ThinkAutomation

Pros: We are a long time ThinkAutomation customer, having started with email2db, then ThinkAutomation v4 and now the brilliantly executed ThinkAutomation v5. As a long ago software engineer and systems architect, TA5 provides a very easy to implement, expansive REST and JSON focused world of automation enabling any to any systems integrations which are key to any mult-channel e-commerce business. Further, their ability to integrate C# ‘scripts’, and ever expanding downloadable automation libraries, their simple to advanced language constructs and extensibility, means that this BPA engine can be strategically adopted by any business, small to enterprise class, to automate whatever manual processes and forward looking advantageous business extensions you wish. And let me tell you, TA5 is rocket fast!

Cons: I had concerns with TA4 because of its more limited capabilities, it TA5 changes the game.

Overall: The people and support are quite awesome, the software is brilliant, we save untold time and resources by simply (and enjoyably) conceiving and implementing automations. The new REST API powering our website is fully integrated, we are integrating our ERP/MRP functions, have automated reseller pdf orders (poor mans EDI lol), automated customer interactions even with Amazon MFN and Amazon FBA and have our sites on accounting automation. It’s a pleasure to work with the Parker team.

Pros: Once you're used to the software, it's simple to use and extremely flexible and drives a lot of the automation of our internal processes.

Cons: I think a couple of things it could improve on, are examples to work with, some areas (such as connecting it to an API to extract data) are lacking examples to show "what good looks like" so you spend a lot of time working it out yourself.
I'd like the option to choose what email to bring into the find & extract helper, not just "get last". Copying and pasting an email into this works differently to how it reads an actual email.

Overall: Overall, it's great. There are quirks, but it's extremely powerful once you're used to it and I would recommend it to anyone.

Pros: It's easy to use, has many integrations and triggers, low cost, fixed fee and fully customisable. The moto is if you can think it you can Automate it and that has held true. Within our business and for clients we have used ThinkAutomation to eliminate mundane manual effort and give time back to the business to drive greater customer value-add activities.

Cons: There is no detailed workflow visualisation for your automations.

Overall: Using ThinkAutomation has been a great asset for both our business and for the clients we serve. The potential of the tool to support businesses is endless and the ROI is enormous.

Pros: - All round integration and extraction options
- Integration with Azure
- A helpful support desk and customer success managers
- Extensive scripting options

Cons: - Still some errors in the newly added features (bugs)
- Documentation on Azure could be more elaborate
- I am missing tutorials on writing scripts and creating triggers/integrations

Overall: Our overall perception of ThinkAutomation 5 is very positive . We hope to migrate from version 3.x later this year.

Pros: ThinkAutomation has been a very useful piece of software that has allowed our IT team to not only automate a lot of our processes but has also helped save both our IT and HR team time.

Another pro to mention would be the support team, when we've had previous issues, the team have responded immediately whether through live chat or email.

Cons: We have had a few issues with ThinkAutomation, a lot of it we didn't fully understand and other aspects were due to the features in TA4 being Beta so not yet fully integrated into the software. Every so often these little issues still pop up but thanks to the support team we have a lot of it under control and know how to fix the issue going forward.

Overall: As mentioned TA is a useful piece of software that has had some technical issues but with the support provided it's been overcome and a lot has been learnt about the software.

TA was a big learning curve for me as I started managing it when we initially had issues and having to sort that out with the help of support has helped me learn a lot more about it. I'm looking forward to getting TA5 up and running and seeing what changes/new features have been added.

Pros: ThinkAutomation is a reliable automation engine which you can customize to no end. You'll find more and more uses for it in any setting.

Cons: I would have liked to see a global constant option, somewhere every action or script can access these values. Have the ability to enable/disable multiple (or all) accounts simultaneously.

Overall: This is probably the best automation product on the market with a reasonable cost and with a cloud option as well.

Pros: ThinkAutomation has given us lots of flexibility for automating processes that previously had been done manually. We've been able to automate our Employee Lifecycle processes saving IT and HR time, as well as reducing the number of errors.

The support has been great too when we've needed it and has been much appreciated.

Cons: We have had a number of issues with TA but we've been able to get support and they've worked hard to provide us fixes in advance of main release to get us up and running again. It's a bit of a learning curve too but their documentation is extensive.

Overall: Overall, TA has been a useful product, with some technical issues, but the support team have been there when we've needed them to support and get issues resolved!

Pros: It’s a catch-all automation tool that you can use across every business division. Because you can build out as many custom workflows as you want, you can automate the common processes for every team. (Eg we started using it in IT and now also have workflows for finance, sales, support and HR.) It’s already low-priced so when you factor in the cross-team utility element it ends up being highly cost-effective.

Cons: Some of the integrations that aren’t baked-in require you to write your own code, which is more time-consuming. It also takes a while to implement properly as you have to set up all your workflows from scratch – there aren’t any editable templates to use.

Overall: A general-purpose automation platform that gives you the tools to design your own workflows for any team in any sector. Basically any company with any kind of repetitive process could get value from ThinkAutomation.

Pros: - The product is "open-ended" - in that you can build out any workflow / any series of actions and integrations to suit whichever department you're helping
- The cost is fantastic - this delivers the same results as a bigger RPA solution would but for a fraction of the price
- The studio is accessible to use and the IDE lets you customise with your own scripts if you need (but rarely need to in honesty as there are tons of actions baked in).

Cons: - Not a con for me as it's the set-up I wanted but bear in mind it's an on-prem solution not a hosted one.

Overall: Brilliant. Every sys admin should be using ThinkAutomation. I've only recently started tinkering and already can't wait to build more - so many possibilities.

Pros: • You can automate anything – open-ended when it comes to workflow design and your conditions and actions etc.
• It integrates with basically everything, so you can also use as middleware.
• Cheap! Costs us £999 per year.
• There isn’t a limit on how much data processed or how many actions it will run.
• It will process all your legacy data too.
• Runs continuously, you forget it’s there once it’s set up and doing the job.
• Good support, the tech guys have always gone out of their way when I’ve got in touch.

Cons: • Not designed for non-technical users, you need to be comfortable with conditional logic and setting up databases etc.
• Doesn’t come with pre-built templates, which would be useful for simpler workflows like parsing emails to database.

Overall: Overall I really rate ThinkAutomation. The scale of possibilities with the automations and actions available is enormous, so you can use it to automate any process you need.
The interface is nice and simple, it doesn’t take long to get setup, about 5-10 minutes. Once setup it’s solid as a rock, it works round-the-clock in the background so you can leave it running processes forever.
For the price and the scope of automation offered it’s hard to find fault.