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Espressive Barista vs ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus 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

Espressive Barista
Ranking in Help Desk Software
15th
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
14th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
AI-Powered Chatbots (3rd)
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Ranking in Help Desk Software
3rd
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of Espressive Barista is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus is 7.3%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Help Desk Software
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Anil  Rao - PeerSpot reviewer
Improved problem-solving and has a user-friendly knowledge base
The primary benefit of ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus is its ease of use. It provides a simpler and more intuitive interface for creating semi-automated use cases and managing problem solutions. This simplicity makes it particularly suitable for less technical staff to use effectively. Additionally, its ability to interpret issues and offer solutions based on its knowledge base makes problem-solving faster. The deployment and use of all policies and user cases are seamless.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is its scalability."
"The bot is pretty easy to update and keep up to date. Espressive itself is pretty easy to work with."
"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"
"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."
"The solution is available to support us instantly as required."
"I like Expressive Barista's integration with Microsoft Teams."
"Its ability to recognize phrases has gotten smarter over time."
"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 strength is its pricing. It is easy to use."
"The management of this application is good."
"It ensures the tracking of all costs for end-user issues."
"I have been impressed by how easy it is to operate and how easy the structure is to manage service tickets. If they request an incident problem train, it's a very strong model. Another strong feature in the tool is the CMDB."
"CMDB as a baseline, incident management, service request management, and license management are valuable features. It offers really interesting features for complete use in an enterprise. You have one platform, and you could set up different service functions for HR, engineering, or another team in the same platform."
"I can't think of any single feature that stands out, but it's an excellent product for a fair price. Nothing is missing. ServiceDesk has a lot of features, and we aren't using all of them. We have to implement the ones we already have before we move on to the others."
"The most valuable feature of ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus is change management."
"Overall, its integration is good. There is a lot of integration that we have done. All alerts are coming to ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus. Its VIP feature is also very useful where you can specify who are our VIPs. When the service desk engineer picks up the call and gets the name, he or she knows that the person is a VIP and treats him or her accordingly. It also has a mobile interface. Anybody can use the app to log cases. It is easy for the end users as well as for the approving party. For the workflow, it is easier for senior managers to give approvals through the mobile interface."
 

Cons

"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."
"The reports provided by the solution are not customizable."
"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."
"The knowledge management could definitely be improved."
"Espressive Barista's natural language processing and conventional AI still have room for improvement."
"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."
"I would like to see improvement to the out-of-the-box verbiage, with the questions going to the right place."
"The current MDM is very basic and should be expanded."
"Its reporting can be improved. It can have better analytics reports. Even though they provide integration with another tool called Analytics Plus to get those reports, it would be quite helpful to have them on the fly and out of the box. A lot of improvement is required in change management and release management. Their change management module is quite simple, and they need to do a lot of work on the change management module. The release management is out only on the cloud. It is not available in on-premises deployments. In the next release, I would like it to have effective project management. They do provide the project management and contracts management modules, but these modules need a bit of improvement."
"I expected more features than it has. The flexibility is missing. I also was expecting a different level of configuration and segregation."
"I would also like to see better integration with external software. It is possible, but it is tough. The APIs are not very flexible, so you really have to write a lot of code to create that integration. Opening it up for external integration would allow for easier customization of the existing autobox workflows. It would help with the user's perception."
"It needs more customization and the ability to generate reports based on custom feeds. At present, if you create a custom feed in any form, you cannot create a report based on those criteria."
"I think that the tool should try to streamline the user interface even more because there are a lot of options that can be offered to users."
"The licensing model should be more flexible. The current approach requires individual licenses, which become costly."
"There is a limitation when assigning an approval; it has to be a single user. It would be beneficial to have an option to assign approvals to a user group or a variable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It is expensive. It's not a cheap thing."
"User-based licensing has been working well for us, and we believe we are deriving significant value from it."
"The price for the licensing is fair."
"The solution is affordable."
"The only issue for us is the pricing, which is quite high in comparison with the competition."
"As compared to a lot of systems out there, it is more affordable."
"ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus is a reasonably priced product."
"It is above average. But it is neither cheap nor expensive."
"It is not an expensive solution."
"The prices are attractive. Customer can use a subscription if they do not have enough budget."
"Pricing can always be improved and made more affordable."
"The platform has good pricing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
51%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Retailer
4%
Educational Organization
60%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Government
3%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 ...
What do you like most about ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus?
The platform's most beneficial features are incident management, change management, request management, and asset management.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus?
The costing for ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus ( /products/manageengine-servicedesk-plus-reviews ) is very flexible and is considered low-priced. Automox ( /products/automox-reviews ), a competitor,...
What needs improvement with ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus?
The GUI can be improved. In terms of functionality, the change management part could be improved significantly due to limitations in that area. For instance, when assigning a ticket to a person or ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Tranter IT Infrastructure Services Limited, Sterlite Technologies, averda, Radiology Associates
Find out what your peers are saying about Espressive Barista vs. ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
847,625 professionals have used our research since 2012.