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Most companies, regardless of size, are hungry today for data collected about their customers, products, employees, and even company events. Have you considered learning more about these vital concerns via an online survey? Online surveys enable you to contact your customers and employees to capture invaluable insights—not only what they desire but also how to serve them better. Once the survey results are carefully studied and absorbed, they will undoubtedly change the way your business operates.

Here's the 5 key reasons why most businesses use online (and SMS) surveys:

• Gain invaluable insights into your specific market or niche
• Receive unfiltered feedback for item improvements and new product concepts
• Archive a better understanding of your customer service
• Determine overall employee satisfaction
• Plus, many additional applications

Creating effective surveys has been getting less arduous, featuring more beneficial elements, over the past few years.  Online websites now offer a vast selection of time-tested professional survey tools to capture the answers you need for success:

Question Types – You'll need different ways to ask different questions.  Multiple choice, Grids, Net Promoter Score (NPS), Likert Scale, Ranking, and many other options.

Customization – Ask the right questions. Branching and skip logic, question and answer piping, choice randomization, custom footers, etc.

Distribution – Get your survey out there.  Share on SMS invitations, social media, QR codes, website embedding collectors, scheduled email invitations, and more.

Analytics & Reporting – Get the answers. Summary charts, export responses, filter results many different ways, i.e., by time period, by questions and answers, by response status, by collector, by A/B test, crosstab reports.

Easy to use – Minimal time investment.

There has been a proliferation of online survey websites in the last few years. It's definitely a challenge to differentiate one from the other. Which one is best for your unique research needs? I've explored these websites again this year and evaluated each one of them in detail to arrive at my personal Top 10. As you'll see, the actual standings are identical to last year as I found most of these websites either presenting modest enhancements or none at all. Nevertheless, all of the ones shown below are well above average and worth your time and attention.

1. SurveyOL

2. SurveyMonkey (Momentive)

3. Qualtrics

4. Alchemer (formerly Survey Gizmo)

5. Typeform

6. Survey Sparrow

7. JotForm

8. SurveyPlanet

9. Zoho Survey

10. SoGo Survey

UP AND COMING

SurveyOL (Survey + Online)                               (Cost: $19/month, $129/year)

"Professional. Effective. Easy. Make better decisions. Enhance customer satisfaction. Increase employee engagement. Optimize product experience. Boost event attendance. Survey tool best for Small Businesses, Teams, and Individuals." – Home page

Pros:

• Focuses on features and functionality for the single user and small teams, from beginners to intermediate level skillset.
• No risk, low cost, cancel your account at any time.  All data is saved.
• Offers email and SMS invitations
• Tools to help you brand and design your survey. Includes predefined privacy statements to help your customers.
• Free plan available albeit with limited features.
  
• New website searching for new ideas. Starving artist syndrome. Join or follow the crowd.

Cons:

Does not offer a chat-style survey format.

The initial "Basic" package includes:

• Unlimited surveys
• Unlimited questions 
• 1000 responses per month
• Ranking questions
  
• Customize colors & styles
• Branching & skip logic
• Email and SMS invitations
• A/B testing
  
• Web URL and QR code
• Export responses via XLS, CSV, PDF
• Export reports via PPT, PDF, WORD

LARGE ESTABLISHED

Survey Monkey (Momentive)                              (Cost: $32/month, $384/year)

"Get answers with surveys.  Be the person with great ideas.  Surveys give you actionable insights and fresh perspectives." – Home Page

Pros:

• Good for medium to large sized companies
• Survey status monitoring is easy using mobile app
• Survey question library comprehensive
• High market share yields many integrations

Cons:

• High cost; lower pricing tiers don't offer great value; successive price hikes
• Confusing options, difficult to export reports
• Not intuitive for the average user
• Embedded survey on website is outdated, poor experience for visitors

The initial "Premier" plan includes:

• Unlimited number of surveys
• Unlimited questions per survey
• 500 responses per year ($0.80 per additional response)
  
• Custom themes, colors, and more
  
• Export data via CSV, PDF, PPT, XLS, SPSS
  
• Advanced skip logic
• A/B testing, question and page randomization

Qualtrics                                           (Cost: $30/month, $360/year)

"The most sophisticated online survey platform on the planet.  Get answers to your most important customer, brand, employee, and product questions with survey software that can handle everything from simple questionnaires to detailed research projects for the world's biggest brands." – Home Page

Pros:

• Best for educational audiences
• Good for seasoned marketers
• Excellent for separating questions according to subject
• Synchronized preview of mobile and desktop questionnaires

Cons:

• Expensive
• Offline application extremely weak (additional fee)
• Lacks the ability to maintain multiple shared reports that can include or exclude various data cuts
• Somewhat difficult to how to setup different types of questions
• Lacks "to-do" list-like project management

The CoreXM Standard features:

• 8 question types
• 30 questions per survey
• Unlimited active surveys

Alchemer, formerly Survey Gizmo           (Cost: $49/month, $300/year)

"Listen. Empower. Engage. Transform your business with Alchemer." – Home Page

Pros:

• Good for individuals requiring advanced formatting and graphics control
• Software is simple and clean
• Ideal for traditional research needs
•  Easy to share results and reports with team　  

Cons:

• Some limits in setting up logic
• If you require more options (A/B split testing, for example), you must upgrade to the Professional version
• Incompatible with Safari at times
• History of problematic product introductions

The low end "Collaborator" price package for simple polls and surveys features:

• Unlimited number surveys
• Unlimited questions per survey
• 75,000 responses per account annually
  
• Export responses via CSV, PDF, PPT, XLS

CREATIVE, FUN

Typeform                                          (Cost: $25/month, $300/year)

"There's a better way to ask. You don't want a boring form. And your audience won't answer one. Create a typeform instead—and make everyone happy." – Home Page

Pros:

• Good for those who require different predefined forms for registration, payment, other purposes
• Great design, very customizable
• Easy to deploy and share results
• Intuitive interface

Cons:

• Response limit on the Basic plan
• Difficult to complete, too many steps
• Weak data reporting, data export
• Embedding issues in certain mail providers

The introductory "Essentials" package includes the following:

• Unlimited questions per survey
• Unlimited typeforms
• 100 responses per month
• Question branching/logic jumps
• Calculator for quizzes and payments
• Accept payments
  
• Mailchimp and Airtable integrations

OTHER NOTABLES

SurveySparrow                                           (Cost: $19/month, $228/year)

"Refine customer, product, and employee experiences, the Better Way. The all-in-one Omnichannel Experience Management Platform." – Home Page

Pros:

• Simple platform for creating and sending surveys, no learning curves needed
• Interface is clear, easy to navigate
• Software is flexible to ensure surveys look and feel professional
• Mobile version perfect for the small screen

Cons:

• Drag-and-drop question box is problematic
• If you'd like to have some professional features, such as adding a file upload question, you can upgrade to Pro for $49/month
• White labeling available by upgrading to Business for $149/month
• Issues with handling bulk data, i.e., copying or deleting an audience file

The lowest price "Basic" package includes the following:

• Unlimited questions per survey
• 500 responses per month
  
• Display & skip logic
• Scoring
• Widgets, QR code
• Google Sheets, Facebook integration
• Export responses via CSV, PDF, XLS

JotForm                                            (Cost: $24/month, $288/year)

"Powerful forms get it done. We believe the right form makes all the difference. Go from busywork to less work with powerful forms that use conditional logic, accept payments, generate reports, and automate workflows." – Home Page

Pros:

• Ease and flexibility allows user to capture information
• Simple to design your form, share the link, and process the results
• An alternative to Typeform

Cons:

• Limited technical support
• Form blocks can be a bit confusing
• Uploading images into the document sometimes problematic

The lowest price "Bronze" package features:

• 25 Forms Limit
• 10 GB available space
• 10,000 monthly form views
• Unlimited total submission storage
• Unlimited reports, fields per form

SurveyPlanet                                   ($20/month, $180/year)

"A simple & powerful online survey tool.  Sign up now for free unlimited surveys, questions & responses." – Home Page

Pros:

• Good for beginners with clean, minimalist user interface
• Very flexible, good pre-built templates
• Provides overviews of branching questions

Cons:

• No support for matrix questions
• Limited question types
• Panel purchase option is not integrated.

The "Pro" version includes the following:

• Unlimited number surveys
• Unlimited questions per survey
• Survey embedding
• Question branching
• Question images & Custom Formatting
• Export survey results

Zoho Survey                                    (Cost: $25/month, $300/per year)

"Experience the craft of survey creation.  Create your survey in minutes.  Reach your audience on every device.  View results graphically and in real-time."  – Home Page

Pros:

• Good for larger organizations
• Integration with other Zoho applications
• Support for offline surveys
• Mobile app allows for the monitoring of survey responses

Cons:

• No support for display logic
• No support for question blocks
• More modifications required for project management
• Integrations with Zoho social, other social media tools need enhancements

The initial "Plus" plan consists of the following: 

• Unlimited number of surveys
• Unlimited questions per survey
• Embed survey in website
• Eventbrite, Slack, Shopify, and Zendesk integration
• Customizable reports
• Export reports in XLS,CSV

SoGo Survey                                   (Cost: $25/month, $299/per year)

""The experience management & survey platform that helps you. The most secure platform with stellar one-click reports and unmatched support" – Home Page

Pros:

• Fast, small business deployments
• Offers bulk editing mode
• Advanced support options available
• Features for working with multiple surveys

Cons:

• Help resources not as robust as more advanced tools
• Display logic questions limit reordering
• The basic "Plus" plan is unusually light on features
• For advanced features, such as exporting your reports to Word/PPT, you'd have to pay $66/month for the Pro version.

The basic "Plus" plan consists of the following:

• Add your own survey logo
• Customize thank you page
• Simple skip logic
• Export data to Excel

All of the online survey websites reviewed above offer a broad assortment of survey tools and the potential for deficiencies based on your specific research needs. All of them offer a free trial, free account or both. Don't hesitate! What do you have to lose? For me, I'm picking SurveyOL—a unique combination of super low subscription costs and remarkably high value makes it a no-brainer.  Good luck!