Best Free Survey Platforms in 2024

Using free survey platforms can prove to be a cost effective solution for businesses and organizations to collect innovative data from their target audiences. Free survey software platforms allow users to create forms and generate insights from responses quickly, at no cost. The free versions of online survey tools offer simple customization options and several functional options like editing surveys, sorting results by questions, skipping logic, validity checks, etc., making them an ideal choice for those who don’t want the hassle of developing a proprietary platform for collecting data. With the help of free feedback surveys, users are able to access powerful analytics tools, which are normally available through paid services.

When a free survey platform is not able to handle more complex survey requirements, it’s time to get a paid plan. But before you do, trying out survey software via a free trial is an effective way to gain a better understanding of the features and capabilities that it offers. This allows users to explore the software without having to make any sort of financial commitment.

With a free trial, users can take advantage of all the functions and benefits that the software provides, including customizing survey questions and formatting, setting up different groups and communities, collecting responses, analyzing results, and more.

Additionally, they can test the customer support services that are provided by the vendor and get access to other resources such as online tutorials. In effect, using a free trial is an amazing opportunity to experience firsthand exactly what survey software has to offer before deciding if it is right for their intended purposes.

You can start with the following top free survey software applications: Alchemer, Qualtrics Research Core, QuestionPro, Sogolytics, SurveyMonkey, Qualaroo and Zoho Survey.

Small business to large enterprise across industries

Survey software can be used by a variety of businesses, ranging from small startups to large multi-national corporations. Such software is beneficial in acquiring feedback to help inform decisions, as well as gathering information on customer preferences, market trends, and sales patterns.

Businesses in the ecommerce, hospitality, finance and banking, and education sectors all make use of survey software to gain objective insights from their customers or stakeholders that may aid in the decision making process.

Nonprofits

Nonprofit organizations often rely on survey software to collect important data from donors and volunteers. Surveys can be used to gain higher levels of insight into the motivations behind donations, determining areas of need in volunteerism, and discovering innovative new ways to engage stakeholders involved in their mission. Using survey software also allows nonprofit organizations to accurately measure the impact of their efforts and gauge progress toward organizational goals. Additionally, surveys are an effective way for a nonprofit organization to stay informed about its constituents’ perspectives on key issues and their overall degree of satisfaction with existing services.

Government

Government agencies often use survey software to conduct research and gather important data. It is a useful tool for quickly collecting information from a large number of respondents. Surveys are used to gather feedback on new services or policies, collect statistical data on demographics or public opinion, evaluate the effectiveness of programs, and many other purposes.

Survey firms

Survey firms can benefit from using survey software, ensuring accurate data collection and easy access to high-quality research findings without the need to shell out huge IT capital. Survey software is often employed to help manage sample data, compile survey responses, and tabulate results. This software can also be used to construct surveys or questionnaires that are tailored to the needs of the firm or project, generating credible data while saving time and effort in the process. Furthermore, some survey software packages have additional features, allowing for analytics and trend analysis of the results, as well as reporting capabilities to summarize the findings.

Alchemer. A comprehensive platform designed to create and deploy surveys quickly and easily. Alchemer comes packed with features like customizable survey templates, advanced logic branching capabilities, comprehensive reporting tools and the ability to integrate surveys with other systems. By combining user-friendly features with powerful analytics, Alchemer can help streamline the survey creation process while providing users with actionable insights.

Qualtrics Research Core. A comprehensive survey software package that offers a variety of tools and features to help users create and manage research surveys. This cloud-based platform makes it possible to quickly and easily collect responses from large samples both online and via mobile devices. It also has several powerful analysis functions to help turn raw data into actionable insights.

QuestionPro. QuestionPro survey software is a trusted data collection platform offering powerful analytics and multiple question types to develop custom online surveys. It provides various tools such as survey logic, over 30 question types and real-time analytics to help you create the most effective surveys. Its intuitive drag-and-drop interface enables easy customization of surveys so that collecting feedback is quick, straightforward and reliable.

Sogolytics. Sogolytics survey software is designed to streamline the survey creation process. Its powerful interface allows users to develop, share and analyze surveys quickly and easily. The system also provides analytics insights to help interpret collected survey data, allowing users to make more informed decisions.

