Free RPA Tools for Small Companies

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Hi. I'm Mehmetcan 🤗 .
I am a graduate student in computer engineering 🧑‍🎓
There are problems that come from small companies 🏢
I want to solve these problems to improve myself 💪
What are the free rpa tools that I can use in-house 🤖
UiPath Community version is free, but is it free to use in a small company

I am new to english language✍️
I hope the problem is understood💯
Thank you 🙂

[gilded ocean]

Hi. UiPath community edition is only free for non-commercial use, meaning mostly training. A company, regardless how big or small, that uses it to reduce cost or increase revenue by automating processes must pay for it.

Power Automate Desktop (without the orchestration in the cloud) is free to use. Also, open-source tools, such as Robocorp, TagUI, OpenRPA and similar are also free to use. But they will usually also not have the enterprise grade orchestration. You will either need to pay for it or create your own custom orchestrator via traditional programming.

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Thank you. I have one more question with your permission.

For example, there is an excel document in the company I work for that I need to check every week. Can I control this document with a robot I developed with UiPath without using Orchestrator? Does this work I do fall into the "institutional research" in the article below?

The Community Agreement includes the following item.
"Software that UiPath has made available under the Community program, solely for non-commercial purposes, such as education and individual or institutional research, subject to the conditions herein and the Documentation."

I wouldn't want to break the contract when using UiPath Community Edition for enterprise research.

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For this process, I understand it would be better to use one of the Power Automate Desktop (without orchestration in the cloud), Robocorp, TagUI or OpenRPA tools you suggested.

[gilded ocean]

If doing this 'control' is a part of a corporate process in your company and if this company is not an educational institution, it would likely breach the Community program. it's a better idea to use Power Automate Desktop for this

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thank you very much for your advice 🙂

[thorn solar]

OpenRPA - paging @nova sand 🙌

[maiden hemlock]

Just to add, sometimes free is ok, but I often find that free has dimineshing returns compared to commercial or licensed products. You'll want to consider the product's support structure, usage population, tool efficiency, and general performance and free products sometimes lack in more than one area.

I'm not saying free is bad, but paid products are often more advanced and easier to operate. If you've done your proper business process analysis and found a lot of improvement opportunities, justifying a paid product should be easy.

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thanks @maiden hemlock 🙂

[nova sand]

There are battle tested, stable, secure open source alternatives out there that you can use for free both in education and commercially. Depending on your needs and how complex you need it, you could look at TagUI or OpenRPA. OpenRPA also offers an open-source orchestrator, OpenFlow.

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thanks @nova sand 🙂

[thorn solar]

Why on earth use anything else than OpenRPA for that case 😍

[glass seal]

HelloI am currently having a problem filtering files in two different directories. I want to filter files based on the same code and then group them together.
I haven't been able to do this for a while.
Can someone help me please?
A link, a track would be nice to help me please.
Thanks

[gilded ocean]

This is definitely not the right channel for questions like that. Please set your role based on the RPA software you are using and then post in the appropriate help channel.

We have help channels for each tool, but they are locked by default to new members. You get access by setting your role. If you don't know how to do it, please watch the video that is about to pop up in a separate message.

[rotund spindle]

Hey there @glass seal!

Please click on your preferred RPA tool emoji in #archived👤・set-your-role, e.g., or .

You'll then automatically get access to the help channels,
e.g., #uipath-help or #power-automate-cloud-help, where you can post your questions/comments to the respective tools.

By doing so, our chats are organized.

You can learn more by watching this video by Anders: https://youtu.be/xWFz-S96XGo

Thank you!

[glass seal]

ok thanks

[winged flint]

Small company would be better with a python script doing same stuff on cron. RPA is an enterprise thing where IT is so busy with their internal crap that it wont bother with simple automation needs and then it is a way to let business users play with IT toys in controlled environment.

Downside of a simple python script is that you move on to a next job, it keeps working for a while until it breaks and then none knows how to fix it.

Although that wont be an issue if you do things properly.

[gilded ocean]

And another downside is that the lerning curve is much steeper for traditional programming. A small business will likely not be able to afford an experienced developer. Training an RPA developer from scratch will be cheaper than do it with Python.

[winged flint]

There are many people who did automation in vba, autoit, ahk etc when rpa was not a thing yet.
Half of the game cheats are still done with one of this and if then can click on stuff in a game, navigating app ui is not a problem.

RPA just packages old tools in one nice box, has orchestrator (often a bad one imo) and is much easier to "sell" to big bosses.

I'm not against RPA, but 'your business users can learn to do it in a month' is a marketing trick.

[gilded ocean]

I know it's a marketing trick and I'm not a fan either. I know it takes time to learn doing RPA properly. But the time it takes to become proficient in an RPA tool is likely shorter than doing the same in, say, Python or some other language with wide applications in business automation.

What I mean is that a small business will usually not be able to afford a full time experienced programmer. And training a junior to do RPA will often be cheaper and faster than doing the same in traditional programming. Hiring a senior programmer will also be more expensive than a senior RPA developer.

I know business users sometimes do VBA and similar stuff to automate their work. But that, again, is often easier to do with RPA.

So, for a small business that cannot afford proper experienced resources, doing RPA is actually a rather viable option, imo.