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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    HelpSpot

    Score2 out of 10
    N/AHelpSpot is an affordable, web-based help desk system. It is available as a SaaS product or can be hosted by the customer behind a firewall. Pricing is by named user.

    $49

    per month

    Parature (Discontinued)

    Score5 out of 10
    N/AParature was a self-service customer support platform providing a self-service knowledge base to connect with customers across multiple channels. The company was acquired by Microsoft in January 2014 and reached EOL in 2017.N/A
    Pricing
    HelpSpotParature (Discontinued)
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    HelpSpotParature (Discontinued)
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    HelpSpotParature (Discontinued)
    Incident and problem management
    Comparison of Incident and problem management features of HelpSpot and Parature (Discontinued)
    Feature
    HelpSpot
    9.0
    1 Ratings
    9% above category average
    Parature (Discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Organize and prioritize service tickets9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ticket creation and submission9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ticket response9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Self Help Community
    Comparison of Self Help Community features of HelpSpot and Parature (Discontinued)
    Feature
    HelpSpot
    9.0
    1 Ratings
    12% above category average
    Parature (Discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Internal knowledge base9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multi-Channel Help
    Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of HelpSpot and Parature (Discontinued)
    Feature
    HelpSpot
    9.0
    1 Ratings
    12% above category average
    Parature (Discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Email support9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    HelpSpotParature (Discontinued)
    Small Businesses
    Help Scout
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Help Scout
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    LiveAgent
    Score8.8 out of 10
    LiveAgent
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Front
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Front
    Score9.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    HelpSpotParature (Discontinued)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (3 ratings)
    6.7
    (10 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    2.3
    (2 ratings)
    6.1
    (10 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    2.0
    (2 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.5
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    1.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    HelpSpotParature (Discontinued)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    UserScape
    HelpSpot is well suited for streamlining support ticketing within the organization. By providing a single point of contact to email for support, we were able to increase response time and case resolution by approximately 30% through the increased efficiency of ticket routing via workflows and the ability for IT support staff to grab tickets from the queue instead of having them pile up in a mailbox that contains other emails as well.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    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
    Read full review
    Pros
    UserScape
    • HelpSpot was great for organization. Having different queues allowed each of my team members to organize their conversations with the customer and quickly retrieve the history of the ticket.
    • HelpSpot is a fairly simple tool that has a friendly user interface. With it's more modern look, it made it easier for me personally to navigate and train team members on how to use it successfully.
    • HelpSpot allowed our team to view the responses section, which allowed our team to cut down on the time we spent responding to a ticket.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • 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
    Read full review
    Cons
    UserScape
    • The UI is a little dated but to be fair, shows most of the pertinent information at a glance on a well designed dashboard.
    • The UI can also be buggy at times with controls appearing in strange places. These glitches are usually corrected within a reasonable amount of time.
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • 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
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    UserScape
    My current job does not use this platform as it is not necessary for my job function.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    Parature has been the best option for this campus in terms of what we use it for and there is no alternative
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    UserScape
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    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
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    UserScape
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    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
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    UserScape
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    Nothing ever seemed to get resolved
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    UserScape
    HelpSpot appears to be more of an old-school product but much of the recent technology is running under the surface. It has much of the compexity and customization available with Jira in tandem with the easy communications interface, not unlike Zendesk ,and some of the potential archival intelligence (in the works) of Fogbugz
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    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
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    UserScape
    • Improved ticket response time
    • Workload reporting to upper management
    • Ticket category reporting to identify training opportunities
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • 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
    Read full review
    ScreenShots