Industry
Taylor Halliday
Co-Founder
12 minutes
Employees increasingly expect immediate support for their IT, HR, and operational needs. The modern workplace has evolved beyond ticket-based systems with long wait times, creating demand for AI-powered solutions that understand natural language requests and resolve issues instantly.
The AI help desk landscape continues to evolve rapidly, with ServiceNow's March 2025 acquisition of Moveworks being the latest significant development. As ServiceNow plans to integrate Moveworks' AI assistant capabilities into its platform, many organizations are reassessing their options—especially since acquisitions typically bring periods of transition that can affect product roadmaps, pricing, and support.
Moveworks has established itself as a leader in this space, but it's not the only option available. This guide explores Moveworks' features, strengths, and limitations in light of the recent acquisition—and examines several compelling alternatives that might better suit your organization's specific needs.
What is Moveworks?
Moveworks is an AI platform that automates employee support through conversational AI. It understands natural language requests and resolves issues in real-time, handling everything from IT helpdesk tickets (password resets, software provisioning) to HR inquiries and other routine tasks. The company has built a significant presence in the enterprise AI space, which culminated in its recent acquisition by ServiceNow.
Key Features of Moveworks:
Moveworks distinguishes itself through several powerful capabilities:
Advanced Natural Language Understanding (NLU): Moveworks is widely praised for its ability to accurately interpret employee queries and deliver relevant answers or actions without human intervention.
Multilingual Support: The platform supports over 100 languages, making it suitable for global organizations.
Proactive Issue Resolution: Moveworks can predict and address issues before they escalate using analytics to identify trends and fix problems preemptively.
Deep Integration with Enterprise Systems: Moveworks connects with popular workplace tools (Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google Workspace) and IT service management platforms (ServiceNow, Jira, Salesforce) to take action on employee requests.
End-to-End Resolution: The platform doesn't just answer questions—it resolves issues by interfacing with the right backend systems.
Moveworks serves primarily mid-size and large enterprises across various industries, with over 350 leading enterprises supporting more than 5 million employees worldwide. According to the acquisition announcement, Moveworks has grown to nearly 5 million employee users in about 18 months, with impressive adoption rates showing nearly 90% of customers deploying the technology to all employees. Its pricing is custom-based and tends to be on the higher side, though companies using the platform have reported significant ROI (some studies cite a 256% ROI over three years).
The ServiceNow Acquisition: What It Means
ServiceNow's acquisition represents a big shift. According to ServiceNow's announcement, the acquisition will "combine ServiceNow's agentic AI and automation strengths with Moveworks' front-end AI assistant and enterprise search technology." The companies already share approximately 250 mutual customers, with the majority of Moveworks' current deployments already using ServiceNow as a system of action.
While this integration promises powerful capabilities, acquisitions often bring uncertainty:
Product Roadmap Changes: Acquisitions frequently lead to shifts in product development priorities and timelines.
Potential Price Adjustments: As products are integrated into larger platforms, pricing structures often evolve.
Support Transitions: Customer support teams and processes may change during integration.
Integration Challenges: Even with the best intentions, combining technologies can introduce technical hurdles.
These factors make this an opportune time to evaluate alternatives, especially for organizations not already invested in the ServiceNow ecosystem.
Top Moveworks Alternatives in 2025
While Moveworks offers impressive capabilities, several alternatives might better align with your organization's needs and budget. Let's explore the most compelling options:
1. Ravenna.ai: The AI-first Help Desk
Ravenna.ai is an emerging player in the AI-powered internal help desk space that recognizes a fundamental truth: modern work happens in collaborative messaging platforms like Slack. Ravenna meets employees where they actually work rather than forcing them into separate portals or ticket systems.
What Sets Ravenna Apart:
AI-Native Design: Built from the ground up with artificial intelligence at its core, enabling advanced automation for service requests, knowledge base management, and common help desk tasks.
Workplace Messaging Integration: Ravenna integrates deeply with messaging platforms like Slack where teams already collaborate, allowing employees to receive instant support without context switching or leaving their primary communication environment.
Automated Knowledge Base Generation: Ravenna's AI automatically generates new knowledge base articles from past conversations and resolved tickets, ensuring the knowledge base remains current with minimal manual intervention.
Comprehensive Performance Metrics: Detailed analytics enable teams to monitor support operations, identify bottlenecks, and implement improvements.
