15 Best Workflow Automation Tools Reviewed

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August 26, 2024

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40 Min Read

Summarize with ChatGPT

Workflow automation is the process of reducing manual intervention in a task by introducing predefined rules and actions. It eliminates redundancy by automating tasks, saves time and resources, and enables productivity and efficiency optimization. To achieve these benefits, you can leverage the power of workflow automation tools.

This article highlights everything you need to know when selecting any workflow automation tool.

What Is Workflow Automation Software?

Workflow automation software is a tool that simplifies and manages your daily business operations by automating repetitive tasks. This allows you to focus on creating strategic plans to scale your business while competing with others.

Almost 36% of organizations today use business process management software to automate workflows. As organizations move their workflows to a more automated environment, focusing on the tools that can provide the best price/performance becomes necessary.

Benefits of Using Workflow Automation Software

Opting for a workflow automation platform offers several benefits over traditional methods:

Effective Communication: A lack of communication might lead to error production. Workflow software enables collaboration with cross-functional teams by bridging the communication gap. It simplifies updating and coordinating with different teams, leading to more cohesive operations.
Enhanced Customer Engagement: Workflow management software enhances customer engagement by streamlining service delivery. They also help provide personalized and timely responses to customer needs.
Automating Redundant Tasks: Manually performing repetitive tasks can be a time-consuming process that can reduce an organization's efficiency. Workflow automation software can help you optimize performance by automating these redundant tasks.
Error Reduction: By minimizing manual intervention, workflow automation tools help you reduce the occurrence of errors that you might encounter while performing business processes.

15 Best Workflow Automation Tools

Here are the 15 most prominent workflow automation tools:

1. Airbyte

Airbyte is a no-code data movement tool that automates daily data integration needs. It provides 350+ pre-built connectors for replicating data into a centralized location for better analysis and reporting. These connectors include some of the most commonly used databases, data warehouses, marketing platforms, and ERP solutions.

Key Features

Here are a few benefits that Airbyte provides:

Custom Connector Development: Airbyte allows you to build custom connectors using the Connector Development Kit if the connector you seek is unavailable in the pre-built connectors list.
GenAI Workflow Support: It lets you automate chunking and indexing operations, helping you transform raw data and load it in popular vector database destinations like Pinecone. Additionally, it enables you to improve the accuracy of NLP models that can help you achieve enhanced user experience for your organization.
Pipeline Development Flexibility: Airbyte offers API, UI, Terraform Provider, and PyAirbyte that help you build and maintain a data pipeline according to your specific needs.
Advanced Security Features: Airbyte is one of the most secure workflow automation tools as it is compliant with major data security certifications, such as GDPR, HIPAA, and ISO 27001.
Flexible Deployment: It provides you with the flexibility to choose how you wish to deploy your pipeline, whether it be cloud, on-premise, or hybrid deployment.

Pros

Best tool for automation of bulk data ingestion.
Easy to use.
Extensive connector library.

Cons

For complex transformations, you might have to integrate Airbyte with external tools such as a data build tool (dbt).

Pricing

Airbyte offers multiple pricing options, including:

An open-source version, free-to-use plan.
The cloud-hosted plan is recommended for data engineers to sync data easily.
Team and Enterprise plans that let you migrate huge amounts of data with advanced features.

Best For

Streamlining data integration and replication.

Rating

4.5 out of 5.

2. Jira

Jira is a workflow management platform that allows you to streamline daily tasks while enhancing efficiency and productivity. Its task-tracking capabilities make it a strong contender for managing projects. Jira enables you to manage errors, trigger notifications, and update fields based on specific conditions. It also offers collaboration features, allowing you to work with cross-functional teams in your organization.

Key Features

Here are a few benefits of using Jira:

Advanced Project Planning: Jira offers comprehensive project planning features, including Advanced Roadmap, which enables you to manage and plan projects.
List View: Jira allows you to organize your work in a single list that you can sort, update, and prioritize depending on your needs using in-line editing.
Projects Board: Visualize the status of tasks at each workflow step using project board. This enables you to understand the distribution of tasks among team members and which task to prioritize in the next step.

Pros

Task Tracking.
Project Management.
Ease of use.

Cons

Steep learning curve.
Expensive to use.

