Best Survey Software – Organize Your Findings Quickly!

Qualtrics XM is probably the biggest name in the world of experience management and customer surveying. The company has always been on the bleeding edge of the research industry, owing its initial popularity to the academic need for questionnaires on complicated subjects. At the time, no other platform offered such extensive polling options. Today, thousands of global companies use it to drive their business decisions.

Qualtrics is unmatched when it comes to the sheer number of options for creating a survey. This online survey software entails dozens of question types and lets you create nonlinear surveys with sections folding out according to the respondent’s answers. This is particularly handy when you’re making matrix-based questions and need additional queries to pop up when certain criteria are met. There’s no denying the Qualtrics’ complexity, but its design is intuitive at the same time. Every survey is built in a drag-and-drop interface accompanied by a visual editor previewing every change you make, both in the mobile and the desktop version of the survey. 

Even better, the survey software lets you import questions and sections from your previous surveys, saving you a lot of time in the process. These features would require coding skills and jumping through hoops on other platforms, but not on Qualtrics. 

Data can be analyzed via the Qualtrics app: Your results will be arranged into neat reports you can then export. There aren’t many project management tools, though, so working on survey results in big teams requires additional software. Of course, that depends on how big your analytics team is and what you need the survey for.

You can have a free account with limited capabilities, but if you’re getting Qualtrics XM for an enterprise, the survey software pricing isn’t publicly disclosed, as the company gives quotes on request. The prices generally start at $1,500 a year, clearly delineating Qualtrics as a premium service. Granted, you’ll be getting exquisite customer service and an industry-leading platform to work on, so it’s worth the expense.

SurveyMonkey is another household name in the realm of online surveys. If you’ve ever shopped online, you probably completed a customer experience poll powered by this company. Pretty much everyone that ever needed digital survey software has used SurveyMonkey at some point.

Incredible ease of use is the reason for that widespread popularity. Accessibility was obviously the designers’ main goal when they were coming up with the SurveyMonkey toolkit. The moment you sign up for a free account, you’ll be presented with a short questionnaire designed to optimize the website experience based on your needs. Some would call this hand-holding, but we prefer to call it good UX. You’ll also find handy survey templates to start you off. 

The reason this is the best survey tool for beginners is the canned question selection: Dozens of them are readily available, significantly cutting down the time required to create surveys, thus granting you extra time for collecting and analyzing your data. You can also randomize answers in your matrices, and once it’s time to publish the survey, SurveyMonkey can automatically highlight one of the question’s multiple choices depending on where you’re embedding the form. Analytics aren’t SurveyMonkey’s strongest suit, but this app does entail impressive team collaboration tools and real-time reporting.

If you’re looking for free survey software, look no further than SurveyMonkey. The default plan lets you create one survey at a time and deploy one of 40 templates. The deal isn’t time-limited, so you can keep using the free plan as long as you like. Of course, upgrading to a paid solution vastly increases functionality – our recommendation is the Advantage Annual plan, which unlocks extra features and connects you with priority customer support.

Typeform, as its slogan says, turns data into experience. And what an experience it is! Among the best online survey sites, this company stands out thanks to its fair pricing, integrations, and logic jumps for sensible survey design. This is mainly a survey–builder tool, but you’ll be able to use it for contact forms, payments, quizzes, etc.

The editor is one of the most streamlined we’ve ever seen: Instead of digging through menus for basic questions, you can simply type them out, and watch as bullet points turn into multiple choice answers. Typeform’s strongest feature is the use of logic jumps to pull information from previous answers and build relevant questions on the fly. With this software, survey questions can have answers based on the data a respondent entered in a previous instance. For example, contact information added during the survey intro can turn into the choices in a question on how the customer wishes to be contacted.

A few clicks are all you need to set all of this up. You can also use these tools to make nonlinear forms – basically forms within forms – thus neatly segregating your data. Integration capabilities are another important feature of this customer survey software. Pretty much any cloud-based platform can be connected with Typeform, one way or another, making it great for data collection, analysis, internal surveying, and HR insights.

