Recently, the internet has emerged as a valuable tool for organizations and companies that want to engage their customers. Surveys can be conducted using two different methods: online and paper. Online surveys are conducted using the internet, while paper-based surveys use paper and pen to collect data.
What is Online Survey? Online survey is a set of questionnaires or queries made available to interested users over the internet for obtaining information. Online surveys are conducted to gather feedbacks from various parties in most cases for commercial purpose.
Online surveys is a method of collecting opinions, reactions and feedback from people regarding a particular topic. In my point of view, an online survey is a best tool to find out the real situation from customers who have actually taken part in your business directly. It’s an opportunity for them to share their experience freely, openly and anonymously.
1. Cognito Forms
Google Forms offers only basic conditional logic and doesn’t let you accept payment information. SurveyMonkey has more advanced logic and lets you accept payments—but only if you subscribe to a premium plan. So if you need more advanced features like these for free, Cognito Forms is an ideal choice.
You can split your form up with logic sections, figure out totals with calculated fields, build repeating sections to use on multiple forms, and accept payments using its built-in integrations with Stripe (you can accept payments via PayPal or Square by signing up for a paid plan). Cognito Forms can even turn your form results into a templated PDF document, so you can send a formatted receipt to your customers.
This is a powerful set of features to have on its own, but it’s even more impressive given that Cognito lets you create an unlimited number of forms for free. Most services put a limit on how many forms you can make without paying, but Cognito doesn’t. You’ll hit a limit if you need to accept more than 500 responses per month, but if you don’t hit that cap, you can keep creating forms to your heart’s content.
All of these features are available in Cognito’s free plan, minus payment processing fees if you use the form to collect payments. Forms are also relatively customizable: insert page breaks to create multi-page forms, or edit fonts, colors, and column widths. You can also use Zapier to connect Cognito Forms to thousands of other apps to streamline your form workflows.Add new Cognito Forms entries to a Google Sheets spreadsheetUse this ZapCopy files from new Cognito Forms entries to DropboxUse this ZapSee more Cognito Forms integrations powered by
Cognito Forms Price: Free for one user and unlimited forms with up to 500 form entries per month; from $10/month for the Pro plan that includes two users and up to 2,000 entries per month.
2. HubSpot Form Builder
If you want to create a form that pops up on certain pages, HubSpot’s Form Builder is the app for you. Create forms that appear in pop-up overlays on certain pages or to certain visitors, forms that drop in at the top of the page after a certain amount of time, or forms that slide in on the left or right side of your webpage (advanced form targeting based on CTA clicks, country, device, or referral URL requires a premium plan).
HubSpot’s pop-up forms are primarily designed to collect a few pieces of information, so the only available fields are email, first name, last name, and phone number (adding custom fields requires a premium plan). But if you’re just collecting data for newsletter subscribers or new leads, that’s probably all of the data you need.
You can also use HubSpot Form Builder to create more traditional, non-pop-up forms, and there’s much more flexibility there. There are a few templates to choose from—mostly for marketing- or sales-related use cases—or build your own custom form using nearly 50 fields.
HubSpot Form Builder is part of its Marketing Hub product, which comes with a free customer relationship management (CRM) tool, and you use the CRM to consolidate details from form responses. But if you prefer to use a different tool to view and manage your form responses, you can use one of HubSpot’s Zapier integrations to send new contact details to Google Contacts, Mailchimp, Slack, Google Sheets, and more.
3. Qualaroo
Qualaroo is a top choice for online survey creation tools, thanks in large part to their Qualaroo Nudge™ feature.
The Nudge™ appears in a non-intrusive way so you can gather insights via various channels. You can target this feedback mechanism based on who your audience is, where they are, when they visit, how often they visit, and more.
You can place Nudges™ within mobile apps, tablets, and mobile browsers, and on any webpage. You can even create a Nudge™ as a unique link that you can share via email, chat, and more.
Additionally, its integration with IBM’s Watson’s Natural Language Understanding can deliver analysis about your audience’s sentiment, specifically how they feel to help you discover why they make a certain decision.
Pricing starts at $25/mo. for the Essentials plan and $50 for the Premium plan. You can try any plan free for 15 days, and Qualaroo offers a zero cost plan as well. Simply put, both small and large organizations alike can find a plan that fits their needs.
4. ProProfs Survey Maker
Another easy-to-use survey tool is ProProfs Survey Maker. Simple and feature-packed, this tool helps you create engaging surveys and share them across email and social media or embed them directly on your website.
With 100+ survey templates and a vast library of 1,000,000+ questions, ProProfs Survey Maker makes survey creation a breeze.
Besides, its robust AI-powered reporting system gives you useful insights into who took your survey, when it was taken, and how the respondents answered. Regardless of who your target audience is and which platforms they use, this tool is all you need to offer a delightful and streamlined survey experience to your respondents.
It comes with a Forever Free plan that allows you to create unlimited surveys and gives you access to 10 respondents. Paid plans with advanced features start as low as $0.05 per response per month.
5. Google Forms
Google offers a suite of free tools to help you with all of your online efforts, from Google Docs to Gmail. They also offer one of the best free survey tools available. Google Forms allows you to create unlimited surveys, with unlimited questions and receive unlimited responses.
Plus you can custom design your forms to meet your specific needs and export the data to Google Sheets to better analyze your results. Google is also one of the true full featured free programs – you get complete functionality without ever having to upgrade to an advanced paid version.
6. Survey Gizmo
Survey Gizmo creates some snazzy looking surveys, and they’re a great choice, even with the free version, so long as you don’t plan on getting a ton of respondents.
Survey Gizmo has a limited free version hidden towards the bottom of their pricing page. The free version offers:
- Unlimited surveys and questions
- 50 respondents
- Several basic question types
- Free templates
- Basic reporting
- Option to export to CSV
Paid versions start at $15/month and offer increasingly more features, like skip logic and piping, customized themes, multiple users, API, and data encryption.
The extra-pricey version offers integration with Salesforce, MailChimp, and other 3rd party software tools.
Consider checking out the full comparison chart between the free version vs. various paid options on Survey Gizmo to determine what plan will work best for you.
Conclusion
Online surveys are becoming very popular methods of information gathering, particularly for marketers. Since they are questionnaire style forms that you fill out on the web to share details about your purchasing habits, lifestyle and demographics, they can be used to ask people virtually anything – what their favorite soft drink is or what phone carrier they use, preferring one over another. Survey tools are usually free so there’s no reason not to participate. It’s not easy making money with surveys but it’s also not impossible.