Parature (Discontinued)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Parature (Discontinued)
Score 5.0 out of 10
N/A
Parature 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
Parature (Discontinued)
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Parature (Discontinued)
Free Trial
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Parature (Discontinued)
Considered Both Products
Parature (Discontinued)
Chose Parature (Discontinued)
I have not used any other products, but my colleagues have and Parature is a blessing in comparison.
Chose Parature (Discontinued)
I haven't used many similar products.
Chose Parature (Discontinued)
There are services that do bits and pieces of what Parature does. We liked the idea of having one service that meets our needs.
Chose Parature (Discontinued)
Before choosing Parature we reviewed many of the currently available solutions before building our short list of Parature, SugarCRM, Zendesk, Salesforce, and NetSuite. In the end, the licensing models for Salesforce and Netsuite eliminated them from consideration. The SugarCRM …
Chose Parature (Discontinued)
Parature comes in at just the right blend between ticketing solutions like Ceridian and Remedy. Ceridian is a little too cut-down/simple while Remedy can be mired by its complexity. Parature shares the same features as quite a few other ticketing solutions, but hits strongly in …
Chose Parature (Discontinued)
I'm currently using Solarwinds Web Help Desk and I think the 2 are very comparable. I didn't select either product but I'd rate Parature at the same level as WHD or better.
Chose Parature (Discontinued)
Salesforce is so much more intuitive and the layout is so much better. I never had any training nor did I need it with SF and with Parature it was a constant battle to understand its issues. I don't like to feel I have to resort to a manual every time I use the product.
Chose Parature (Discontinued)
Between SolarWinds and Altiris, I like the advantage that Parature gives. The auto reply is a huge assistance when dealing with people outside of my organization.
Chose Parature (Discontinued)
At the time, I believe we chose Parature because of pricing. That decision was made before my tenure with the company.
Best Alternatives
Parature (Discontinued)
Small Businesses
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
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Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
SysAid
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Score 8.9 out of 10
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User Ratings
Parature (Discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
6.7
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
6.1
(0 ratings)
Usability
2.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
7.5
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
1.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Parature (Discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
Parature earns a "7" on my rating scale because it fits the bill for a ticketing solution. While it is not the most powerful utility I have come across, it is fairly user friendly and gets the job done. There is quite a bit of room for customizing the interface, but it comes with a learning curve. A score of "7" reflects what I would tell anyone who is looking for feedback on this application; it's better than a majority of the market share, but still has room to grow!
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Pros
  • Syncs all support emails into cases that can the be prioritized, monitored, and tracked.
  • Provides easy canned responses to common support questions helping save time.
  • Provides live chat.
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Cons
  • Implementation- I think they have worked on improving this since we launched
  • Custom requests
  • Perhaps an interface with other business systems
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Likelihood to Renew
We left Parature for Salesforce Service Cloud. While Parature was functional, as our business matured we needed better support, more stability, and a lot more features. In addition, it integrated with our sales, marketing, and finance department, allowing us to all use a single solution and be able to share information across departments.
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Usability
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.
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Reliability and Availability
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.
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Support Rating
Nothing ever seemed to get resolved
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Alternatives Considered
Before choosing Parature we reviewed many of the currently available solutions before building our short list of Parature, SugarCRM, Zendesk, Salesforce, and NetSuite. In the end, the licensing models for Salesforce and Netsuite eliminated them from consideration. The SugarCRM solution was our current solution, and didn't appear to be a key area of focus for Sugar (though we continue to use SugarCRM for everything except the Ticketing feature). Zendesk lacked the Download Module feature which is a critical element of our deployment. In the end, it was Parature that addressed all of the needs we identified and did so in a single, hosted solution. It was also one of the least expensive to deploy and maintain.
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Return on Investment
  • Positive: everything is housed in one place, we are paperless and we are efficient.
  • Negative: the bugs of this product make the above equally as frustrating. Also, some people don't use it correctly and going back and fixing their mistake is time-consuming. The reporting feature are also pretty flawed.
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ScreenShots