I love UiPath but my goodness the licensing is confusing and after hours of researching I still can’t work this out. Could we take the example of someone in an organisation who is happy with using an attended robot and has the Automation Developer / Attended User License (these seem to be the same) but wants an extra license for someone (or two) to be able to automate their workflows.
Here are your options as I understand it:
Attended User - does not include Studio X but does include UiPath Assistant for attended automation $150 per license
Citizen Developer - includes Studio X and UiPath Assistant for attended automation $250 per license
Automation Express - Includes access to Studio X and an Attended Robot via UiPath Assistant and IS FREE… for the first 25 users.
There is an accepted use policy for Automation Express which means that they can’t share outputs with other USERS but other than that, why would you pay $150 or $250 a month when you can get it for free? Please community, what am I missing as this is driving me crazy!
@jjes I watched your YouTube video on Automation Express which I thought was clear and excellent. You offered to do a follow up on licensing which I could not find. That would be so helpful!
Hi @Mark007 ,
I agree with you that there is a good amount of confusion around licensing topics and they change a bit too frequently, so my 2% around the license types you mentioned: Attended User: is focused on users that just execute automations created by the COE, but dont have the need to create/change such automations. Its your general business user that gets access to all the great automations developed in the company and benefits from it. You can centrally control who gets access to what, etc. Citizen Dev: is focused on the Power Users that create automations outside the COE, usually at the department level. Of course, they can also run automations like the Attended ones, but they get the extra possibility of creating new automations. Offers a lot of Governance to make sure what is being created is vetted by the COE, can be reviewed, etc. Nothing compares in terms of governance to what is offered by UiPath in the market. Express: is really focused on personal automation (and personal automation only), to give business users a taste of what UiPath can do at 0 cost. It can also go over 25 free seats if you need (UiPath will increase if there is adoption - you’ll need to reach out to your Sales rep). The “lock” from sharing automations with others is done by design, pretty similar to how other RPA platforms are doing… free for personal automations but not for collaboration. And when I say personal I also mean for business purposes - so good to use in the enterprise.
It is really up to your company’s needs wherever Express is enough - usually its OK to start, but as you create more value you’ll want the ability to add governance as it spreads through the organization, and you’ll naturally move to a Citizen Developer in my opinion.
It also lowers the cost of “trying it out”… some companies start a Citizen Developer journey that renders 10%-20% of “power users” really creating automations, now they can experiment “for free” and pay only for the 10%-20% that stick to it (sample scenario).
Just to add: I do believe there is room for prices to become more accessible on the paid tiers and to facilitate adoption especially in SMB (Small & Medium Business) alongside markets (countries) that operate in a different spent level - but that is a bigger & more complex discussion. You will notice that a lot of the reasons around why the license is so segmented is tied to the focus on the big companies & the complexity around governance & compliance.
Hi @carlosevp - thanks so much for the response, that’s really clear and helpful. I operate in the SMB market and as you say, we like to dip our toe in the water when it comes to these things and then expand as the ROI is proven out. So you have seen examples of companies solely starting out with Express?
I did have another question if I may and it’s all around that point of what collaboration and personal use is.
My SMB client is interested in:
Document Downloading: They want to automate the downloading of thousands of documents from UPS using delivery numbers from an Excel file. The output will be forwarded to their internal tax department before being sent to tax authorities.
Data Validation: Automate the process of checking a database for incomplete data and then emailing the responsible employee to request data completion.
“you are not allowed to (i) use the Automation Express licenses in collaboration with other
users from your company, (ii) share or otherwise provide access to the output of the Automation Express license with other users from your company and/or (iii) use the Automation Express license to access the output of automations developed by other users from your company”
My concerns:
For Scenario 1, since documents are relayed to the inhouse tax team before being forwarded to the tax authorities, does this violate point (ii)? For Scenario 2, if the automation emails another employee, does this breach point (i)? Notably, the license mentions “user” and not “employee”. Does this mean it’s compliant as long as the other employee isn’t a UiPath user?
Any clarity to guide me appropriately would be greatly appreciated.
I believe you hit the nail - seems like both scenarios may go beyond “personal productivity” and although I am not a license expert I believe you could be extrapolating the allowed usage depending on how you design the automations.
I don’t believe the limitations are restricted to other employees being UiPath users - the output generated by UiPath as an artifact (example a spreadsheet) seems to be part of the accepted use restrictions as well.
A quick suggestion for scenario 1 would be to cut the middleman and have the tax person run the automation that downloads the documents instead of relying on the forwarding mail step - that might get you going - coach them on how to build and unleash the power.
For scenario 2 it does look like a cross-department automation (from the output perspective), can’t see a way to mitigate that.
Maybe a way to look at: develop both automations using Express and validate their value to both teams involved → once you get their buy-in for funding step up to the Citizen Developer tier and add the steps to forward the results and add that extra collaboration - at that point you can interface with things like SharePoint, OneDrive or other collaboration tools you already have so they could interface there, and the Automation would be taking care of downloading/validating data/etc on their behalf.
UiPath offers “Action Center” for human in the loop scenarios (scenario #2) as well - depending on your governance requirements it might be another reason to license users too - maybe as a “future upgrade” to your process.
It takes a little bit of trial to correlate the gains from the overall Automation platform beyond just plain RPA (UI Automation) - things like Document Understanding, AI Center, Action Center, etc. when combined unleash great opportunity for gains, but are building blocks that take some time to come together, and timing your usage around those benefits vs the investment is the key to success.
I like your suggestions here with a solid route to upgrading. There’s definitely an opportunity to “land and expand”, it’s crossing the land element that I am up against.
I have decided to get some clarity on the meaning of the Acceptable Use Policy from UiPath by emailing the sales team, hopefully that will get picked up. It’s either very tightly drafted or widely drafted depending on the meaning of user which is undefined in the policy. User seems an odd chose if it is drafted to mean employee and so I am hoping that is deliberate and refers only to collaborating with other UiPath users.
When I get an answer, I will share the response with you.
You offered to do a follow up on licensing which I could not find. That would be so helpful!
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