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Espressive Barista vs SysAid 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 (5th)
SysAid
Ranking in Help Desk Software
21st
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
20th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 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 SysAid is 0.8%, up from 0.7% 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.
Todd Blake - PeerSpot reviewer
A solution that streamlines ticket creation for the staff members of a business and enables efficient issue resolution by the IT team
SysAid is similar to Nintex AssureSign. Some of the back-end configurations of the solution are very difficult. So, we always need SysAid's help. Also, there are almost too many features that we are not taking advantage of in our company since we don't even know about them. A little bit of a streamlining or simplification of the main features would be a good improvement. I would like to see SysAid present its solution more easily. There is a lot in the solution, and it is more than what we need in our company.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 most valuable feature is its scalability."
"The solution is available to support us instantly as required."
"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."
"I like Expressive Barista's integration with Microsoft Teams."
"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."
"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 solution can scale."
"The simplicity of the solution is excellent."
"The SysAid team provided excellent service to implement the solution for us. From the very first day, we received a comp manager, and a project manager, to implement the product. They continued to inquire about our business needs and then finalized the best path for us."
"I would say the overall flexibility of the product is its most valuable feature."
"All our service management is integrated into one system. Our response time is much faster because we have a visual into what is going on."
"SysAid is more user-friendly, and its configuration is easier than other tools."
"The service desk automation and orchestration are very good. We are implementing it at the moment. We implemented it for two of our applications already for our CRM. Whenever there's a change in the CRM, it will automate them into SysAid as well. We have two workflows from our CRM into SysAid, which is very helpful. Overall, we're very happy with the workflow."
"The solution provides us with multi-layered service management along with all our support pieces integrated in one system. Our entire system is run on SysAid, from Tier 1 to Tier 3. All the other IT department functionality is captured in SysAid, like development, warehousing, and application. So, it has vertical and horizontal coverage."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"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 reports provided by the solution are not customizable."
"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."
"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."
"The administrative side of the user interface could be a little more user-friendly. It is easier for me to export our reports into Excel, then do a server retrieval and get the information. Whereas, to do a report, you have to go through a configuration type of process, which is kind of difficult and complicated. I have been using this solution for two years now and I still haven't gotten the hang of the reports."
"SysAid has fewer AI features compared to other tools."
"Monitoring needs improvement. At the moment we are looking for some advanced monitoring tools, which are using AI and machine learning as well. This product currently does not offer that."
"So far, we're very happy with the new integration. The only thing that I would like to see is for them to improve asset management so that it's more usable. We looked at it once and we didn't find it quite usable for us. That's why we didn't use it. We haven't looked into the new one yet but the asset management is something that can be improved even more and patch management is not as good as it could be."
"There is a learning curve for the users."
"Some of the back-end configurations of the solution are very difficult. So, we always need SysAid's help."
"Currently, SysAid does not have a mobile application."
"The automation needs improvement. The workflow has some improvements to do. There's some stuff that they are working on like having cascaded fields. For example, we're categorizing tickets by location, by site and by building and then by data room within a data center. At the moment they're all separate fields."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It is expensive. It's not a cheap thing."
"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."
"Though I am not really sure about SysAid's prices, I know that it is competitive compared to some of the other products that our company looked at, like ConnectWise and ServiceNow."
"We saw our investment back at the end of year one."
"SysAid is a good solution, especially from a pricing perspective."
"The pricing of SysAid is less than its competitors."
"Once you're interested, talk with SysAid. You can have them come in and look at your company and advise you on the best solution. They will tell you what comes with each separate package and also advise you what application to activate. If you want something that they don't have, they have a department that can design something based on your unique requests."
"Overall, the price is good. It's all about what you get for the base amount. From my perspective, you want to look at what you're getting out-of-the-box. SysAid does a good job of putting key stuff in the box for you."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
50%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Healthcare Company
6%
Retailer
5%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

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 SysAid?
SysAid is more user-friendly, and its configuration is easier than other tools.
What needs improvement with SysAid?
With SysAid, most of the customers are requesting a native mobile application. SysAid has fewer AI features compared to other tools.
What advice do you have for others considering SysAid?
Our customers use the enterprise edition and the standard edition of SysAid. We provide local support, but there are some things we have to escalate to SysAid. When we need support, we use their su...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Disney, Sears Holdings Corporation, LAN Airlines, Schneider Electric, On Semiconductors, Toyota, Sky, KPMG, Georgetown University Law Center, Motorola, North York General Hospital, Volksbank, Xerox, Bacardi, Del Monte Fresh Produce, Manpower, Nucor, Ecobank
Find out what your peers are saying about Espressive Barista vs. SysAid and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.