Parature (Discontinued) vs. Zoho Desk

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
Zoho Desk
Score 7.7 out of 10
N/A
Zoho Support is a Saas help desk / ticketing system aimed at SMBs. I competes most often with Zendesk, and Desk.com.
$0
Pricing
Parature (Discontinued)Zoho Desk
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Free
$0
Express
$9
per month per user
Standard
$20
per month per user
Professional
$35
per month per user
Enterprise
$50
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Parature (Discontinued)Zoho Desk
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeRequired
Additional DetailsA discount is offered for yearly billing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Parature (Discontinued)Zoho Desk
Features
Parature (Discontinued)Zoho Desk
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Parature (Discontinued)
-
Ratings
Zoho Desk
8.6
Ratings
7% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings7.90 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Parature (Discontinued)
-
Ratings
Zoho Desk
8.8
Ratings
11% above category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Parature (Discontinued)
-
Ratings
Zoho Desk
7.4
Ratings
5% below category average
Customer portal00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings6.60 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings8.90 Ratings
User Ratings
Parature (Discontinued)Zoho Desk
Likelihood to Recommend
6.7
(0 ratings)
7.8
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
6.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
2.0
(0 ratings)
9.4
(0 ratings)
Availability
7.5
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
1.0
(0 ratings)
8.7
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Parature (Discontinued)Zoho Desk
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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Zoho Desk is a great customer service tool. It is very easy to track the ability to receive tickets and send responses in Zoho Desk. There are lots of options for customization. The knowledge base feature is very extensive and powerful. It makes creating internal and external FAQs easy.
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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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  • Report features give the all insights of the customer team and customer support which enables us to make changes according to it.
  • The best thing about Zoho Desk is that it has a very beautiful and fully designed dashboard.
  • I have been using this software for a very long time in my organization, it is very easy to use with having the interface created on a very advanced module.
  • It is completely a feature rich platform.
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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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  • When utilizing as a ticketing system, it would be nice to have a better way to monitor when something is due. It's just a little cumbersome.
  • Search Functionality - The search functionality could use a tweak or two. Too many times I am unable to find tickets. This would also be very helpful for the "Recycle Bin" when you just need to find that ticket you accidentally deleted (we are all human!). :)
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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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No answers on this topic
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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Zoho Desk on operational capacity is the most effective help desk we have come across, as it is suitable for businesses of all forms and shapes, from large to small. Again, Zoho Desk captures the attention of all clients, and on time, offers solutions to their demands without failing. Lastly, Zoho Desk requires no extra skill to execute the program.
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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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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Nothing ever seemed to get resolved
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Their support is excellent. They are always available to answer all your queries and doubts. Be it a call or email or even live chat. You will always get a prompt response from their customer support executives. They are very much familiar with the product and all its functionality. Sometimes you get stuck and don’t know what to do. They are always there for your questions
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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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Zoho Desk is easily a winner for trouble ticket handling as Bitrix24 was not offering any dedicated trouble ticketing tool and we had no option but to use the Tasks section of Bitrix24 to handle our existing customers. Also Bitrix24 neither did have any dedicated mobile application for on the go usage which Zoho Desk has easily handled with applications for both Android and IOS devices.
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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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  • By running reports based on ticket, we can see how much time is spent on each customer and can manage these customers better based on what we see are there issues
  • We can also run reports based on the types of queries customers are coming in with which allows us to develop our product based on actual customers needs as a whole.
  • Automatic reporting once set up saves many man hours as new customers can be added automatically if required, and it saves having to build these reports monthly or possibly weekly
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ScreenShots

Zoho Desk Screenshots

Screenshot of Log and monitor phone conversations, convert them into new tickets, or attach them to existing ones. Convert social media interactions and live chat into tickets at the click of a button.Screenshot of Bring a Help Center directly into a website to strengthen self-service. Chat with Zia, an AI-powered conversation assistant. Customers can chat with Zia right from a mobile app or website. Zia processes their questions and suggests appropriate solutions from the Knowledge Base.Screenshot of With advanced process automation, internal processes can be setup within the help desk, implement them automatically, and make sure that all processes are followed precisely.Screenshot of Instant responses for instant happiness. Respond to customers the minute they reach out with Zoho Desk's embeddable chat widget. Customers can get in touch with agents instantly, right from the Help Center, so agents can respond and help them find answers faster.Screenshot of Monitor a team's performance, customize and schedule reports. Custom dashboards can be created.Screenshot of Zia brings together predictions across anomalies, sentiment, trending ticket tags, and more into a common dashboard for decision-makers to consume. They can drill down further into the details from the same dashboard to investigate further.