2023 Guide: Best RPA Tools and Why UiPath is #1

For the third time in a row, Gartner ranked UiPath as the #1 platform in its 2022 Magic Quadrant for RPA, followed by Automation Anywhere and SS&C Blue Prism. These three RPA vendors consistently stack up as the market leaders based on multiple sources and leading research firms. However, Microsoft is gaining ground, edging past SS&C Blue Prism in Everest Group’s Market Impact category this year.

Below we compare the top RPA tools and provide our perspective on why UiPath gives you the most “bot for your buck.”

UiPath vs Automation Anywhere vs Blue Prism

Founded in 2001, Blue Prism is credited with coining the term “Robotic Process Automation.” In 2022, the RPA pioneer rebranded as SS&C Blue Prism after SS&C Technologies Holdings acquired it for $1.6 billion.

Founded in 2003 as Tethys Solutions, Automation Anywhere rebranded to its current name in 2010.

UiPath CEO Daniel Dines also began operations under another moniker, DeskOver, in 2005. Ten years later, UiPath was officially born and rebranded as an RPA company.

The table below provides a quick snapshot of the leading RPA tools:

Blue Prism's longer trajectory initially made it the go-to RPA solution. Most of its clients were large banking and financial institutions – among the only organizations that could afford the technology’s initial high cost of entry.

Years later, more affordable competitors like UiPath and Automation Anywhere came to market with the same (or better) capabilities and increased flexibility and ease of implementation. As a result, RPA was “democratized” for companies of all sizes across many industries, including small and mid-market organizations.

Today, UiPath and Automation Anywhere have significantly higher revenue streams than Blue Prism, which transitioned back to a private entity after being acquired by SS&C. As a public company, Blue Prism faced criticism from shareholders for a perceived lack of investment in future products.

UiPath and Automation Anywhere also have soared past SS&C Blue Prism’s base of 2,000-plus customers, with more than 10,650 and 5,000 customers respectively. Another interesting source for RPA tools comparisons is G2, which ranks software and services based on real-time data from verified user reviews. As of 1/11/23, each of the top three platforms rated as follows:

• UiPath: 4.6/5 with 6,052 review
• Automation Anywhere: 4.5/5 with 5,290 review
• SS&C Blue Prism: 4.5/5 with 316 reviews

To read a G2 comparison of UiPath vs. Automation Anywhere, click here; for UiPath vs. Blue Prism, click here. 

What makes UiPath the top-rated RPA tool?

UiPath’s popularity is easy to measure. To start with, the Everest Group points to its above-market average revenue growth in 2021 over a relatively larger base, continuing to increase market share.

Gartner also emphasizes UiPath’s strong brand awareness – crediting the platform with greatly influencing the market narrative about process automation.

Everest reports that UiPath ranks among the top providers across key geographies and industry verticals, with a customer base that’s more than double its nearest competitor. The platform serves every buyer segment from SMBs to global enterprises.

UiPath also demonstrates an exceptional ability to retain customers and increase their spending over time, reporting an impressive 126% dollar-based net retention rate.

With such strong market support, it’s not surprising that UiPath had one of the biggest U.S. software IPOs in history when it went public in 2021.

UiPath’s key strengths

But with so many contenders fighting for market space, what makes UiPath the preferred platform?

At the most basic level, Everest says clients highlight the platform’s ease of use and development as a significant strength. Competitors like SS&C Blue Prism, for instance, require notably higher coding skills that make implementation more time-consuming.

Clients also emphasized UiPath’s vision for intelligent automation, rich governance features, and overall product suite.

UiPath has evolved to become the leading RPA platform in the market, built to support the full automation lifecycle from discovery to measurement. Its vision includes an integrated, low-code platform that remains at the forefront of innovation, continuously expanding its traditional RPA capabilities to include tools like app development, intelligent document processing, process mining, test automation, cloud delivery, embedded analytics, enhanced AI fabric components, a citizen-developer-friendly user experience, and API integration.

By comparison, Gartner noted that UiPath’s biggest competitor, Automation Anywhere, does not currently offer embedded process discovery that can autogenerate process templates. (The vendor did highlight the capability as a roadmap investment.) Gartner also called out Automation Anywhere for limited real-time collaboration between different developer personas.

UiPath’s platform targets a broad range of user personas across the process automation lifecycle, from software engineers to business technologists and fusion teams.

Recent platform enhancements include cloud RPA (SaaS) robots, API automation for modern systems, point-and-click configuration of

document Machine Learning models, DevOps lifecycle control, and integration of UiPath Apps (LCAP) with its RPA.

UiPath’s near-term product roadmap also features Studio Web, a new web-based design environment that can be used to create automations in the cloud.

Everest further highlighted UiPath’s pre-packaged, industry-specific solutions that reduce time-to-value for customers, as well as its heavy focus on customer training, success, and support.

