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Espressive Barista vs NinjaOne 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 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)
NinjaOne
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (30th), Server Monitoring (11th), Remote Access (20th), Mobile Device Management (MDM) (5th), IT Alerting and Incident Management (10th), Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) (1st), Patch Management (5th), MSP Backup (4th), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the IT Service Management (ITSM) category, the mindshare of Espressive Barista is 0.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NinjaOne is 3.2%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Service Management (ITSM)
 

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.
Jörg Köhler - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhances remote access and integration with third-party tools
I use NinjaOne for managing smaller clients, specifically their devices and software, for small to medium businesses. I provide remote management services through NinjaOne. It allows clients to use NinjaOne for remote access to their computers for home office purposes. This feature is highly…

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."
"Its ability to recognize phrases has gotten smarter over time."
"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 bot is pretty easy to update and keep up to date. Espressive itself is pretty easy to work with."
"The solution is available to support us instantly as required."
"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."
"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 can use it for remote monitoring, and it also works great as a troubleshooting tool. We are able to open up a command line or a PowerShell session remotely without having to disrupt the user. They have a limited network device monitoring capability, but for workstation servers, we have the event logs. We can do performance monitoring, system changes, software deployment, and patch management. We can also push scripts. It has a very simple web interface. There are no additional things to do there. Security is also pretty good. It does the same things that the other competitor's tools do. One of the advantages of Ninja is that they have a more capable mobile app, which allows you to see the alerts immediately. I get alerted to major critical issues."
"The best feature of NinjaOne is the SLA system. Every IT person can check their performance, how long it takes to resolve an issue, and how many SLAs are breached."
"NinjaOne has a feature where we can create custom scripts that we can run on devices remotely."
"The tool's most valuable feature is third-party application updates."
"The most valuable features of NinjaOne include remote desktop management, support and assistive tools, and screen sharing."
"The most relevant feature is the monitoring, which provides built-in tools for sending commands."
"It helps us to be able to have visibility into the overall performance of the servers, laptops, and desktops that we are managing currently."
"The customer support at NinjaOne is excellent, rated ten out of ten."
 

Cons

"The reports provided by the solution are not customizable."
"The knowledge management could definitely be improved."
"Espressive Barista's natural language processing and conventional AI still have room for improvement."
"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."
"I would like to see the continued expansion of all of the automation capabilities."
"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."
"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."
"The NinjaOne distribution server is highly dependent on an active directory."
"NinjaOne's reporting module is cumbersome."
"The ticketing system in NinjaOne is not the best."
"NinjaOne's dashboard could be easier to use."
"Lacks sufficient integrations with other PSAs."
"There was a lot of delay with NinjaOne's ticketing system. For example, when a user creates a ticket and raises an issue, it would take 30 to 40 minutes to appear on the IT side. So the time delay issue is the main point."
"The inclusion of XENServer and Proxmox as virtual platforms in NinjaOne is currently missing."
"Improvements could be made to reduce NinjaOne's functionalities to focus more on inventory or remote help tools."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"User-based licensing has been working well for us, and we believe we are deriving significant value from it."
"The solution is affordable."
"It is expensive. It's not a cheap thing."
"The price for the licensing is fair."
"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 roughly costs $400 a month. It provides a good value because of the number of tools that you get in the solution. I would rate it a four out of five in terms of pricing. There are no additional costs other than the standard licensing fees."
"NinjaRMM uses a subscription model."
"Its pricing is great."
"We currently pay $1.20 per device on a monthly basis."
"We got a pretty good deal. It was fairly affordable."
"NinjaOne's price is fine since my workplace is an educational institution, so we get the product at a really good price considering that we do not pay taxes, making the prices very fair and worth the product."
"NinjaOne is a little expensive but is still cheaper than competitors like Acronis or Veeam."
"The pricing is reasonable and cheaper than ConnectWise."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
51%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
5%
Retailer
4%
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
8%
Retailer
7%
Manufacturing Company
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 NinjaOne?
NinjaOne helps us view the status of software patching, whether the PC is locked or unlocked.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NinjaOne?
The price or licensing of NinjaOne is a little bit high.
What needs improvement with NinjaOne?
The network monitoring needs to be improved.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Status Pros, Mitchell and Company
Find out what your peers are saying about Espressive Barista vs. NinjaOne and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.