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Espressive Barista vs ServiceNow 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)
ServiceNow
Ranking in Help Desk Software
1st
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
217
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (1st), Rapid Application Development Software (2nd), No-Code Development Platforms (1st)
 

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 ServiceNow is 23.9%, down from 27.5% 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.
Somnath Kand - PeerSpot reviewer
Custom integration and reporting lead to efficient ticket management
There is a need for bug or error tracking in ServiceNow. Although there are child incidents or tickets, tracking primary issues or bugs within enhancements is not present. The reporting features in the new portal could be more user-friendly. While it provides options to minimize chart and image sizes, actual implementation doesn't always reflect these changes.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The bot is pretty easy to update and keep up to date. Espressive itself is pretty easy to work with."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"I like Expressive Barista's integration with Microsoft Teams."
"Remote access is most valuable."
"A workflow automation platform that's reliable, performs well, and has good reporting and integration."
"We always get good support."
"Operations and maintenance costs have been reduced using this solution. We have been able to deliver faster solutions to our customers and track progress using live data."
"It allows us to filter the data, create graphs, and get detailed reports."
"The flow designer for application development is the most valuable. The newest version of flow designer allows us to develop applications quite fast. We can have custom and mobile applications. It has an interface for mobiles, and it also has a good reputation."
"I recommend ServiceNow due to its stability and good security."
"One feature of ServiceNow that is important is the workflow engine. From my perspective [as a consultant] the power to be able to structure processes, represent workforce management for organizations, and the visibility provided by the reporting are additional top features."
 

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."
"Espressive Barista's natural language processing and conventional AI still have room for improvement."
"The reports provided by the solution are not customizable."
"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 improvement to the out-of-the-box verbiage, with the questions going to the right place."
"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 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."
"The solution is lacking in the mobile application area that could be improved."
"The discovery of assets could be improved; right now they only allow for one domain."
"Their cloud management is also not that great compared to other products."
"HR Service Management is one module that needs a lot of improvement because it's a pretty new module. It was introduced in the last two years. It's becoming more mature day by day, but there is a lot of scope for improvement in that module."
"if I consider from the IT operations management side, ServiceNow is pretty premature on some things, especially the discovery, while the other tools like Micro Focus and BMC Remedy, those that have been in the market for quite some time. ServiceNow is evolving itself in the discovery piece of the future."
"It's not user-friendly by default, but it can be customized to be customer-friendly."
"The solution's user experience could be improved concerning its UI and portals."
"A new user does need training or time to learn the solution before jumping in. It was very hard in the beginning to understand everything. I couldn't find the models I needed at the time."
 

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."
"The solution is affordable."
"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."
"It is expensive. It's not a cheap thing."
"The platform offers a free trial, by providing a free developer instance once you sign up."
"The license model is based on a number of fulfillers (active users who play some role within the ServiceNow functionality). Therefore, you can serve as many end-users as you want, without additional costs."
"There is an annual subscription to use this solution."
"ServiceNow pricing is an art, not a science. The deal depends on how commercially savvy you are, which does make it something that is quite difficult to get right. It is most definitely an opportunity area for ServiceNow to improve and have more visibility around pricing of the different products within the platform."
"The mandatory minimum is US$ 20,000 for licensing."
"It is very expensive because it is a big organization. You have to pay for additional things."
"It has a higher cost compared to local/regional solutions."
"They could be more competitive with their licensing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
52%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
5%
Retailer
4%
Educational Organization
27%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
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 ...
Which solution is better for developing non-ITSM applications: OutSystems or Service Now?
The short answer is that OutSystems is far better for 2 main reasons. Firstly, with Service Now you are locked into that platform for good. The business model is to lock in and then keep pumping th...
Would you choose ServiceNow over Microsoft PowerApps?
Hi Netanya, I will choose ServiceNow because ServiceNow is a very good tool compared to Microsoft PowerApp. Because ServiceNow has a very strong module (Performance Analysis) reporting which will ...
What do you like most about ServiceNow?
The solution has a user-friendly interface.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
AAA, AstraZeneca, Becton, Dickinson and Company, Broadcom, Christus Health, Epicor, Equinix, GE Capital, Intuit, KPMG, Loyola Marymount University, OshKosh, Quantas, RedHat, Royal Bank of Scotland, Swiss Re, U.S. Department of Energy, Safeway, Yale University, and Zillow    
Find out what your peers are saying about Espressive Barista vs. ServiceNow and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.