eStreamDesk vs. Microsoft Parature (Discontinued)

The application's simplistic approach to Web-based helpdesk management makes it simple to use. It avoids unnecessary functionality and has a simple, clear user interface. The only features that are really helpful to businesses are hosted on the platform. This is of great help in minimizing workload, especially if you meant to use it for customer requests.

Incentivized

The single element of Parature I've not seen in any other system of this kind is the Download Module. You can post files in the open, or protect them by any number of entitlement methods. The solution is also appealing to those who don't want to manage the back-end/IT needs as it is a hosted solution and has proven to be very reliable.

Incentivized

• It is very easy to implement in small and medium enterprises.
• The rules engine is simple and effective.
• 100% usable right out of the box.
• API simple and functional integration.

• Clean/Friendly UI. It was extremely easy to navigate around Parature's menus at a high level, and you could take advantage of the more robust features as you became more comfortable and familiar with how Parature operates!
• Strong Knowledge Base. Writing KB articles or ticket summaries and making use of the search function within Parature allows for expedient recovery of past ticket information. Being able to search for a fix action, or at least a troubleshooting article that can guide you towards a resolution is extremely valuable.
• Enhanced Notation Capability. Being able to send/post internal or external updates to a ticket is great! You can leave the wordy technical details for other employees while making sure to communicate the high-points and fix action to the end-user.

Incentivized

• No complaints - it does what it is expected to do at a very reasonable price.

• Reporting is barebones at best. If you need special reports, we had to go through Parature to have them built.
• The use of frames on a website is very 1990s. It actually impacts usability of the product, especially when combined with how Parature handled sessions. An engineer could only work one ticket at a time which, honestly, isn't very realistic for a busy support team that is working on several issues at a time.
• Support was often unresponsive when contacted for unplanned problems.
• The knowledge base was not very friendly for clients and it provided no real encouragement for it to be used.
• It took several clicks to do something as simple as edit and assign a ticket or to close a ticket.

Incentivized

No complaints at all. Great cost. eStreamDesk does the job.

Parature has been the best option for this campus in terms of what we use it for and there is no alternative

Incentivized

It was bulky, cumbersome, and didn't allow us to handle the volume of cases we received on a daily basis. Many of our issues were highly technical in nature and we would often need to work on 2 or 3 at once. The poor design choices prevented this, which was unfortunate.

Incentivized

They recently had one very extended outage. It was a data center issue - but they were not diversified enough so in the end the system was down for almost 8 hours. There are also periods of time where for no reason the system simply doesn't respond. This small outages are usually short (just a few minutes), and have in fact been occurring less often, so it appears some corrective actions have been taken.

Incentivized

Nothing ever seemed to get resolved

Incentivized

I tried several open source tools. The relationship between product quality and effort to set up open source tools, and the acquisition of a server, favor eStreamDesk. The US price is $7 a month per agent. It is perfectly translated into Spanish.

There are services that do bits and pieces of what Parature does. We liked the idea of having one service that meets our needs

Incentivized

• Parature allows for better Customer Service
• Can follow up automatically for tickets
• Will automatically close tickets that haven't been responded to.
• Allows customers to reopen tickets easily and not allow them to be missed.

Incentivized