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Espressive Barista vs Freshservice 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
18th
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
17th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
AI-Powered Chatbots (3rd)
Freshservice
Ranking in Help Desk Software
7th
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
Project Management Software (10th), Cloud Management (14th), IT Asset Management (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of Espressive Barista is 0.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Freshservice is 4.6%, up from 3.6% 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.
Trilochana Gouda - PeerSpot reviewer
Smooth incident management and easy to use while needing better escalation management
We are using Freshservice for the IT ticketing system for business users We use the ticketing system primarily, which is very easy to use for all users. Freshservice is helpful, especially in incident management. Incident management is very helpful, and the system is straightforward, making it…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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"
"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."
"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."
"The workflow and the change management process are valuable."
"The most valuable feature of Freshservice is you can assign downloaded tickets and the reports are useful."
"One of the things I liked about Freshservice was how easy it was to implement. While it doesn't have extensive customization capabilities, the available options are sufficient for certain sizes of companies. You don't need to customize your ticketing system much. Freshservice is a great solution because you can implement it very quickly. You can upload your catalog, and you're done in maybe a week or two."
"It allowed the development team to concentrate on the client’s requirements instead."
"The solution has been stable."
"The solution facilitates a transition from an organizational structure that is function-based to a process-oriented approach."
"The solution’s timely automated triggers increase our IT team’s productivity."
"We use the ticketing system primarily, which is very easy to use for all users."
 

Cons

"The knowledge management could definitely be improved."
"I would like to see improvement to the out-of-the-box verbiage, with the questions going to the right place."
"I would like to see the continued expansion of all of the automation capabilities."
"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."
"The reports provided by the solution are not customizable."
"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."
"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."
"There are some limitations in reporting. For example, I would like to have a report of conversations or replies."
"You can't implement a complicated delivery workflow. We don't have the same problems with incident and change workflows. It's only for delivery workflow. They have a mechanism for modifying your incident or change workflow. There's a visual interface for that, so there's no reason not to have the same function for request management."
"Asset management can definitely be improved because it doesn't pick up every single device on the network or every single piece of information. Some manual information still needs to be entered."
"It's hard to interact directly with the users themselves."
"The chat portal is not that great."
"I think it would be great if the tool had another version that is more customizable. From what I remember, there were some limitations regarding the number of assets you could track. In a more robust version, the number of assets increases, but I think it would be better to have something more customizable for all versions, especially the most robust version. This would be great for larger customers."
"Asset management can definitely be improved because it doesn't pick up every single device on the network or every single piece of information."
"There is a need for improvement in terms of automatic escalation to the next level if an issue is not resolved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive. It's not a cheap thing."
"The solution is affordable."
"The price for the licensing is fair."
"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 was a middle tier. It wasn't an expensive one. It was a tier model usage. Licensing costs varied between admin users and regular users."
"Its price is great. Its pricing is supposedly a lot less than ServiceNow and other alternatives."
"Our licensing fee for Freshservice is $2,500 a year."
"Freshservice price is competitive, it is not more than other solutions on the market."
"The pricing information is on their website. It's my understanding that their Pro Plan, for example, is around $89/month."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"Freshservice's licensing costs are pretty good, and it has different categories of pricing based on what modules and features you choose, which gives a lot of flexibility."
"Compared to other tools, Freshservice is affordable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
48%
Retailer
6%
Healthcare Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
20%
Educational Organization
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
University
7%
 

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 Freshservice?
The solution has been very helpful engineering insights into the client's environment. We have been able to manage calls and incidence very efficiently which provides us with a clear understanding...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Freshservice?
The solution offers flat licensing and appears to be cost-effective.
What needs improvement with Freshservice?
There is a need for improvement in terms of automatic escalation to the next level if an issue is not resolved. It should optimize and allow customization. Additionally, asset management needs impr...
 

Also Known As

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Sinclair Broadcast Group, Western Carriers, Judson University, Golf Canada, Travix, Proxama, Paymentez, Ready Auto Transport
Find out what your peers are saying about Espressive Barista vs. Freshservice and other solutions. Updated: August 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.