SurveyMonkey. SurveyMonkey is a cloud-based survey software platform that enables users to create, distribute and analyze surveys. A popular product, it is used across industries from the world’s largest corporations to small businesses, non-profits and educational institutions. It also provides customizable design templates for surveys, it also offers real-time analytics capabilities for a deep dive into data.

Qualaroo. Qualaroo provides an automated way to quickly capture qualitative data that can be used to inform decision-making, increase customer satisfaction, and optimize user experiences. Qualaroo’s array of features range from customizable survey designs to open-ended feedback widgets and real-time analytics, making it an easy yet effective tool for collecting customer intelligence.

Zoho Survey. Zoho Survey is an online survey tool designed to optimize customer insights. With an easy-to-use interface and powerful features, users can create customized surveys with advanced branching logic and multiple question types. The platform also offers analysis tools to help you determine the best course of action based on customer feedback. Zoho Survey provides an effective way to get deeper customer insights and make smarter decisions.

Aside from the difference in deployment–cloud-hosted vs. on-premise–survey software can be sorted by feature set. Generally, we can divide the types among freemiums, form builders and end-to-end survey software.

Freemiums

Freemiums are survey platforms free edition, an increasingly popular solution for businesses, individuals and organizations to gain valuable insights from their respondents. While there are numerous benefits, such as access to powerful features, user-friendly customization options and free survey templates, freemium survey software applications do have some limitations. These include a limited number of responses per survey, data analysis restrictions and certain types of questions that cannot be created. Furthermore, many premium features that could be extremely beneficial are available only in the paid version.

Form builders

Form builders allow businesses to create surveys that are easy to understand and efficiently gather customer feedback. This can help organizations gain more significant insights and a deeper understanding of their customer’s needs and preferences. With an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, form builders make it easy for users to customize surveys to fit their particular use case. They also come with a number of pre-defined templates that include configurable questions, making it simple for those without coding experience or expertise to design a survey. Additionally, most form builders provide real-time reporting tools, thus allowing businesses to track progress and find trends in customer responses.

End-to-end survey software

End-to-end survey software offers a wide range of features such as different types of question styles, powerful analytics to measure responses, survey logic to customize the user experience, support for multiple languages and libraries with templates optimized for maximum engagement. With this comprehensive solution, you can go beyond just collecting data; you can also gain valuable insights into customer needs, preferences and trends which are essential in making informed decisions.

Survey logic and branching

Survey logic allows users to tailor their surveys in a way that improves the accuracy, effectiveness and usability of their surveys. Survey logic helps users to optimize their surveys by allowing them to display different types of questions or answer choices based on respondents’ answers. Through this, unnecessary and irrelevant questions can be skipped, thereby streamlining the survey-taking experience for participants, who are more likely to provide detailed and thoughtful responses as a result. Additionally, survey logic has the added benefit of expanding the number of potential outcomes that can be produced from a single survey, enabling users to obtain more comprehensive and reliable results.

Question editor

This feature allows users to customize questions quickly, easily and accurately. Additionally, no coding or survey development knowledge is required. With a generously sized library of question types, survey creators can translate any ideas into actionable questions without postponement or frustration. Furthermore, features such as validation and logical branching ensure respondents are only presented with suitable questions in the correct order.

Piping

Survey software has a highly useful feature known as “piping,” which allows survey creators to easily personalize each respondent’s experience. For example, different responses in one question can lead to a different set of questions in another, allowing for a more dynamic and tailored survey. Piping also eliminates the need for copying and pasting when creating long surveys—it allows multiple elements from other questions to be used dynamically throughout a survey so that proven response rates remain consistent. Survey creators are no longer restricted by simple branching or linear surveys, paving the way for increased engagement and completion rates.

Randomization

Survey software with randomization capabilities can be a powerful tool for helping researchers achieve the most accurate results possible. By randomly ordering questions, this type of software eliminates bias, ensuring that respondents answer all questions in the same order regardless of their background or personal beliefs. Randomizations also help prevent people from selecting answers that are similar to themselves or ones they are comfortable with. Additionally, being able to randomize answers for multiple choice questions ensures that there is no implied hierarchy between responses – something that is important for avoiding misleading or skewed data.

