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ETO Software (legacy) vs. PracticePanther

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    ETO Software (legacy)

    Score7.2 out of 10
    Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
    ETO Software is a legacy case management solution supported by Social Solutions, acquired by Bonterra, and later sold as Bonterra ETO. The application is not the company's current case management solution.N/A

    PracticePanther

    Score6.2 out of 10
    N/APracticePanther is a legal case management software for attorneys with features like customized workflows, simplified time tracking and billing, native online payment processing, and client portals designed to increase firm efficiency. The software comes with data migration at no additional cost, as well as live training and support to help firms to get up and running quickly. PracticePanther's goals are to help firms to: Save 8+ hours per week on admin…

    $59

    per month per user

    Pricing
    ETO Software (legacy)PracticePanther
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Solo Plan (Billed Annually)
    $49
    per month per user
    Solo Plan (Billed Monthly)
    $59
    per month per user
    Essential Plan (Billed Annually)
    $69
    per month per user
    Essential Plan (Billed Monthly)
    $79
    per month per user
    Business Plan (Billed Annually)
    $89
    per month per user
    Business Plan (Billed Monthly)
    $99
    per month per user
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    ETO Software (legacy)PracticePanther
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeRequiredNo setup fee
    Additional Details—Data migration, live training, and support available at no additional cost.
    More Pricing Information
    Best Alternatives
    ETO Software (legacy)PracticePanther
    Small Businesses
    Bonterra Apricot
    Score9.2 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    Bonterra Apricot
    Score9.2 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    ETO Software (legacy)PracticePanther
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.0
    (44 ratings)
    8.2
    (3 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    1.0
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    1.0
    (5 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Availability
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    4.0
    (5 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    5.1
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    5.5
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    ETO Software (legacy)PracticePanther
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Discontinued Products
    ETO Social Solutions should be avoided until they start caring about the problems generated by their software. In regards specifically to the ARMS suite utilized by the entire state of California, until the ETO software learns how to speak with SOMS, and unless it can be customized by knowledgeable people who consult with front-line users. It is not appropriate to provide the state legislature with bad data. I have 6 years of experience with it and I have multiple sources of agreement from fellow users throughout the state.
    Read full review
    PracticePanther
    It is perfect for law management as it has integrations with Lawpay, which is specific for operating and trust account billing. I am able to create custom intakes for a client to fill out, automated with a task when submitted, and then review and response. I am also able to use the forms for internal use to enter information and use templates to populate those fields onto documents that I create.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Discontinued Products
    • ETO's customization allows for the use of so many different and unique applications.
    • The ability to build extremely customized reports also allows us to get very detail oriented results or very broad building wide stats.
    • The additional added features such as workflow, referrals, and ETO Engage are useful in their own way and add more ways to better track and record data while simplifying some end-user processes.
    Incentivized
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    PracticePanther
    • Ease of Use
    • Ease of Adding Time and Expenses to Accounts
    • Ease of Seeing Aging Accounts
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Discontinued Products
    • The user interface is not intuitive and exceptionally difficult for non-tech savvy people to learn.
    • The system is not as customizable as we were led to believe at the initial purchase.
    • The system does not interface well with other systems. Organizationally we are moving towards data integration, and we will likely replace ETO because of this limitation.
    • Considering the limitations of the system, the cost is quite high. We've seen only marginal benefits of this system over pen and paper, and the ROI is not promising.
    • The initial build process was very frustrating. We didn't understand what the developer was billing us for. Something like simple touchpoint forms was billed for more hours than it would seem to require.
    • A system like this should be both fully mobile compatible and have offline functionality.
    • We would benefit from more nuanced security settings.
    Incentivized
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    PracticePanther
    • Want to easily be able to customize matter information and haven't figured out how to do it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Discontinued Products
    Social Solutions has been great for our organization. It has allowed us to not only report on data, but to dive into it to see trends and give snapshots of the current status of our neighbors. Social Solutions has been helpful in getting us to see additional ways we can use our data and ways that it is easier for front line staff to use this tool
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    PracticePanther
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Discontinued Products
    As a technically savvy person with experience learning new database software systems I find ETO relatively straightforward now that I've been trained in it's use. However, many of our staff are less technically savvy and the learning curve for ETO can be grueling for many, who require frequent troubleshooting and support from me. Additionally, there are small quality of life improvements that would increase usability even for me - such as allowing multiple tabs to be open simultaneously or being able to use the browser's "back" and "forward" buttons.