Pricing

The pricing plans of Jira include:

A free-to-use plan.
A standard plan that costs $7.16/user/month.
A premium plan costing $12.48/user/month.
An enterprise plan for managing large-scale operations.

Best For

Project management and error reporting.

Rating

4.3 out of 5.

3. HubSpot

HubSpot is a prominent platform that integrates marketing, sales, and customer relationship management to help you maximize performance and drive growth. It offers solutions across multiple domains, including sales, marketing, services, content management, and more. All these domains are unified on a single HubSpot platform, making it one of the best workflow management software for performing cross-functional tasks.

Key Features

The key features of HubSpot are:

Website Activity Tracking: HubSpot allows you to track how leads interact with the website, showcasing how much time each lead spends on a particular page.
Customer Relationship: HubSpot provides a CRM to help you manage and improve customer relationships.

Pros

Marketing management.
Drive retention.

Cons

Pricing plans can get expensive for small businesses.

Pricing

HubSpot pricing depends on the specific domain you work with. For example, the cost associated with Hubspot Marketing include:

The Marketing Hub Professional plan costs $800/month.
Marketing Hub Enterprise plan costs $3600/month.

Best For

Growing businesses that aim to incorporate automation into their workflow.

Rating

4.4 out of 5.

4. Bitbucket

Bitbucket is a code hosting tool that enables you to build, test, and deploy code with its integrated CI/CD solution. It also lets you automate the deployment process, reducing errors encountered while performing manual deployments.

Key Features

The key features of Bitbucket are:

AI Automation: Bitbucket offers artificial intelligence support to automate the generation of pull request summaries depending on code changes and commit messages.
Granular Access Control: Bitbucket provides granular access control at the workspace, project, or repository level. It also lets you define specific branch and environment-level permissions.

Pros

Jira integration.
Repository management.
Version control.

Cons

Poor user interface.

Pricing

Bitbucket offers three different pricing plans, including:

A free plan.
The Standard plan costs $15/month.
The Premium plan costs $30/month.

Best For

Deployment of code.

Rating

4.4 out of 5.

5. Jotform

Jotform is a drag-and-drop form builder tool that allows you to create, customize, and manage forms for various purposes. It offers 150+ built-in integrations that enable you to automate the process of sending form submissions to CRMs, cloud storage applications, and more. Additionally, Jotform offers 700+ custom application templates, which you can use to build applications from scratch without writing a single line of code.

Key Features

The key features of Jotform are:

Intuitive App Creation: Jotform Apps offers a no-code interface that helps you to build applications with forms, product lists, branding assets, and widgets in seconds.
Drag-and-Drop features: It offers 70+ widgets that you can add to your application with simple drag-and-drop functionality. These widgets include checklists, maps, videos, QR codes, and more.

Pros

Ease of form creation.
Customizability.

Cons

Uploading images into the document for submission can be a time-consuming task.

Pricing

Jotform offers five different plans:

A free Starter plan.
Bronze plan costing $34/month.
Silver plan costs $39/month.
Gold plan $99/month.
An Enterprise plan with customized pricing.

Best For

Automating the process of intuitive form creation.

Rating

4.7 out of 5.

6. Nintex

Nintex is workflow automation software that offers a comprehensive suite of features, including process management, application development, document generation, and more. Its 90 pre-built connectors enable you to connect with multiple products and software systems to execute complex workflow tasks.

Key Features

Some of the key features of Nintex are:

Robust Security Features: It complies with prominent data protection standards, such as HIPAA, GDPR, and Safe Harbor.
Automated Form Creation: Nintex allows you to automate the process of creating and publishing forms, which can be used to collect user data or trigger workflows.

Pros

Ease of use.
Automation features.

Cons

Steep learning curve.

Pricing

Nintex offers three pricing plans:

A Pro plan starts from $25000/year.
A Premium plan costing $50000/year.
And a Custom plan.

Best For

Digital document generation and robotic process automation (RPA).

Rating

4.3 out of 5.

7. Sender

Sender is a marketing automation platform that streamlines email and SMS campaign creation. Its user-friendly interface enables you to cater to specific customer needs, segment your subscribers, and track the performance of your campaigns. Sender allows you to send personalized emails to your customers, greet new users with automated emails, send feedback emails after every purchase, and more.