Templates

Templates are pre-created surveys that allow users to ready their insights quickly. They also provide an easy and reliable way of ensuring each survey follows the same format and structure, as they can be tailored to meet any need. With templates, survey makers can save time while still gaining meaningful insight into customer preferences.

Data analysis

Survey software offers tools for data analysis, allowing users to quickly and easily gain insights into the answers they receive. With advanced features like automated calculation of statistics and summaries, survey software effectively reduces the amount of manual work needed to interpret survey data. Furthermore, creating charts and graphs with automated features is much more efficient than manually graphing responses. Using data analysis tools within survey software, users can quickly identify trends across the surveyed population.

Multi-language

Multi-language allows companies to reach out to customers who speak different languages and gain insight from customers that may not be possible with a single-language approach. Surveys can be tailored based on language, allowing respondents to answer questions more easily and accurately. By using multi-language survey software, businesses have the potential to gain access to a wider range of responses that can provide deeper insights into market dynamics and customer preferences.

Branding

Branding survey software with custom colors, logos, and fonts allows companies to give surveys a unique identity. Doing so helps produce an overall positive experience since surveys become associated with the brand rather than just being viewed as generic repetition. Customers are more likely to respond if they are given a sense of ownership over their survey experience; therefore custom branding encourages higher participation rates. This kind of personalization ultimately provides more accurate results for the company’s research and development goals.

Distribution

Survey software provides a range of distribution channels that businesses and organizations can use to collect feedback from their customers or constituents. Distribution channels run the gamut; companies can use web-based, email, paper-and-pencil, SMS/text, in-app surveys and more. This flexibility ensures businesses are able to reach the right people with the right survey method. Depending on the type of organization, this could be existing customers filling out an email survey, students taking a paper-and-pencil quiz in class or app users presented with an in-app questionnaire after completing a task.

Automation

Automation streamlines repetitive tasks to speed up the creation of surveys and make sure data gathering is more effective. Automation plays an especially important role when it comes to analyzing survey results. Programs can be set up to process survey responses, automatically eliminating those that don’t meet specific criteria. It can even produce automatic reports based on the data received from respondents, giving users access to valuable information quickly and with minimal manual intervention.

Data collection options

Surveys can be distributed via email links, QR codes, social media or other online methods. The more distribution options a survey app has, the more flexibility it lends to your campaign.

Easy-to-use

Survey software can be learned in a few minutes by users of any skill level. With an intuitive interface and helpful tutorials, survey software makes it easy to create customized surveys that are tailored specifically to the needs of the researcher. Furthermore, survey responses can be collected automatically and information can be presented using informative graphics and charts. This reduces both time and effort in managing survey data, allowing researchers to analyze results quickly and accurately so they can adjust future surveys or get right to developing solutions depending on the study’s goals.

Accurate results

With this software, surveys can be easily distributed and quickly filled out, reducing the margin of error and giving more precise data. It also allows for comparisons in demographics, making it easier to break down the data into finer detail. Furthermore, its analytics tools are able to detect inconsistencies or anomalies in a glimpse of an eye, allowing companies to draw legitimate insights from their data more easily than ever.

Faster results

Businesses can instantly compile responses and generate detailed analytics within minutes. This gives organizations access to key insights that can drive decisions faster than ever before and help organizations stay one step ahead in today’s competitive environment. Best of all, survey software makes the process significantly easier by automating the collection, analysis and reporting of survey data, drastically reducing the amount of time spent manually sorting through results.

Cost-effective

Survey software can be a great money-saving tool for businesses and organizations that have to conduct surveys on a regular basis. Survey software is an economical solution compared to paper-based methods as it allows one to quickly and easily reach out to a large number of customers or participants without having to incur additional costs like printing and postage fees. Plus, it is much faster than traditional methods, saving time and allowing the surveyor to gain valuable insights from the data collected quickly.

Flexible

Survey software provides an unparalleled level of flexibility to meet the needs of today’s customer-focused organizations. Different types of questions can be deployed and combined, response scales can be adjusted, and surveys can be tailored to any target population by using powerful segmentation tools. Furthermore, survey software allows for frequent updates, enabling users to make adjustments on the fly. All of these features add up to create a more accurate assessment of customer preferences and feedback.