Our philosophy reflects a new approach to enterprise service management: If modern internal service and support were being invented from scratch today, it wouldn't look anything like the bloated ticketing systems of old. It would live where people already collaborate, harness AI to automate repetitive requests, and free teams to focus on higher-level problem-solving.
For organizations that prioritize streamlined, in-context support without disrupting employee workflows, Ravenna offers a compelling alternative to traditional help desk models.
2. Aisera: The Automation Champion
Aisera offers an AI Service Desk platform similar in goal to Moveworks but with an emphasis on extensive integration capabilities and pre-built workflows.
Key Strengths:
Extensive Pre-built Resources: Aisera boasts 500+ integrations and 3,000+ prebuilt workflows for common IT and customer service tasks, enabling quick deployment with minimal training.
Plug-and-Play Approach: Organizations can deploy Aisera rapidly to handle requests across multiple channels (chat, email, voice) using its library of intents.
Multi-Channel Support: Unlike Moveworks' focus on internal support, Aisera extends to customer-facing support scenarios through various channels.
Bring Your Own LLM: Aisera allows customers to bring their own large language models if desired.
According to G2 comparisons, Aisera scores slightly higher than Moveworks on integration capabilities (8.9 vs. 8.3), likely due to its pre-built connectors. However, Moveworks often receives higher marks for natural language understanding accuracy.
Aisera's pricing is custom-quoted like Moveworks, targeting primarily mid-sized to large enterprises across sectors.
3. Espressive: The Employee Language Specialist
Espressive offers an AI virtual agent called Barista that emphasizes understanding the unique ways employees ask for help.
Standout Features:
Employee Language Cloud: A proprietary large AI language model trained on billions of employee phrases and requests across industries, enabling Espressive to understand company-specific terms and slang without extensive manual training.
Omnichannel Support: Employees can get help via web, mobile, chat, and other channels.
Built-in Smart Ticketing: Espressive can create and manage help desk tickets as needed.
Sentiment Analysis: The platform gauges user sentiment and emotion during chats to adjust the tone of responses.
No-Code Interface: Espressive allows workflow customization through an intuitive no-code interface.
Espressive claims impressive metrics: 80-85% employee self-service adoption and significant reductions in help desk call volume (50% or more) after deployment. Like Moveworks, it supports 100+ languages and offers strong integration capabilities.
4. ServiceNow + Moveworks: The Platform Integration
With ServiceNow's acquisition of Moveworks, the combined offering represents an evolving option in the market. According to the acquisition announcement, ServiceNow plans to deliver "a unified, end-to-end search and self-service experience for all employee requestors across every workflow – all from a single entry point."
Considerations:
Deep ServiceNow Integration: Even before the acquisition, Moveworks was already integrated with ServiceNow, and this connection will only strengthen. The combined solution will likely offer seamless workflow automation and AI-driven support within the ServiceNow ecosystem.
Agentic AI Focus: ServiceNow emphasizes that its AI solution is "the fastest-growing product introduction in the company's history," with nearly 1,000 AI customers and over $200 million in annual contract value for its Pro Plus AI solution as of December 2024.
Broader Use Cases: The announcement highlights expanded capabilities for sales, CRM, finance, and HR automation—suggesting the combined product will extend beyond traditional IT help desk functions.
Potential Integration Challenges: Despite promising seamless integration, combining two complex products often involves technical challenges and temporary disruptions.
Strategic Roadmap Uncertainty: As with any acquisition, the long-term product strategy may evolve, potentially impacting existing customers who chose Moveworks for specific capabilities.
ServiceNow and Moveworks will likely be a powerful combination for organizations already invested in the ServiceNow ecosystem. However, the integration period following acquisitions typically brings uncertainty, making this a good time for prospective customers to evaluate whether this combined offering or an different alternative better suits their needs.
5. Other Notable Alternatives
Several other players serve specific niches in the AI support space:
Rezolve.ai: Focuses on Microsoft Teams integration with features like desktop automation for endpoint tasks and GenAI chatbots. Claims 65% auto-resolution of IT and HR inquiries.
Freshservice (Freshdesk): Offers more affordable, tiered pricing (plans from ~$15 to $99 per agent/month) with AI capabilities like ticket routing and answering common questions, making it suitable for mid-sized organizations.
IBM Watson Assistant: Provides strong natural language tools and industry-specific models with flexible pricing options (including a starter plan around $140/month), though it requires more development effort as it's more of a toolkit than a ready-to-use solution.
