development accessible to non-developer IT staff
- IT operations automation: file movements, report generation, and batch jobs
- Mid-market displacement of legacy scheduling tools (CA 7, TWS) with modern platform
- Data centre automation and hybrid cloud workload scheduling
- Compliance reporting automation for regulated industries
- AI and ML automation capabilities behind enterprise RPA leaders
- Less suitable for complex cognitive automation requiring vision or NLP
- Brand awareness limited outside its historical Help/Systems customer base
- Community and ecosystem smaller than market leaders
- Microsoft Power Automate offering comparable basic automation included in M365
- UiPath Community Edition and Automation Anywhere Community Cloud offering free entry
- ServiceNow RPA and Jira Automation competing for IT workflow automation budget
- Consolidation of automation tools into broader platforms reducing standalone appeal
User Sentiment
Synthesized from G2, Gartner Peer Insights, and analyst review data.
- Extremely fast to learn — IT staff without coding experience building automations within days
- Comprehensive file transfer and data movement capabilities without separate SFTP tool
- Reliable batch job scheduling with good error handling and alerting
- Value for money compared to enterprise RPA platforms for straightforward tasks
- AI and cognitive automation significantly behind UiPath and Automation Anywhere
- Limited capabilities for complex web scraping or modern SaaS application automation
- Community forums and training resources less comprehensive than market leaders
Pricing & TCO
Analyst-synthesized pricing signals — directional only, contact vendor for current terms.
Typical ACV (Mid-Enterprise)
$10K–$80K
Market Segments
Deployment
Key Cost Drivers
- Bot runner licences priced per concurrent session
- Module add-ons for file transfer and ERP connectors
- Annual maintenance included in subscription pricing
Best value for IT operations batch scheduling and legacy system automation — 60-70% lower than enterprise RPA for comparable simple automation use cases.
Full comparisonCustomer Profile
Typical segments
Typical buyer
IT Manager / Systems Administrator / Head of IT Operations
- 1Batch job scheduling and workload automation across ERP and legacy systems
- 2File transfer, data movement, and ETL automation between systems
- 3Report generation and distribution automation
Future Focus Areas
AI-enhanced task discovery identifying automation opportunities from workflow logs
Cloud workload automation extending to AWS, Azure, and GCP batch jobs
Low-code connector builder for modern SaaS API automation
RPA + SFTP + workflow converging into single automation governance platform