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ConnectWise PSA vs Espressive Barista comparison

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 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

Automation Anywhere
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
666
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (2nd), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (2nd), Process Mining (1st), Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (1st), Agentic Automation (1st), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (2nd), AI Legal & Compliance (1st), AI Finance & Accounting (2nd), AI Procurement & Supply Chain (1st)
ConnectWise PSA
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (16th), Business Management Software (1st), Professional Services Automation (PSA) (1st)
Espressive Barista
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (38th), AI-Powered Chatbots (9th), AI-Agents for HR (4th)
 

Featured Reviews

Venkat Sivaprakash - PeerSpot reviewer
Management Consultant at Accenture
Has significantly improved document-driven workflows and reduced processing time across finance and HR functions
Automation Anywhere has evolved significantly and upgraded itself to provide agentic AI and AI-based automation solutions for document automation. The product has matured considerably over time. We can create workflows that can call an API. We can include prompts in particular workflows for ChatGPT-related functions, connecting to an LLM and RAG to perform tasks. For document automation, modern features are available to train documents, ensuring high accuracy and repeatability over time. The system is very easy to use. I recently completed a course in document automation, typically designed for people involved in coding and technical aspects. Though I understand coding comprehensively, I don't do actual coding. The course was very accessible. Currently, extensive coding isn't necessary due to the hybrid model incorporating GenAI aspects, low-code, no-code capabilities, APIs, and numerous pre-built objects in Automation Anywhere. The features include GenAI-driven prompting methods and workflow creation capabilities. In these workflows, we can create decision boxes and call APIs without coding. We simply pull objects, drop them, connect them, and add minimal coding when needed. The most crucial aspect isn't coding but rather sizing the automation and fleshing out the details. Automation Co-pilot takes notes and performs automated analysis. It can extract details from videos, summarize conversations, and provide detailed information. During calls, it identifies instructions and performs tasks such as preparing reports and reconciliation. Automation Anywhere can also connect with Microsoft Co-pilot. Through Co-pilot, real-time operations can be executed, allowing direct interaction between vendors and automation through this component.
SK
Associate Director at a outsourcing company with 51-200 employees
Centralized alerts and ticketing have improved SLA compliance and guided infrastructure decisions
For system monitoring and the alert system within ConnectWise PSA, we find it very useful, and its critical alerts are very important for us for ISOs and SOC compliances. The ticketing follow-up system is good, and there are many features that are very good in ConnectWise PSA. We use the time tracking feature with ConnectWise PSA, specifically for SLAs. The time tracking feature helps us improve billing accuracy, as it is really useful in improving the SLA of the tickets. We have different SLAs for different customers, including those who need a response within one hour and those who need a solution in one hour. According to those customer requirements, we have set the SLAs on the platform, and we get alerts if a ticket is going to be nearing the SLA. With the help of that, we improve the turnaround time and achieve the SLAs up to 90 percent maximum. ConnectWise PSA's reporting tools help our decision-making process a lot because, at certain points, we must make critical calls on moving and rebuilding servers. We can see the number of tickets and analyze server performance to make decisions, so it helps in that way.
Jim Lobao - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager for End User Support Services at Five9
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

"Automation Anywhere offers the capability of integrating the DLL files with meta bot and hence the developer can use DLL files to connect to applications likes outlook, SAP, etc"
"The most valuable feature is that it is intuitive. It is designed so business users can use it with a drag and drop functionality to develop automation of business processes. Since they are the experts on business processes, there are probably the best ones to create the automation."
"I strongly recommend Automation Anywhere as a compelling platform for RPA needs."
"It has allowed us to generate additional revenue without having to hire additional people."
"The IQ Bot is the most valuable feature and a significant market differentiator."
"The integration of Automation Anywhere into our clients' workflows, APIs, business applications, and documents was seamless, but it was a bit of a struggle until we realized that it has a built-in integration platform."
"The bot creation process is simple and useful. Whatever you need to do, it is there. If there is something else, there are the MetaBot functions."
"Simple processes such as tracking, logging, and data consolidation are now automated, which helps us focus more on doing tasks that are impactful and more important."
"The most valuable feature is the management of projects from start to finish."
"We are able to use our ticket system to track any remediation of a device stored in our configurations."
"ConnectWise lets us know when customers are looking at our quotes, so we know to reach out to them later."
"We use this solution because it does everything we need as opposed to other programs that are always missing one feature or another."
"I also like ConnectWise's ability to set up queries. I can set up all these different queries that look for specific things and end up with a list of results, like feedback from the client or the ticket status."
"It handles ticketing pretty well, and it's not something I have many critiques for."
"The few times I've had to call, when I first joined the company, support was always excellent, professional, courteous, friendly, and efficient, and they always resolved my issue or answered my questions."
"The ease of reporting is valuable; we have a weekly management meeting, and we gather numbers from ConnectWise in preparation for that, and it is helpful for measuring how we're doing in our performance."
"Given the out of the box content for common industry applications, we got good value out of the solution right from day one."
"The most valuable feature is its scalability."
"Given Barista's out-of-the-box content for common industry applications, the value is pretty good right from day one."
"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."
"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"
"The solution is available to support us instantly as required."
"When it comes to neutral language processing and conversational AI, it's very good, very solid... We all have different ways of speaking or writing in English and the application does a very solid job of recognizing what's being asked regardless of how it's being asked."
"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."
 

