Since starting in 1999 SurveyMonkey has been a global leader in feedback and data collection. While the survey industry is cluttered with many survey tools, most people are mainly familiar with one tool, SurveyMonkey.
Today there are many survey tools on the market that offer just as many or more features than SurveyMonkey. Before diving into a list of alternatives, we’ll start with highlighting the main disadvantages of SurveyMonkey, some that you may not even be aware of. We’ll also go over some data that highlights what survey users value most. Both of these will help you to better evaluate survey software for your needs.
SurveyMonkey Disadvantages
If you’re reading this article, it’s likely you’re looking for a new survey software and are aware of a few SurveyMonkey disadvantages. Here’s a quick summary:
Annual pricing with NO month to month option.
SurveyMonkey’s anonymous survey feature shows email addresses for completed respondents – meaning a survey author could indirectly identify a respondent – this would decrease trust with your audience base (most often employees for anonymous surveys).
No ability to add custom variables to anonymous surveys. This is very useful to do annual or quarterly employee surveys and segment/compare the results. (SurveyKing use k-anonymity to protect identities when custom meta tags are used)
No advanced question types such as MaxDiff or Conjoint analysis. These question types allow organizations to make better decisions on product pricing, product features, or what to offer for an employee benefit package.
Limited ability to create custom reports with your data. What if you wanted to send a few specific question/results to coworker in a different region, while giving them the ability to manipulate the data themselves right inside of the report builder? Not possible with SurveyMonkey.
SurveyMonkey User Feedback
In November of 2019, we set out to get a better understand on how SurveyMonkey users view SurveyMonkey. Our mindset was to use this data to better shape not only our product, but the mission and overall vision of SurveyKing. So we set out to find paid SurveyMonkey users and sent them a survey!
What did we find? To our surprise a good portion of SurveyMonkey paid users found them too expensive! Over 30% overall. This was one of the core missions of SurveyKing – provide great tools at a low cost. We included a MaxDiff question in the survey and found that “reporting and statistical” features were most important. This directly led us to upgrade our reporting system, with the focus on giving user the ability to create custom reports.
As you’ll see in the data below, reporting features and price are deemed most important when choosing an online survey tool. The SurveyMonkey alternatives below where choosen with those features in mind.
Survey Sample Size: 581
When choosing an online survey tool what factors are LEAST and MOST important to you?
We didn’t include lower end tools like Google Forms, SurveyPlanet, or SurveyNuts in this list. While those tools are mostly free, and great options they lack many of the advanced features large online survey tools offer. If your survey needs are quick and simple, those may be great options!
Self reviews are of course subject to bias! But overall SurveyKing offers a tremendous amount of tools for what appears to be the lowest price point on the market. SurveyKing also offers simple month to plan, no annual contracts. Nearly all features on the platform are accessible and free. If you like what you see, simply upgrade ($19 a month) to collect unlimited data or remove branding!
SurveyKing best features:
Simple easy to use (even for beginners), and requires no training.
Truly anonymous surveys using k-anonymity.
Create reports on the fly with a drag and drop report builder; share reports with one click and let end users edit their report.
Display logic – useful to ask follow up questions on the same page. Reduced survey fatigue and other survey tools use “skip page logic”.
Text message survey collector, with the ability to customize and track messages.
SurveyKing missing features:
A few less popular question types like Matrix of Dropdowns, or the ability to accept payments
Advanced statistical tools such as statistical significance or z-scores (both useful in cross-tabulation)
Advanced branching and advanced piping
SurveyMonkey
SurveyKing
Monthly price for most popular features
$32 USD (Billed annually)
$19 USD
Monthly price for unlimited responses
N/A – Contact Sales
$19 USD
Survey Building
Truly Anonymous Surveys
MaxDiff Question
Conjoint Question
Display Logic
Skip Logic
Advanced Logic & Branching
Survey Reporting
Create Custom Reports
Easily Share Reports and Let Users Manipulate Their View
Allen is the founder of SurveyKing. A former CPA and government auditor, he understands the importance quality data can have in making decisions. He continues to help SurveyKing accomplish their main goal: providing organizations around the world with low-cost high-quality feedback tools.
Create your first survey for free. See how easy it is to get started! No together survey platform has all our tools in one easy to use low cost package.
