Thats a good writeup @mirza
In my work, I have done poc projects with UIPath and Katalon Studio. I have personally stuck with Cypress and am now looking into Playwright.
From the old QTP and UFT days right up to these newer tools, I have noticed they tend to be really heavy on system resources. They also are’t very flexible when it comes to integrating with test management and CI tools.
I completely agree with you on the pricing issue. A few years ago, I actually managed tool vendors and licensing, and the models vary wildly from single licenses to small group and even organization wide packages. On top of the test automation tools, these companies often bundle in other tools. Unless a company has deep pockets or tieups, its hard to afford them, especially now that more big players are entering the market.
I am actually planning to write something up about all of this.