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Alemba Service Manager vs Espressive Barista comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Alemba Service Manager
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
24th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Espressive Barista
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
14th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (15th), AI-Powered Chatbots (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the IT Service Management (ITSM) category, the mindshare of Alemba Service Manager is 0.8%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Espressive Barista is 0.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Service Management (ITSM)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1099623 - PeerSpot reviewer
Fulfills all IT management needs, simple setup, but could be more user-friendly
Unfortunately, we were not able to implement the mobility feature so I won't be able to provide feedback on it (and it was something that has been requested since we have field workers and given the WFH case due to the pandemic). This is due to results of security tests and which we were not yet able to address in our environment. We've been also trying to integrate our current system with discovery solutions but it was not easy. I am not sure if it is due to the fact that we still have an older version of the AlembavFire product. Also, users are also requesting that the current system's UI can still be improved. For those of our users who had experienced ServiceNow, they cited that they can do RFC chats via the tool. In our group, we are using AlembavFire for recording the ticket and do other discussions/alignments via Teams chat.
Jim Lobao - PeerSpot reviewer
Has helped enhance our support ability, reduced our resolution time, and reduced our service desk costs
Espressive Barista's natural language processing and conventional AI still have room for improvement. We haven't yet found anything that resembles true AI that can learn autonomously without human intervention. However, Barista does help us identify and address some of these areas, allowing my team to step in and create intents and responses to questions. When a user asks a question that Barista doesn't immediately understand, we can recognize the pattern, capture it, and link it to a common intent. This is highly beneficial for acquiring such data, but it's a reactive approach and still requires curation. Natural language processing still has some way to go. One of our challenges is that our internal employees haven't yet adopted a natural way of interacting with Barista. Getting people to be concise and to the point, rather than being verbose as if they were interacting with a human, has been an ongoing challenge. While they may feel comfortable being conversational in Slack, expecting a human-like response, Barista is a different entity. Barista isn't interested in their recent vacation; it just wants to know they're locked out of their account. So, some users may assume Barista understands their intent when they say, "I'm back from vacation and locked out of my account." Barista, however, may interpret this as a request for the holiday schedule. Therefore, we're gradually educating our users to adapt their communication style for better success with Barista. Conversely, we desire Barista to adapt its behavior based on the interaction, the language used, and the way people communicate. I wholeheartedly desire an AI that can continuously learn and adapt to our organization's evolving needs. This is the most challenging aspect, as it involves understanding our organization's terminology, procedures, and toolsets. We've made significant progress in this area. However, from an NLP standpoint, we still face challenges with our nearly 3,000 Slack channel users, each with their unique communication styles. People ask questions in various ways, and sometimes there are misunderstandings. They want to interact with us naturally. However, we still struggle with natural language processing. People don't always realize that the bot is a virtual agent designed to be concise and efficient. Sometimes, less is more. It's been a difficult transition for people to grasp that they're conversing with a virtual agent, not a human. They still expect human-like interactions, such as discussing their weekend or holidays or simply pasting screenshots of errors. However, the bot can't interpret screenshots. If they provide the error code and some context about the application, the bot can better understand the issue. So, the key challenge is bridging the gap between human expectations and the bot's capabilities in terms of natural interaction.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"When we met with the Alemba vFire from Australia, it was a good discussion and they have a good feature roadmap."
"Incident Management is the most valuable feature of the solution."
"The workflow is very good, as well as customizable."
"The solution is available to support us instantly as required."
"The bot is pretty easy to update and keep up to date. Espressive itself is pretty easy to work with."
"We have the ability to alter phrases, create new phrases, or enhance phrases, or change paths. From the dashboard, we are able to get a lot of information we need about what people are asking, where they are dropping off from conversations, and where they do not get the information they need."
"I like Expressive Barista's integration with Microsoft Teams."
"With respect to its natural language processing capabilities, it recognizes things that you wouldn't think it would recognize. Even in cases where it doesn't, it's pretty easy to go in and make the adjustments that are needed."
"The most valuable feature is its scalability."
"Our developers have used the Barista Control Center to extend the platform by adding content, and they've found it fairly easy to do and manage"
"Its ability to recognize phrases has gotten smarter over time."
 

Cons

"We had issues with the user interface, the way it was structured wasn't that user-friendly. The chat features could improve. For example, in change management, all the chat discussions can be done via ServiceNow. We are using two separate solutions, such as Teams, to chat, and the Alemba vFire tool to process."
"The product should improve its ability to integrate with third-party tools."
"The reporting needs to be improved."
"Espressive Barista's natural language processing and conventional AI still have room for improvement."
"The reports provided by the solution are not customizable."
"I would like to see the continued expansion of all of the automation capabilities."
"I would like to see improvement to the out-of-the-box verbiage, with the questions going to the right place."
"Expressive Barista could improve by adding native integration with WhatsApp, one of the top communication channels in South Africa. When we're trying to sell Barista to customers, we have to tell them that the solution doesn't have out-of-the-box support for WhatsApp. We can develop it, but then we need to have a conversation about how much that will cost."
"What would make things easier is more detail, out of the box, about what is helping out of the box. We're struggling a little bit to get that data. We want more information about what Barista has brought in that the employees are using, out of the box. We want more visibility into the things that we ourselves haven't done the interaction for."
"Although they've done some work on their metrics dashboard, there is some fine-tuning to do for people that just want to go in there at a glance and see their metrics."
"My only comment would be if they wanted to use this as an IT service management tool, maybe they could think about Barista making tickets and having change management and problem management capabilities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is much cheaper than ServiceNow."
"Alemba vFire is more affordable than the other solutions on the market. The solution changes for the number of customers not per user or module. The price was reasonable overall. We paid for support and it was a fair price."
"The pricing isn't overly burdensome. It's going to be interesting to see how new models come in with new capabilities but, as it is, as a base system, it's pretty good."
"The solution is affordable."
"User-based licensing has been working well for us, and we believe we are deriving significant value from it."
"It is expensive. It's not a cheap thing."
"The price for the licensing is fair."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
Non Profit
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
Computer Software Company
51%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Retailer
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Alemba vFire?
Incident Management is the most valuable feature of the solution.
What needs improvement with Alemba vFire?
The product should improve its ability to integrate with third-party tools. The service portal should be customizable.
What is your primary use case for Alemba vFire?
The product is used for incident management, change management, and request management. We can store assets like people, machines, and processes in CMDB. We can also use the solution to see the cha...
What do you like most about Espressive?
The most valuable feature is its scalability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Espressive?
Espressive has been very accommodating in trying to meet our needs and adapt to our current situation. User-based licensing has been working well for us, and we believe we are deriving significant ...
What needs improvement with Espressive?
Espressive Barista's natural language processing and conventional AI still have room for improvement. We haven't yet found anything that resembles true AI that can learn autonomously without human ...
 

Also Known As

vFire
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Hiscox Liverpool City Council Karachaganak Petroleum Operating (KPO) PPG Barnardo's Victoria University of Wellington
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Alemba Service Manager vs. Espressive Barista and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,207 professionals have used our research since 2012.