Microsoft 365 Copilot: While not a dedicated help desk solution, it offers AI assistance for productivity within the Microsoft ecosystem.
Choosing the Right Moveworks Alternative
When evaluating AI-powered help desk solutions, consider these key factors:
1. Integration Requirements
Existing Ecosystem: Does your organization heavily use Slack (favoring Ravenna), Microsoft Teams (consider Rezolve.ai), or ServiceNow (potentially making the ServiceNow+Moveworks combination appealing)?
Multi-System Needs: If you need cross-system orchestration, independent solutions like Aisera or Ravenna might provide more flexibility than platform-specific options.
Integration Depth: Consider not just how many integrations a solution offers but how deeply it can interact with your critical systems.
Acquisition Impact: With Moveworks being acquired by ServiceNow, organizations not heavily invested in ServiceNow might want to consider independent alternatives to avoid potential lock-in or disruption during the integration period.
2. Language Understanding Capabilities
Complex Queries: If your employees make complex, context-rich requests, Moveworks and Espressive excel in natural language understanding.
Multilingual Needs: Most enterprise solutions support multiple languages, but verify coverage for your specific requirements.
Industry-Specific Terminology: Espressive's Employee Language Cloud and Moveworks' learning capabilities might better handle specialized vocabulary.
3. Deployment Scope and Scale
Company Size: Enterprise-grade solutions like Moveworks and Espressive target larger organizations, while options like Freshservice cater to mid-market companies.
Support Channels: Consider whether you need support only in chat platforms or across multiple channels (email, voice, web portals).
Implementation Timeline: Aisera's pre-built workflows might enable faster deployment, while Espressive claims implementation in 6-8 weeks.
4. Budget Considerations
Pricing Structure: Enterprise solutions (Moveworks, Aisera, Espressive) use custom pricing, while some alternatives offer transparent tiers.
ROI Potential: Evaluate each solution's claims about ticket deflection rates, time savings, and cost reductions.
Total Cost of Ownership: Consider implementation effort, ongoing management, and potential savings from automation.
The Future of AI Help Desks goes beyond ticket deflection
As we look ahead, the next generation of AI help desk solutions is moving beyond simple ticket deflection toward truly transformative workplace experiences.
Tomorrow's AI assistants won't just answer questions—they'll proactively identify potential issues, suggest process improvements, and continuously enhance the knowledge base without human intervention. They'll become true partners to IT and operations teams, handling routine tasks while empowering humans to focus on strategic initiatives.
The Risk of Acquisitions: Why Diversification Matters
Corporate acquisitions, while potentially beneficial for the acquiring company, often introduce significant uncertainty for customers. Historical data suggests that a majority of acquisitions fail to deliver their expected value, with integration challenges being a primary culprit.
When evaluating AI help desk solutions in light of the ServiceNow-Moveworks acquisition, consider these acquisition-related risks:
Product Discontinuation: Acquired products sometimes see features deprecated or entire product lines shelved if they overlap with the acquirer's offerings.
Cultural Integration Issues: Different company cultures can clash during integration, potentially impacting product quality and customer service.
Shifting Priorities: Acquisition often leads to changing priorities, with features important to existing customers sometimes deprioritized.
If you are evaluating options right now, these risks suggest the value of considering other options besides Moveworks.
Wrapping up
There's no one-size-fits-all answer to which AI help desk solution is best. Your ideal choice depends on your organization's specific needs, technical environment, and strategic priorities.
The ServiceNow-Moveworks combination will likely become a powerful option, particularly for organizations already invested in the ServiceNow ecosystem. However, the acquisition announcement makes this an excellent time to evaluate all options:
For ServiceNow Users: The integrated offering could provide significant value, though being prepared for some transition bumps is wise.
For Non-ServiceNow Organizations: Independent alternatives like Aisera, Espressive, and Ravenna offer compelling capabilities without tying you to a specific platform ecosystem.
For Slack-Centric Teams: Ravenna's purpose-built Slack integration offers a focused solution that may outperform broader platforms in this specific environment.
As you evaluate these alternatives, remember that the goal isn't just to automate tickets—it's to create a seamless experience where employees can get help instantly, in the channels where they already work, freeing your team to focus on what matters most: driving your business forward.
In a time of industry consolidation, maintaining awareness of the full spectrum of options ensures you can make strategic decisions that best serve your organization's unique needs.
