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
Vision Helpdesk
Score9.5 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
Vision Helpdesk, which started in 2005 as a simple help desk software has evolved into three customer service and IT support management tools.
Help Desk Software - A multi-channel help desk software that allows users to manage customer communication across various channels like email, web portals, chat, phone, and API.
Satellite Help Desk Software - A multi-company/brand/product help desk software that allows users to manage support for multiple companies in place.…
$8
per month
Pricing
Parature (Discontinued)
Vision Helpdesk
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Starter Help Desk
$8
per month per seat
Starter Help Desk
$12
per month per seat
Pro Help Desk
$16
per month per seat
Satellite Help Desk
$20
per month per seat
Pro Help Desk
$20
per month per seat
Satellite Help Desk
$24
per month per seat
Pro Service Desk
$24
per month per seat
Pro Service Desk
$32
per month per seat
Ent Service Desk
$32
per month per seat
Ent Service Desk
$48
per month per seat
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Parature (Discontinued)
Vision Helpdesk
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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More Pricing Information
Features
Parature (Discontinued)
Vision Helpdesk
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Parature (Discontinued) and Vision Helpdesk
Feature
Parature (Discontinued)
-
Ratings
Vision Helpdesk
6.8
3 Ratings
19% below category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets
00 Ratings
8.03 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications
00 Ratings
8.03 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission
00 Ratings
6.03 Ratings
Ticket response
00 Ratings
5.03 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Parature (Discontinued) and Vision Helpdesk
Feature
Parature (Discontinued)
-
Ratings
Vision Helpdesk
5.0
2 Ratings
46% below category average
External knowledge base
00 Ratings
5.02 Ratings
Internal knowledge base
00 Ratings
5.02 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Parature (Discontinued) and Vision Helpdesk
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I think that there is probably nothing that Vision Helpdesk can't do given enough work to customize it. The problem is that you almost have to have someone dedicated to knowing everything there is to know about the system and then have them be the administrator of all the customizations and feature additions you want. It's great that it can do so much, but it's not great that it's so complicated and has very little out-of-the-box configurations.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The best thing for us - the timer. It's really cool. We can start the timer and end it when support finishes. It's very important for working with other companies we give support for.
Good-looking, with good visualisation and usability dashboard.
Ticket transfer between support users, comments, ticket printing.
The best price and functionality, comparing to other help desks.
Support. Best support I have seen on internet. Helped with setup, and helped with few minor questions.
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Support from Vision Helpdesk was rather lackluster. We uncovered a bug pretty early on in our use of the system and it took them about a month to fix it. Our internal admin of the system had to keep pestering them to get it fixed. It wasn't critical to our business but was something we needed fixed and it just seemed like they didn't care that much about fixing it.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Vision Helpdesk was more open for an NGO while the other companies were more attended on the "big-money", which we don't have as an NGO. Second point is that Vision Helpdesk is very easy and simple to use. Not too much installation, programming etc.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Most cost-effective help desk software I have researched from Kayako to SAAS [products] like Zendesk.
We got more features and easy customization done with Vision Helpdesk which where not possible for Zendesk and Kayako was too costly.
Ticket tracking has been easier and faster with Vision Helpdesk; for our web hosting business we prefer a download version which is not possible with SAAS help desk providers ( Zendesk or Freshdesk).