UiPath provides free, self-paced, instructor-led training in a variety of languages that are tailored to different personas like professional developers, citizen developers, and business analysts. It also fosters a large online community of users for collaboration and knowledge sharing.

UiPath is considered one of the fastest RPA solutions in the industry as well – often 3-4x faster than other RPA products. In addition, the capabilities of UPath's attended robots are unmatched. Attended robots work alongside human workers at their workstations, triggered by specific events, actions, or commands the employee engages within a specific workflow.

Even today, the functionality offered by Automation Anywhere and its attended robots are limited to monitoring and deployment, and in the case of Blue Prism, almost nonexistent. UiPath delivers the best combination of attended and unattended automation that many customers desire.

Other key advantages UiPath offers include:

	Long Running Workflows. Traditionally, automation is expected to work on its own from start to finish, without human interaction. Unfortunately, that excludes the significant number of business processes that require approval or inputs as part of their workflows. UiPath offers a platform that enables interaction and collaboration between digital and human workforces, opening the door for many more automations in a cost-effective and actionable manner
	Machine Learning and Predictive Analytics. Implementing Machine Learning (ML) models has proved challenging. Not only are they expensive and difficult to maintain, but major changes like COVID render their predictive analytics capabilities useless. UiPath offers out-of-the-box, drag-and-drop ML models that can be consumed by all organizational sizes at a fraction of the usual cost. They can also be customized and fixed much quicker than traditional in-house development.
	Seamless Interconnectivity. The openness of the UiPath platform and its seamless interconnectivity with almost all major enterprise products and applications enables superior business process management. Key advantages include open APIs, integration with third-party analytics and dashboard systems, and the ability to invoke code.
	Process Document Understanding. UiPath Document Understanding combines RPA and artificial intelligence (AI) to achieve end-to-end document processing. It helps organizations extract and interpret data from different documents, from AP invoices to loan or employee applications. The tool works with a wide range of documents ranging from structured to unstructured; recognizes different objects like tables, handwriting, signatures, or checkboxes; and can deal with various file formats.
	Citizen Development. In line with its vision of "a robot for every person," UiPath offers StudioX. This innovative, no-code tool is an optimized version of its design studio that enables non-technical users to create simple automations for themselves or their departments. That way, employees can take the initiative to automate tasks that make their lives easier but don't fit the criteria for a company-wide initiative.
	Test Automation. Traditional manual testing is a tedious endeavor, requiring multiple tools and an extensive set of activities. UiPath’s Test Suite resolves many of the pain points that plague manual software testing using a tightly integrated bundle of continuous delivery automation testing tools to increase speed, coverage, and effectiveness. By combining the world’s leading RPA technology with best-in-class testing practices, Test Suite ensures the quality of every RPA or application before it goes live. This enables developers to uncover and fix problems before they impact the business.
	Task Capture. Documenting process steps remains an automation pain point, involving a tedious and time-consuming manual effort that’s prone to human error. UiPath’s Task Capture process discovery tool is a game-changer, accelerating automation development and process improvements with fast, accurate, and intelligent automated business process documentation. On average, UiPath’s Document Understanding tool helps achieve 52% fewer errors, 35% lower costs, and 17% less time spent on document-related tasks, compared to manual document processing.
	Customer Satisfaction. UiPath receives high marks in every measure of customer satisfaction. Besides its impressive G2 ratings, UiPath scores the highest of the three largest RPA software vendors in Gartner’s Peer Insights, earning 4.5/5 stars. It also has the most number of customer reviews, which detail evaluation and contraction, integration and deployment, service and support, and product capabilities. UiPath has devoted significant resources to encourage customers' success through a continuous focus on learning resources, online training, and an active developer community. It also supports customers with frequent updates and crowdsourced knowledge sharing.
	Flexible Licensing Model and Low Cost of Entry. UiPath was one of the first RPA software vendors to democratize the technology, allowing organizations to get started with an affordable low annual investment. This becomes a huge advantage when putting together the initial business case for automating repetitive business processes, as it helps make RPA’s traditionally fast payback even faster.

Scaling RPA: the biggest battle to win in 2023, regardless of platform

Regardless of the platform, helping clients successfully scale their RPA programs remains an important focus for software vendors and implementation partners in 2023. It’s no secret that most organizations still report issues growing their automation initiatives to the level they desire in terms of speed and ROI. However, growth is expected to continue unabated, with Gartner saying 90% of large organizations were on track to adopt RPA in some form by the end of last year.

RPA can be a game-changing technology for an organization – when it’s done right. Understanding the differences between the leading RPA tools, and why UiPath is the preferred industry choice, can help make 2023 the Age of Automation for your company.

To read some of Auxis’ RPA client case studies, click here. To schedule a consultation on how Auxis can support you in your RPA journey, click here.