Positives
- AI survey builder
- Over 250 templates
- Brand customization
- Advanced question types
- Free version
- User-friendly
Negatives
- Limited customer support
- Pricey
- No refunds
SurveyMonkey is a well-established online survey app brimming with survey creation resources. In fact, its huge library of templates and pre-written sample questions is just the tip of the iceberg with this service.
From adding questions and designing a survey’s layout to analyzing results and data insights, SurveyMonkey has tools that make building and evaluating surveys faster and easier. It even has an AI tool that helps create surveys based on users’ goals as well as estimating the performance and completion rates.
What’s more, the service can be used at no cost, as a free forever version is available. However, this plan has limited resources, so the paid feature-rich subscriptions may be more appealing. Starting at $25 per user per month, teams can work collaboratively to create brand-customized surveys in many different formats. Moreover, other essential features like multilingual surveys and advanced branching only come with a paid subscription.
Subscribe to SurveyMonkey and take advantage of the limited free version to build surveys with up to ten questions at zero cost.
Features
Fundamentally, SurveyMonkey helps businesses get insights on customer experiences, preferences, and interests. For starters, several types of survey can be carried out, such as transactional and relational. Transactional NPS surveys are sent to acquire customer feedback – this could be following a phone call, for example. Making users’ life easier, the pre-set templates allow you to create these surveys in no time.
Relational NPS surveys can be scheduled to reoccur as well. However, users have to send the new link to customers each time, which could be improved with automation tools.
With SurveyMonkey, teams can work together while conducting a survey, streamlining the entire process from creation to analysis. Additionally, the survey software lets users get feedback from anywhere in the world, as multilingual surveys can include translation files.
Alongside respondents being able to choose their preferred language, they can also decide to take a survey anonymously and protect their personal information. This option increases response rates, as people tend to feel more comfortable sharing honest opinions when they can’t be identified.
That being said, for surveys where respondents’ information is essential, all data is securely stored in SurveyMonkey’s compliant SOC 2 data center and encrypted using industry-standard AES-256 encryption. Moreover, the company meets the core data compliance requirements, such as GDPR, HIPAA, and ISO 27001.
Students and educators who subscribe to one of SurveyMonkey’s individual plans get up to 41% off the total subscription price.
Question Types
SurveyMonkey’s question types go beyond the traditional multiple choice. There are over 20 types available, including Likert scale, NPS, star rating, and checkbox. It’s even possible to add images to questions and allow respondents to upload files within their answers.
A comprehensive question bank contains many pre-set questions divided into categories, such as customer feedback and human resources. Also, teams can create their own question library, making personalized questions accessible to everyone.
Going beyond this, there are many different options for advanced branching, such as skip logic and randomization, and both can be easily set to each question or page of the survey. Randomizing questions or pages is a worthwhile practice, as it minimizes order bias and improves overall data quality.
Moreover, question piping is also available, which is excellent for providing the respondent with a personalized experience and giving a conversational tone to the survey.
Survey Design
Designing surveys with SurveyMonkey takes little time, as you get a head start by using a template. There are over 250 to choose from, categorized into subjects with pre-made questions. The benchmarkable category, for example, provides questions that help you compare your data with others’.
SurveyMonkey also recognizes the importance of brand identity, so adding your logo to the survey header, as well as changing fonts, colors, and layout themes, takes only a few steps.
Once the layout and questions are all set, the survey can be viewed from the respondent’s perspective. The preview page shows how it looks on a web browser or mobile device, allowing users to test the survey while checking for mistakes.
SurveyMonkey Genius makes survey building even more straightforward by using AI to help users create surveys based on the goals they wish to achieve. It gives question and design recommendations, identifies potential errors, and suggests fixes. It also predicts the survey’s performance, estimating the completion rate and time.
Survey Responses Collection
With the survey all set and ready to go, sending it to potential respondents is straightforward. The platform lets users send its web link via email, social media, and text, or embed it into their website or mobile app. When creating a survey using SurveyMonkey Genius, the tool suggests the best way to collect answers to meet your objectives.
In addition, SurveyMonkey Audience lets users buy responses using the target audience collector. The service sends surveys to people who match the criteria from SurveyMonkey’s own global panel. This is excellent for users who don’t have their own list of respondents, but still need to carry out the research.
Reporting
SurveyMonkey transforms respondents’ data into comprehensive reports. The results can be viewed and analyzed instantly during the collection process, so it’s possible to keep up with them in real time.
