10 minutes to read. By author Michaela Mora on March 19, 2012 Topics: Market Research, Online Survey Tools, Survey Design
After posting the comparison of three popular online survey tools’ free versions, many have requested a similar analysis of paid online tools. It seems there is a new tool coming up every day and comparing them all would be a rather difficult task. I decided to compare three online survey tools I have used most recently for different projects.
I have been using Alchemer (formerly SurveyGizmo) for a while now. As I said in my previous post, it is a great value given the number of features it offers at a very affordable price. The tool has been improving with time so it was a natural choice for comparison purposes.
Not long ago, I saw a demo of Decipher (formerly Beacon) and was pleasantly surprised by the advanced features if offered and the business model that supports it. Most online survey tools require either a monthly or annual subscription, but Beacon does not. You only need to pay for completed surveys. I decided to give it a shot and used it to program a pretty complex survey. I had the chance to become very familiar with the tool and thought it was worth including it in this comparison.
Finally, since my above-mentioned post about free online survey tools, I have had many requests asking me to review Qualtrics, which is also becoming quite popular. I happened to use it in two recent projects with very different requirements, which gave me the opportunity to test it in depth.
For a comparison between Alchemer (SurveyGizmo), Qualtrics, and SurveyMonkey check the post: Three Popular Online Survey Tools – What You Get For Your Money.
The list below includes some of the most often-used features in moderate to advanced survey programming and, as you can see below, all three online survey tools are pretty powerful and comparable in many aspects. That said, none of these online survey tools is perfect, and they all would benefit from continuous improvement in capabilities and usability. Most of the time they do the same thing in different ways that have an impact on users’ learning curve.
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+ custom templates
No subscription needed. Pay $0.75/complete. No minimum
Updated December 2020
I find Alchemer (formerly SurveyGizmo) to be the most user-friendly and you can do pretty advanced programming with it. They have been adding new question types and integration partners. However, the data export to SPSS and result reporting feature need improvement. For some reason, multiple choice questions get some random variable names that don’t match the variable name specified in the survey, when they get exported to SPSS. Variable names don’t show up in the online reports either. Also, I wished they included statistical testing in their crosstabs.
Qualtrics is the second most user-friendly survey tool of the three. Some things are not obvious. I like the large number of question types. Many are variations of standard questions with horizontal and vertical layouts, with and without images. Among the question types, you will find Constant sum tables, Heatmaps, Hotspots (The latter is pretty useful in concept testing), and MaxDiff (assuming you already have an experimental design). They recently added a new reporting tool, which is still in beta. I like that you can add banner points to the crosstabs and drill down through different question layers, unfortunately, it is still not very intuitive when it comes to create different table types.
Decipher (Formerly Beacon) is a powerful tool, but the learning curve is a bit steep. Thankfully, they have a very responsive technical support, and I was able to get answers to my long list of questions and issues, very quickly. What I liked the most about Beacon is the flexibility it offers to create very complex skip patterns and validations. I also liked its crosstabs. They include counts, percentages, means, and Top 2 Box with statistical testing. Initially, I was mostly bothered by a somewhat cumbersome process for previewing and testing surveys, since I think these are basic features, but they have recently simplified the process and made previewing and testing much easier and user friendly. A minor thing I don’t like, that is more about my own taste than anything else, is that all questions have a table format and there is no way to change that. The tool seems to have been developed by and for programmers since the environment is not very intuitive for neophytes. You can spend a lot of time trying to figure out how certain basic features work.
Regarding cost, each online survey tool uses a different model. Alchemer”s subscription can be monthly or annual (the latter gives you a 10% discount). Beacon doesn’t require a subscription but charges $0.75/complete. This may be a good deal compared to SurveyGizmo as long as your project’s sample or the total sample across different projects is 100 or less. If you go over 100 respondents, SurveyGizmo would be a more economical alternative with unlimited completed surveys.
Qualtrics is the most expensive of the three. The number of completed surveys will depend on license cost and you have to commit for a whole year, so consider your research volume before making such a commitment. However, if you have need of some of their unique question types (e.g. Hotspot), it may be worth it.
As I said before, no online survey tool is perfect. All have quirks when you get into the details. The decision to use one or the other should be based on how well they meet the needs of the project you are working on and what the budget is.
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