Key Features

Here are the key features of Sender:

Integration Features: Sender offers plugins for popular customer management tools (CMS), such as WooCommerce and WordPress.
Advanced Email Analytics: Sender facilitates an advanced email analytics feature that lets you analyze campaign performance, understand customer behavior, and optimize marketing strategies.

Pros

Ease of use.
Affordable plans.

Cons

Limited templates.

Pricing

Sender.net offers four pricing plans:

Free version.
Standard plan costs $15.83/month.
Professional version costs $29.17/month.
Enterprise plan with an unlimited number of platform users.

Best For

Email marketing automation.

Rating

4.4 out of 5.

8. Kissflow

Kissflow is a low-code platform designed to automate tasks across different departments, such as sales, finance, human resources, and marketing. By automating daily tasks, it helps you streamline business operations and save time. In addition, Kissflow offers robust analytics and reporting capabilities that enable you to extract valuable insights from data and track performance.

Key Features

Here are the key features of Kissflow:

Advanced Security: Kissflow offers multiple security features, making it one of the most secure workflow automation tools available. Some key security features include two-factor authentication, role-based access control, and granular access control.
Collaboration Feature: The platform contains multiple collaboration features, such as contextual comments, direct chats, and voice messages, to enhance organizational communication.

Pros

Flexibility in customization.
Customer support.

Cons

Average in terms of user-friendliness.

Pricing

Kissflow offers two pricing plans:

The basic plan costs $1500/month.
Enterprise plan with custom pricing.

Best For

Analytics and reporting.

Rating

4.3 out of 5.

9. SureTriggers

SureTriggers is an all-in-one workflow automation tool that lets you set triggers and schedule tasks based on these triggers. It enables you to integrate various applications with WordPress plugins, automating your workflows and boosting productivity.

Key Features

Here are some of the features of SureTriggers:

Multi-step Automation: SureTriggers enables you to create a multi-step automation workflow that helps you sequentially execute multiple tasks in an automated manner based on specific triggers.
Advanced Workflow Creation: It allows you to create advanced workflows using various features, such as filters, schedules, delay, and conditional logic, which help automate complex tasks.

Pros

Highly intuitive interface.
Offers flexibility in customizing automation workflows.

Cons

Limited integrations.

Pricing

SureTriggers offers three plans:

Free plan
Pro plan costing $9/month.
The business plan costs $19/month for 10,000 tasks.

Best For

Automating tasks and integrating various applications without coding.

Rating

4.5 out of 5.

10. Smartsheet

Smartsheet is a workflow automation tool that lets you organize tasks, processes, and schedules in a spreadsheet-like environment. Its intuitive interface allows you to visualize tasks in the form of charts, calendars, and card views. Smartsheet is an alternative to Microsoft Excel, which enables you to perform complex calculations with advanced features and minimal expertise.

Key Features

Here are some of the key features that Spreadsheet provides:

Effective Communication: Smartsheet lets you effectively track each task of a project and represent it in an easy-to-understand format. This enables every individual involved in the project to efficiently communicate the key metrics.
Easy Integration: Smartsheet easily integrates with almost all enterprise applications, allowing you to visualize data from multiple sources. Mapping data into a visual form makes it easier for you to create effective plans for better business performance.

Pros

Team collaboration.
Effective task management.

Cons

Confusing user interface.

Pricing

Smartsheet offers three pricing plans:

Pro plan costs $9/user/month.
Business plan costs $19/user/month.
Enterprise plan with customized pricing.

Best For

Project management and dashboard creation.

Rating

4.4 out of 5.

11. Hive

Hive is a workflow management tool that helps you to automate project management features, saving time and resources. It provides a centralized environment for task management and lets you seamlessly connect to various productivity applications like Gmail, Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, and more.

Key Features

Let’s look at the key features of using Hive:

Notes: Hive’s note-taking feature allows you to organize your tasks according to priority. You can create meeting agendas, use note templates, and assign tasks.
Team Collaboration: Hive enhances team collaboration by enabling cross-functional teams to work together. You can gather feedback on your project’s creative assets by using emails with action cards.

Pros

Ease of collaboration.
Task management.

Cons

Not the best choice for handling real-time functionality.

Pricing

Hive offers four pricing plans:

Free plan.
Starter plan costs $1/user/month.
Teams plan costs $3/user/month.
Enterprise plan with flexible pricing.

Best For

Task and project management.

