How to Choose a Survey Software Vendor

Partnering with the Right Online Survey Provider

Comparing survey software vendors can be a time consuming undertaking. Finding a vendor that tailors exactly to your needs can be even harder. We believe to make an informed decision as to which online survey provider is the best for you, there are 3 elements you’ll want to research. Those elements are the survey software feature set, the pricing structure and model, and the support you will receive once you have made your purchase.

The Survey Feature Set & Why It’s Important

Understanding the features that you need to create the survey that you want, is a major step in picking out the right online survey software vendor. The following are features we focused on when developing SurveyGizmo.

• Flexibility — In an ever changing market place, not being tied down to a contract with a survey company can be very important. That’s why SurveyGizmo is a month to month service, and as a bonus we never delete any of your survey data!
• Question Types — Knowing which questions types you’ll want to use before creating the survey can help greatly in your survey provider journey. We provide over 20 question types for survey creation flexibility.
• Integration Ability — Survey systems that easily integrate into other systems can be a huge time saver. That’s why we offer an easy to use survey API as well at third party integration tools including SalesForce.com and ExactTarget integrations.
• Reporting — Getting your survey data out in an easy to understand and analyzable way is the main reason to conduct a survey. SurveyGizmo makes it easy to act on the information you collect with multiple report types including TURF, Cross Tabulation, and Customer Satisfaction reports.
• Survey Logic — Knowing the type of surveying you plan on doing can tell you what type of logic you’ll need for your survey. We provide logic for disqualifying survey takers, emailing invitations to your survey, page jumping, showing/hiding questions, custom scripting, and much more.
• Response limits – Responses are unlimited for all paid account levels. Student accounts are limited to 500 responses per month, and Free accounts are limited to 250 responses. If your account has response limits and you happen to go over your response limit for the month, we will not shut down your surveys, we just hold all the overflow responses in an “locked” status. To unlock them, all you need to do is upgrade for the month to the next highest account level.
• Publishing — A variety of publishing options can be key to getting your surveys out and completed in an efficient way. With SurveyGizmo you can send out email invitations to your survey, embed your survey into your website using JavaScript, HTML, or iFrame code, or publish a link anywhere on a website.

Pricing Structure: You get what you pay for — or do you?

Each survey vendor has their own unique pricing structure, and it’s important to know exactly how each one works. So when comparing survey companies, keep these thoughts in the back of your mind:

• Know what you’re getting for your money.
• Are there any discounts you can get for committing longer?
• What is the duration of the contract you’re signing?
• Is there a contract?
• Is there a way to try out the survey solution before you buy it?

As you can see from our pricing model, we provide a variety of purchasing options. We believe SurveyGizmo gives you the best bang for the buck because we don’t require you to sign any contracts but still give you a huge amount of advanced features. You can also upgrade and downgrade as you please and we’ll never delete any of your survey data. You’ll never sign a contract with us, but if you do decide to commit to a year, we offer a 10% discount and if you are an Academic Institution or Non-Profit organization our discounts go even deeper.

Customer Support: Self-Service to Live Phone Support

As the third part of your survey provider comparison journey, knowing what type of customer support you expect as well as what type of customer support the company provides can be a key factor of who you go with. Getting the answers to the following questions will help you get an idea of what to expect if you ever run into trouble:

• Does the survey software provider outsource support?
• Is their support email only or are there live people I can talk to?
• Is there someone I can contact directly in case of an emergency?
• How much do I have to pay for support?

SurveyGizmo has never and will never outsource support of any kind, all our emails are answered by our stellar support staff located in Boulder, Colorado. We offer a variety of support options all dependent upon the account level you choose. An outstanding feature given to our Enterprise level customers is direct phone support with our customer service staff who intimately know our software and can definitely help in a time of need.

Ready, Set, Go!

Now that you have all the tools in place to start comparing survey software vendors, why not start with SurveyGizmo? Check out our plans and Features or send an inquiry to our sales team.