Market growth

The global online survey software market is predicted to experience rapid growth in the upcoming years. According to a report, it is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 10.50% by 2027, bringing its total worth to $10,081.48 million. Particularly, the market size in the Americas has been estimated at $2,022.12 million in 2021 and is projected to reach $3,639.10 million by 2027 at a compound annual growth rate of 10.28%. Asia-Pacific’s online survey software sector has been estimated at $1,594.78 million in 2021 and is expected to grow to $2,951.11 million by 2027 at a CAGR of 10.80%. Lastly, Europe, the Middle East & Africa have gauged a market size of $1,918.61 million for 2021 which is set to expand to $3,491.26 million by 2027 at a stable CAGR of 10.49%.

Internet penetration and mobile usage

The internet saw a steady increase in users in 2022 with 4.55 billion people across the world using the web, representing a 2.6% growth from 2021. This is equal to 57.4% of the total population. The Middle East and Africa are notable for their accelerated growth, with internet penetration rising by an impressive 4%. At nearly 30%, internet use in this region still lags significantly behind other global regions such as North America, which posted a penetration rate of 89.2% for 2022. Furthermore, mobile phone use outpaced internet use, hitting 64.8% worldwide and 44.8% as far as smartphone adoption is concerned. Smartphones had made less headway than other technologies though in the Middle East and Africa; 14.2% penetration compared to 36.6% for mobile phones overall that showed that there is still much room for improvement for both technologies in this area going forward.

AI-powered surveys

Advancements in artificial intelligence have been making significant strides lately, and one of the most powerful applications is seen in AI-powered surveys. AI-driven surveys are becoming increasingly popular among businesses as it allows a depth of insights that were not previously possible with traditional survey methods. Human response bias is often eliminated and irrelevant questions are avoided owing to intelligent algorithms analyzing the data as it comes in. Furthermore, AI-powered surveys can detect patterns and correlations in the data, allowing decision-makers to quickly identify how customers interact with their products or services. The benefits of AI-powered surveys certainly should not be ignored–they provide invaluable insights while eliminating much of the manual work associated with data collection.

Social media buzz data vs. traditional surveys for sales forecasting

In recent years, businesses have increasingly begun to explore the use of social media buzz data as an alternative to the traditional survey method when it comes to sales forecasting. By effectively leveraging this type of data, companies can gain a deeper understanding of customer sentiment and potential product performance more quickly than through surveys. This advantage has allowed companies to be more agile in their approach to sales forecasting by making faster decisions that accurately reflect customer preferences. While there is still some uncertainty due to inaccuracy that can arise from relying on social media analytics, in many cases, it has been proven to be a valuable asset in estimating future market scenarios.

Online surveys can be a useful tool for gathering feedback, opinions and data. However, they may be problematic when it comes to accuracy and representativeness in more complex matters.

• Biased responses. Many times individuals are not randomized and as such, surveys may lack unbiased responses.
• False responses. Respondents may not be as truthful or entirely honest in their answers since they remain anonymous.
• Simplistic. Most online surveys lack the necessary depth or complexity to accurately measure an individual’s feelings on a specific topic.
• Low engagement. The overall response rate for online surveys is often very low, which could potentially skew results.

Consequently, online surveys should be used with caution and additional research methods should certainly be employed to supplement their use for milestone decisions.

Large enterprises are leveraging survey software to gain a competitive edge. This software helps uncover the diversity of customer needs, desires and expectations quickly and effectively. Companies can use customer feedback from surveys to build more comprehensive customer profiles, improve customer service, determine customer preferences more accurately, and measure marketing campaigns. Furthermore, by automating customer satisfaction check-ins, survey software allows companies to easily capture accurate responses in real time. This streamlined approach removes the burden of manual data entry and would be impossible without advanced survey software technology.

Survey software integrations are incredibly useful for businesses of all sizes as they allow businesses to leverage powerful insights from surveys directly into their existing business systems. Common business systems that integrate with survey software include:

• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems
• Analytics suites
• Human resources information systems (HRIS)

Having these integrations makes it easy to take survey results and turn them into valuable data that can inform decisions about sales pipelines, budgeting, resource planning, personnel strategies and product development.

Innovative survey solutions also offer capabilities like integration with webhooks that allow businesses to run automated actions based on survey responses, such as sending an email or a text message that is tailored to each individual respondent.