Rating

4.6 out of 5.

12. Camunda

Camunda is an open-source workflow and decision automation tool specifically designed to handle orchestration tasks for organizations of different scales. Its open architecture enables customization of any workflow according to your business requirements.

Key Features

Here are a few features of Camunda:

Decision Modeling Processes: Camunda is compliant with business process model and notation (BPMN) and decision model and notation (DMN) standards, enabling collaboration between different teams of your organization.
Build Automated Systems: Camunda lets you build and manage automated systems that streamline operations, eliminate errors, and enhance productivity.

Pros

Managing workflows.
Customizability.

Cons

Lacks good documentation.

Pricing

Camunda has two different hosting plans, SaaS and Self Managed. For SaaS, the pricing plans available are:

Free.
The starter plan costs $99/month.
Enterprise plan.

Best For

Orchestrating processes.

Rating

4.4 out of 5.

13. Monday

Monday is a robust software for automating repetitive tasks that does not restrict itself to project management. It offers an easy-to-use interface that resembles spreadsheets, making it easier for you if you have previously worked with spreadsheets. With Monday’s integration capabilities, you can connect multiple apps to it to streamline your automation processes.

Key Features

Let’s look at the key features of Monday.

Task Management: Monday offers over 200 pre-built templates that help you create workflows within minutes. It facilitates a central location where you can plan, organize, and track your team’s tasks.
Multiple Data Views: It enables you to view data in multiple formats, such as Timelines, Gantt charts, Kanban, and more. This feature allows you to explore your data in the best possible way, helping you make informed decisions.

Pros

Ease of customization.
Project management.

Cons

Steep learning curve.

Pricing

Monday offers five pricing options:

Free.
The basic plan costs $9/user/month.
The standard plan costs $12/user/month.
The pro plan costs $19/user/month.
Enterprise plan for which you can contact Monday’s sales department.

Best For

Task management.

Rating

4.7 out of 5.

14. ProcessMaker

ProcessMaker is a workflow management software that allows you to design forms, create documents, automate workflows, and assign roles and users seamlessly. It is a lightweight tool that doesn’t require installation for the client.

Key Features

Here are some of the features of ProcessMaker:

Form Creation: ProcessMaker offers a visual form builder for creating interactive forms. You can integrate these forms into business processes to streamline workflow and collect data for decision-making.
Monitoring Activity: It provides Business Activity Monitoring (BAM), which offers insights into how your business is performing, enabling you to make real-time decisions on the latest available data.

Pros

Ease of use.
Reporting and analytics.

Cons

Time consumption while fixing bugs.

Pricing

ProcessMaker offers three pricing plans with custom pricing options.

Best For

Approval-based processes and form creation.

Rating

4.3 out of 5.

15. Kintone

Kintone is a workflow automation tool designed to enhance collaboration across different teams by streamlining tasks and managing data. It offers features such as automated reminders, approvals, and task assignments that help you save time spent on managing workflows.

Key Features

Here are some of the key features of Kintone:

Continuous Tracking: Kintone helps you track and document the status of each task. This documentation ensures that all the processes involved in completing the task comply with your organization’s policies and standards.
Integrations: Kintone’s plugins and third-party integrations can enable you to expand its capabilities without writing a single line of code.

Pros

Customer support.
Customization options.

Cons

The offered UI is a bit clumsy.

Pricing

Kintone offers a single plan costing $24/user/month.

Best For

Task management.

Rating

4.6 out of 5.

How to Pick the Right Workflow Automation Tool?

There are many considerations when choosing the best workflow automation software. Let's discuss the primary points you must consider before selecting any of the software workflow tools mentioned.

Assessing Your Business Needs

Understanding your business' specific requirements is the most important aspect when automating workflows. It involves knowledge about the specific business domain where redundant tasks are performed frequently and the metrics you need to enhance.

Evaluating Your Current Processes

Before automating your business processes, you must explore the current ways of handling each task. As a specific tool will get integrated into the workflow, evaluating the current processes and the tool’s compatibility with the existing ones becomes important.

Considering Your Budget

Spending more money than necessary would not be wise. You must consider workflow software that enables you to manage your business needs effectively and economically within your budget range.

Testing and Trials

Testing the workflow tool before paying for the services is a great way to learn how it works and whether it is compatible with your day-to-day tasks. Almost all tools provide a free trial that can get you started. After trying the free version for a few days, you can decide whether the tool is right for your organization.

