For web-only, it's worse.
For most enterprises, it provides a unified flow across the variety of technologies their core applications are built in: heavyweight Windows, mainframe, Java, etc.
(Thanks for all your work building awesome things!)
For most enterprises, it provides a unified flow across the variety of technologies their core applications are built in: heavyweight Windows, mainframe, Java, etc.
(Thanks for all your work building awesome things!)
And for Windows automation in general there are many tools like e. g. AHK, Sikuli or UI.Vision that combine Selenium features with RPA features. And they are free, open-source or at least very low cost compared to UIPath.
If your needs are minimal (e.g. test automation, because you don't care if it breaks 10% of the time), that's probably enough.
But they're definitely not the same class of tools.
[0] https://www.autohotkey.com/docs/commands/Control.htm
Of course, these tools are more lightweight and lack the advanced scheduling, monitoring and robot distribution features ("Orchestrator") that UIPath offers. But if one needs only straightforward task and test automation they are a good and reliable alternative.
These are all things I've had break visual matching in prod deployments.
The scheduling, monitoring, and distribution are (IMHO) the least interesting parts of UiPath. They're pretty trivial to build with other tech.
But a matching engine that offers a plethora of high level rule options, coupled with deep inspection capability, and fast runtime matching? That's a pretty big building block.
Most RPA vendors are cross-trained from the business side, rather than having a background in tech. So they're generally not very familiar with the broader tech world. (Their dev teams are, but those aren't the folks writing blog posts)