    Incentivized
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    PracticePanther
    Very easy to use and intuitive. This does not require complex data entry or toggling between multiple screens.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Discontinued Products
    Routine maintenance is announced with plenty of lead time, and the few times I've been unable to log in to the system properly a simple refresh was all that was required to fix.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    PracticePanther
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Discontinued Products
    Mostly really strong now, although I understand that for some years before switching their hosting service to AWS performance was a real issue with ETO and we had frequent problems with pages timing out or other glitches stemming from performance issues. With AWS that is mostly a thing of the past, although it is still a major issue with the reporting tool which is unable to run reports on the entire database due to performance limitations, instead requiring admins to define universes prior to running queries.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    PracticePanther
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Discontinued Products
    We love the first tier customer support folks! They're friendly, helpful, and knowledgeable within the scope of their position. The experiences we've had with their supervisors have also been mostly good and again they seem to be doing what they can within the scope of their positions. This is what prevents me from selecting 1. Unfortunately, none of these wonderful folks can offer real solutions when things are actually broken. They verify there's a problem and send it to the black hole called "the developers". After that, we don't hear anything useful and we figure out how to live with/work around the problem ourselves. (Requests for updates typically get "still with the developer" responses.) This is highly frustrating given that most of our issues are basic system issues (functionality that worked then broke after an update by Social Solutions, servers not syncing, report universes not flattening automatically, etc.). All we want is for the system to work as designed and to be fixed in a timely fashion when it doesn't. Apparently, that's too much to ask. (And no, we don't expect it to happen instantly, programming and quality control checks obviously take time.)
    Incentivized
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    PracticePanther
    I love the Support team. Available through chat on any screen on your practice panther. They say they respond within 24 hours but it's usually at most 3 hours and they direct you a solution or that confirm no available solution. The team at PP is always helpful and know how to follow up with issues in a timely manner.
    Incentivized
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    Online Training
    Discontinued Products
    Really good trainer and exhaustive curriculum covered, but ETO is a complex enough system that you don't *really* know how to use it until you've been in the trenches for a few weeks. For instance, I took a Report Writing training and emerged with some fluency in the reports interface and a vague understanding of the process, but immediately encountered a legion of instance-specific idiosyncrasies that would have been totally impossible to address in a webinar training for a dozen folks from different orgs working in different instances.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    PracticePanther
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    Discontinued Products
    Hard to say, as I was not with the agency at the time. However, based on our use of the software ~5years later I can say that there were no catastrophic design choices made during implementation that have become unduly burdensome as we've scaled up.
    Incentivized
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    PracticePanther
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Discontinued Products
    When we made our decision several years ago Social Solutions had just acquired Apricot. At that time it was recommended to use ETO based off our revenue stream. However, it seems like Social Solutions has put in a lot more time and effort into Apricot over ETO and it seems more modern and user friendly. I think it is worth a second look once our contract expires
    Incentivized
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    PracticePanther
    PracticePanther is much easier and much more user friendly for what I need.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    Discontinued Products
    The core product scales well, and we've grown quite a bit as an agency during our use of ETO. However, there are some real pain points particularly around creating new programs and managing report universes that require extensive offline checklist resources and a full-spectrum understanding of how changing settings in one part of ETO can have downstream impact in other areas. This can introduce a "chilling" effect on proposed changes to the system, where there is strong incentive to leave things as-is to avoid unforeseen consequences.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    PracticePanther
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Discontinued Products
    • I would say that at this point the overall ROI has been negative as we aren't getting much more out of our data by the switch we made to ETO, but the cost is much higher. I anticipate that will change as we get better at using ETO.
    • Most users that have switched to ETO in our organization prefer it to what they were using before and some are more appreciative of the value they can get from the data.
    Incentivized
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    PracticePanther
    • I have been able to expedite time reviewing a file, organizing information so less time spent on workers.
    • The automated organization through integrations, like dropbox, to organize all my matters in a uniform manner. Saves time.
    • Ease of use has saved on training as instructions can be implemented directly on workflows. Saves time. Each time it saves a worker time, I am more efficient and my return on investment is apparent.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots

    ETO Software (legacy) Screenshots

    Product screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshot

    PracticePanther Screenshots

    Screenshot of Dashboard - Mobile FriendlyScreenshot of DashboardScreenshot of CalendarScreenshot of Time TrackingScreenshot of InvoicesScreenshot of Document Management