Key Features to Look for in Workflow Automation Tools

When choosing a tool for workflow automation, there are multiple options available in the market. This raises the question: What are the key features you must look for in a workflow automation tool? Let’s discuss each feature in detail.

Visual Workflow Builder

The tool you choose must have a visual workflow builder that can help reduce the efforts required to build and manage software. A low-code/no-code tool can provide a drag-and-drop interface, simplifying the handling of your workflow tasks. These tools can help you represent complex processes in easy-to-understand flowcharts essential for establishing workflow automation.

Integration Capabilities

The tool’s capability to integrate itself with third-party applications is a necessary feature that you must look for in a workflow automation tool. Integration capabilities can help you leverage the resources present in different applications to perform diverse tasks.

For example, a tool like Airbyte can enable you to integrate applications like ERP solutions and marketing automation software with analytical tools like Snowflake. This integration can help you leverage the data present in disparate systems to gain valuable insights.

Customizable Workflows

The workflow automation tool you choose must allow customization options so that you can get the flexibility to make changes according to the business requirements. By utilizing customization capabilities, you can enhance the efficiency required to scale your business.

Scalability

One of the most important features to look for in workflow automation software is how well it can handle your business' increasing workloads. The tool must adapt to business operations, such as integrating more systems and automating more tasks.

Data Security

The workflow automation tools must provide robust security features like end-to-end encryption, multi-factor authentication, and role-based access control. In addition to the security features, your tools must comply with major security certifications, including GDPR, SOC 2, and ISO 27001.

Best Practices for Implementing Workflow Automation Tools

Implementing workflow automation tools can significantly enhance efficiency and productivity. Here are some of the best practices you can consider when utilizing these tools:

You must use version control to track changes and leverage rollbacks during failures.
Create a reusable workflow template to streamline automation.
Incorporate effective visualizations to make the workflow tasks easy to understand.
Clearly define service level agreements (SLAs). Enable your tools to monitor performance and set a clear performance benchmark to facilitate effective workflow automation.
Apply automation to the possible bottleneck areas to enhance productivity and customer satisfaction.

How Airbyte Helps in Automating Your Workflow?

Let’s look at the steps involved in automating data integration in your daily workflow with the help of Airbyte. The steps below can help you streamline data integration, reducing the manual efforts of replicating data from different sources into a centralized location.

For this example, let’s consider that you are replicating data from the MySQL database into a data warehouse like Snowflake.

Step 1: Configure MySQL as a Source

Login to your Airbyte account.
An Airbyte dashboard will appear on the screen.

On the left navigation pane, click on Sources. In the Search connector box, enter MySQL and select the available MySQL connector.

You must enter the details of the MySQL database from which you intend to replicate data. Finally, click on the Set up source button at the bottom of this page.

Step 2: Configure Snowflake as a Destination

Once you have configured the source, click on the Destinations option in the left navigation pane to set up the destination to load data.
On the Set up a new destination page, you can either find the Snowflake option in the suggested destinations or manually search for it in the Search connector box.

Click on Snowflake and enter all the mandatory fields on the next page to configure Snowflake as a destination.

This process enables you to automate the data integration task in your workflow with just a few simple steps. By connecting platforms in this way, you save time and resources while generating better business insights.

If you prefer to migrate data from MySQL to Snowflake using a custom method, you might encounter many difficulties that can result in error production. Airbyte, on the other hand, simplifies your workflow operation by offering pre-built integration features.

Key Takeaways

By now, you must have thoroughly understood how workflow automation tools enable you to streamline your daily tasks. However, before selecting a tool, you must know about its features to get the best performance outcomes. These features include integration capabilities, user-friendliness, scalability, customizability, and security.

FAQs

What is the difference between RPA and workflow tools?

RPA allows you to automate certain repetitive tasks within a business process. On the other hand, workflow tools are a broader concept that are designed to automate the entire workflow from beginning to end.

Is Jira a workflow automation tool?

Jira is a workflow automation tool that enables teams to save time by automating tasks and reducing manual intervention.

How much does workflow automation software cost?

The costs associated with workflow automation software vary depending on the specific tool and the features you use; they can range from a few dollars to a few thousand dollars per month.