However, as responses may pile up quickly, a dedicated section summarizes the data collected, stopping users from being overloaded with information. Also, dynamic charts are automatically generated for close-ended questions. Other useful insights like completion rate, average time spent on the survey, and the most skipped question are shown in a separate tab.
Additionally, specific data views and segments can be filtered and compared. Crosstab reports display how many times an answer choice was selected, the percentage of responses, and the total number of responses per answer choice. Sentiment analysis is also available, but for English responses only. What’s more, all data can be shared with other team members, and the results are downloadable in PDF, XLS, CSV, PPTX, or SPSS format.
Ease of Use
Conducting surveys with SurveyMonkey is a piece of cake, as the platform’s interface is intuitive and user-friendly. The array of templates and question types are easily accessible, making it efforless to customize surveys.
When it comes to creating, distributing, and analyzing surveys, each step is broken down and easy to follow. The drag-and-drop builder is well-thought, allowing users to place questions, new pages, images, and additional text exactly where they want.
To top it off, the tools have text attached explaining what they’re for. Some of them even display direct links to the help center for further explanation.
Device Support
To access the cloud-based platform via desktop, users need to turn to the web browser, as there’s no desktop app. However, there’s a mobile app for Android and iOS users, which is perfect for creating, managing, and analyzing surveys on the go. Even though its design is quite different to the web version, most features run just as smoothly.
Creating and editing surveys from the mobile app is straightforward as all tools function well. The impressive number of templates are categorized and displayed clearly, so it’s still possible to look for the one that suits your needs even from a smaller screen.
Integrations
SurveyMonkey offers over 100 integrations, including some that are essential in assessing customer experience. For example, integrating SurveyMonkey with CRM platforms like Salesforce allows respondents to provide feedback during or right after using a product. Moreover, the collected survey data can be automatically synced back to the CRM system for analysis.
Integrations with communication platforms like Microsoft Teams are also convenient as you can send surveys directly inside the platform and collect feedback from coworkers and employees. Additionally, those with a Zapier account can integrate SurveyMonkey with hundreds of other apps.
Pricing
SurveyMonkey has various pricing plans dedicated to individuals and teams. For users flying solo, there are three plans: Individual Advantage, Individual Premier, and Standard.
The plans for teams are called Team Advantage and Team Premier. For a customized Enterprise plan, larger businesses must speak to the company directly. If the paid plans aren’t within your price range, the Basic version of the software is worth considering, as it’s completely free. However, since it’s limited to one user, those working collaboratively should go for one of the team plans, which start at $25 per user per month.
The only monthly plan available is the Standard, which costs $99 per month. As there are no refund policies, those who aren’t willing to commit for a whole year may find this option preferable. The Individual Advantage plan offers everything that’s included in the Basic, plus brand customization and an unlimited number of questions.
The subscriptions for teams contain all the collaboration tools, but it’s important to note that team plans require a minimum of three users. SurveyMonkey accepts credit and debit cards, wire transfers, checks, and PayPal. What’s more, students and educators can save up to 41% on individual plans if they have a valid student, staff, or faculty ID.
Customer Service
Contacting SurveyMonkey’s customer support may be a bit challenging, as its main channel is email. The company’s website says 24/7 email support is available, but when we reached out, it took the support team five days to reply. Although there is phone support as well, it’s limited to Premier and Enterprise plans.
On a positive note, the company’s dedicated help center is worth praising. The page has multiple articles about almost every aspect, feature, and tool of the software. They’re clear and well-written, with many of them featuring video explanations.
On top of this, the company maintains a steady presence on social media, where it shares articles and tips about the software’s features and latest news.
Bottom Line
Overall, SurveyMonkey is the perfect fit for anyone looking for an easy-to-use and comprehensive survey platform. The variety of question types, templates, and pre-made questions, along with insightful reports, help individuals and teams quickly build and send goal-oriented surveys.
The AI tool, SurveyMonkey Genius, is definitely one of the company’s unique selling points, as it helps users automatically build surveys according to their targets, as well as predict the survey’s performance. What’s more, you can collect responses even if you don’t have any respondents, as SurveyMonkey provides its own bank of interviewees.
Although prices aren’t the cheapest, the free plan allows users to build simple surveys and test the platform before committing to a purchase. Also, as conducting surveys is at the core of academic research, it’s an advantage that discounts for students and educators are available.
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