Cons

"Some things that I do not see as of today are interactive chat or video interface. These are things that I will look for in future. I saw something like picture recognition, but something like a video or voice recognition is something that I'm looking for in the Automation Anywhere platform as an end user and even as a reseller."
"The mobile application can be improved by adding more functions and capabilities because right now, only a few features are enabled for mobile users."
"I never use Automation Anywhere in the attended space because they are bad at that, at least compared to other players like us or UiPath."
"When we need to upgrade the bot version for various applications like SAP, the compatibility issues could be easier to resolve. The financial team is using version 5 or 6, but the automation engineer recommends only version 6 because it is more compatible. I think Automation Anywhere could handle these compatibility issues better."
"They should do more on the cognitive side."
"The Recorder action in the A2019 Community edition is not supported."
"Where minor but widespread changes are made to the cloud product being operated upon, changing the cloned search values individually was incredibly time consuming, and it shut down the RPA service until it was fixed."
"Scalability has been a pain point; the scalability is there, but there are ongoing operational issues with it."
"They definitely need better tech support. There is a lot of instances where we are kind of forced to go to them for their support team, it is a slow process and it constantly just feels like they're pretty much sending you to the documentation page that you already would have found, rather than actually offering direct assistance."
"Reliability is definitely something that I have issues with, especially over a bad connection."
"Their reporting options aren't great. BrightGauge was something that we added on, and that enhanced the experience."
"It needs to be easier to share tickets between users who need to work together."
"ConnectWise Manage can improve third-party integrations and the UI. The UI is good but it could improve in the graphics."
"Not a good ticketing system"
"ConnectWise PSA’s graphical interface is a little old."
"It was a little complex. For example, figuring out what table in the setup tables contains the areas you would like to change is somewhat difficult."
"I would like to see the continued expansion of all of the automation capabilities."
"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."
"There aren't very many things that this product needs improvement on."
"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."
"The reports provided by the solution are not customizable."
"The knowledge management could definitely be improved."
"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."
"Espressive Barista's natural language processing and conventional AI still have room for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our company is investing a lot of money in Automation Anywhere. They have saved money wherever humans are working. They invest a lot of money in FTEs and other logistics, so the money saving is very pretty good with Automation Anywhere. While I don't know the exact figure, the tool is saving us millions of dollars as well as saving about 40,000 hours in the last year."
"It saves on the quality of work, because the quality can be bad when somebody's doing it. If a bot does the work, it's faster and comes with good quality. These are two important things along with the cost saving in the long run. That's where the value is."
"If we count the integrations that we have done with Appian, which is where a lot of our savings is from, we are well over a million dollars in savings. This is from only doing development for about a year and a half."
"I feel the cost of licensing is very high for the A2019 version."
"They sell it by license, but if they could charge by case or by interaction, that might be better. Right now, it's expensive when you want to scale or use them for simple processes."
"Annually, we are paying almost one million reais."
"Because it reduced the time duration of our processes, our costs went down."
"If it is saving FTE and Generating a good ROI then it is Worth Investing."
"The pricing of ConnectWise Manage is reasonable."
"The cost can be the main barrier. It's not a solution for a three person company. It just isn't going to be cost effective. Because ConnectWise Manage does have everything there, the licensing is a little bit restrictive as far as how they want to granularly assign licenses rather than having more of an all-inclusive package."
"There are some different add-ons and benefits that are optional and come at an additional cost."
"I have one monthly license for all of the ConnectWise products I use, and it's $85 per user."
"We're paying $940 a month for 14 users."
"The pricing is not based on my clients so much as it is on how many people I have accessing the system, and I think it's pretty good."
"The price for the licensing is fair."
"The solution is affordable."
"User-based licensing has been working well for us, and we believe we are deriving significant value from it."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Construction Company
16%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Performing Arts
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Construction Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business161
Midsize Enterprise85
Large Enterprise561
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise1
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It depends on your use case. Is it simply to automate a couple of processes? Is it to augment a human team? AA is ver...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
From my experience using AA tool, it depends on the applications that you want to automate, because there some applic...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It is a highly preferred RPA tool. You can check my Automation Anywhere Review to know more.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ConnectWise Manage?
We are purchasing 1,000 seats per year, so I am aware of the pricing and we are getting it at a dealer's price. The p...
What needs improvement with ConnectWise Manage?
The only area of ConnectWise PSA that I find could be improved is in configuring everything, as we have to take help ...
What is your primary use case for ConnectWise Manage?
I have been working with ConnectWise PSA for the past four years, and we are using the platform for our ticketing sys...
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Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)
ConnectWise Manage
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
IT Connexx, High Standards Technology Inc, Solvere One, MyIT, ConnectWise, Simpatico Systems, Fred IT Group, ECS, OneStop, K2 Technologies, Clark Integrated Technologies, Jmark, Geek on Wheels
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Find out what your peers are saying about ConnectWise PSA vs. Espressive Barista and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.