Typeform has a free and a paid form. The free version lets you create a few very basic surveys and test out some advanced features before hitting a paywall. Anything more complicated than a short poll requires a paid subscription. The good news is that all three paid plans make Typeform one of the most affordable top survey tools. They all cost $70 and under on a monthly basis. Annual plans will net you significant discounts, too, so you can rest assured that neither option will bleed you dry.

Alchemer is a multifunctional platform for surveys, payment forms, quizzes, and more. Founded in 2006 as SurveyGizmo, this Colorado-based company caters to the more tech-savvy and enthusiastic crowd with its apps. It has since rebranded but remains an excellent tool for collecting feedback.

Alchemer is the tool for you if you prefer highly modular online survey software. It supports JavaScript coding and can even use Microsoft Word documents as a base for creating surveys. Alchemer connects to Google Drive, too, but only for exporting collected data. Unless you save a Google Docs document as a Word file that Alchemer can read, you can’t import questions from it. Manual survey creation is streamlined, but it isn’t as intuitive as the competition’s. For example, the software doesn’t automatically send “None of the above” to the bottom of the answer list when using a randomizer. 

Like with other survey software, you can import all kinds of multimedia files to enrich the respondents’ experience, and the coding-friendliness we already mentioned means that you’re not restricted to pre-set functions. The Logic tab allows users to create a bunch of rules for reformatting your questionnaire while the users are answering surveys. If you’re artistically inclined, the survey editor also allows for plenty of visual customization, somewhat making up for Alchemer’s otherwise lackluster design template collection.

If you’re not looking to get a subscription, compared to pretty much all other survey software, the free version of Alchemer is pretty decent, but be sure to choose a free account, not a free trial. You can have 3 surveys up at a time, with 100 responses each. Some elements are locked out unless you pay, so be sure to consult the documentation for specifics. If you opt for the paid route, your choices expand greatly, from team to enterprise accounts. The starting packages are affordable, although you might want to purchase the Professional plan if you anticipate needing more flexibility in your web survey software.

When we’re trying to create a survey, especially on a deadline, we’re always on the lookout for shortcuts, either via importing from previous surveys, or templates. Thankfully, JotForm is the template king, offering more than 10,000 survey designs. But that’s not the only reason to sign up for it:

JotForm was made to be straightforward and easy to navigate, using an intuitive drag and drop interface. The site first asks what kind of survey you’re running and if you need a template before jumping straight to the editor. We’d even go as far as to call it the best online survey site for those who don’t want the hassle of creating a questionnaire from scratch. That being said, browsing the template repository can be time-consuming, specifically due to their peculiar titles: As there’s no favorite list to save them to, you’d better write down the names of the templates you liked, or you might not ever find them again. 

On the plus side, this platform boasts amazing integration features. Connect your JotForm account to nearly 200 third-party apps, and export data, accept payments or just get notifications on new replies going through this survey tool. We can’t list all the supported apps, so we’ll just mention Slack, Dropbox, PayPal, and Google Drive. Nice, right? Collaboration tools are another nice touch, and the platform also accommodates response-based survey flexibility – a questionnaire you create through JotForm doesn’t have to be static.

JotForm’s free offering is quite nice, too. You’ll be able to create and run up to 5 forms at the same time, access to all analytics, even accept payments. If you don’t mind having a watermark notifying your visitors you used a free survey maker, we’d go as far as to call it one of the best free solutions out there. 

You can also choose between three pricing tiers paid for on a monthly or annual basis. We highly recommend going with an annual plan and the substantial discount that comes with it. However, be prepared to face some restrictions – even the Gold plan is not totally unlimited on all fronts, as it still imposes restrictions on the number of monthly responses your surveys can collect, although the limit is fairly astronomical, at 100,000.