Surveys are an age-old method to collect information from potential and existing customers about products and services. They open a channel of communication, allow for the customer to feel appreciated while sometimes enjoying anonymity.
Online tools have made the act of surveying very easy with various online survey tools. These tools allow one to create engaging survey forms that can be sent out separately or embedded within a website.
These online tools often come with various customisation features that allow you to follow your company colours, integrate payment gateways and even offer conditional questioning – often lacking in the age-old paper survey method.
So, what should you look for in a typical survey tool?
- Device Compatibility – people may fill forms on phones, tabs, desktops or laptops and it’s our job to make the survey look comfortable and readable everywhere.
- Integrations – This includes data integration that allows easier assessment of the collected data as well as integration of payment gateways, videos, etc.
- Templates – How many types of surveys can one create.
- Sharing Features – Whether the surveys can be shared via SMS, Instagram links sent over email or embedded onto a site.
So, let’s take a look at three major survey tools: SurveySparrow, SurveyMonkey, Typeform and how they measure up to one another.
Onboarding
Typeform
Typeform allows one to create surveys where questions can be displayed one after the other. This is also demonstrated in Typeform’s onboarding process that’s extremely simple.
All you need to do is enter your requirements one after the other as asked. This will direct you to a customized Typeform dashboard. The UI is aesthetic, clean and requires minimal thinking on the user’s part.
SurveySparrow
The SurveySparrow onboarding process includes a short form, a chatbot and a guided tour that shows you how to use the tool. You may choose to go through it or skip it.
It does feel like too many things at once (especially the chatbot seems a bit much at this stage), however, the guided tour is simple and useful. You can also reactivate it anytime from the top menu.
SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey has a short onboarding process. It does not ask for details about the industry but rather gets right down to the nitty-gritty. However, there’s no option to skip this.
Thus SurveyMonkey begins with you creating a dummy survey template. Which while cool, should come with a skip option.
Dashboard
Typeform
In keeping with its aesthetic, Typeform offers a simple UI. To the left, we have a menu that displays all the active workspaces and collected responses. And that’s it! To create a new survey, you can simply click on “New Typeform”.
Each workspace refers to a project. And each project can have a different set of team members who can work on it. They can be added or removed from a project anytime by the controlling account.
Typeform does not have an option for one to import their contacts. Rather, it creates a link for each survey. If you want to send it out via email, you can only access this option at the Publishing stage.
The removal of features like this makes the workspace extremely simple to use for someone new to the task of creating survey forms. Typeform divulges the right amount of information at the right time.
SurveySparrow
The SurveySparrow dashboard comes with a “Create Survey” pop-up that opens every time you visit the home page, which can get old quite quickly. However, the dashboard itself is sophisticated and offers a few more options than Typeform.
To the right is a chatbot. To the left is a menu that shows all the workspaces or projects currently underway. There is also a special section below that allows you to import contacts, set a brand theme and so on. One can see a preview of the templates from the “Templates” on the top.
SurveyMonkey
The SurveyMonkey dashboard is unique. The homepage scrolls down vertically as opposed to the earlier ones that only contain a static screen. The homepage includes all details about popular integrations, survey examples, tips and more.
It is very much like a blog and a great introduction to the tool.
The menu for accessing responses and surveys are located at the top. Other than that, as the page scrolls, there are separate sections – for Insights, Integrations, New Surveys and so on.
Templates and Editor
Typeform
One can either start from scratch or choose a survey form from the existing templates offered. The templates in Typeform are categorised based on the type of information collected. These include:
- Feedback
- Registration
- Application
- Quiz
- Giveaway
- Request
- Order
- Lead capture
- Poll
- Report
Typeform provides a decent range of options from making class quizzes to product research survey templates.
After selecting a template, Typeform offers information on the template regarding the amount of time it will take to fill and the questions it contains.
Template Editor
Coming to the editor, Typeform offers a simple drag and drop builder with various question typologies. Typeform can only display one question at a time, on a given background.
The survey is divided into two sections – the content (which contains the questions) and the ending (a thank you page). New questions can be added by clicking the “+” sign to the left. It works in a similar format to a Powerpoint presentation. The slides or questions are displayed as thumbnails on the left.
In the centre, one can work on the template. Typeform allows question types like multiple choices, short answers, picture choices, opinion scales (rate from 1 to 10), star ratings and more.
You can also add payment gateways, ask for legal confirmations, check for a valid website URL or ask the users the upload a file. The file uploading limit is set at 10 MB.
One can add an unlimited number of questions to a survey. Similar questions can be grouped together under another header.
There are also various layouts for the survey that includes image and text placement options. The Preview option allows one to see the survey in desktop and mobile format.
Menu Features
The Menu on the left has three separate sections:
- Editor – This shows all the questions and is the menu displayed by default.
- Design – The design section allows one to change design elements like the font style, font size, background picture, colour of text, buttons etc.
- Logic – This section shows the branching of various questions. Now, this is where Typeform really excels! Logic branching generally just shows the linearity or branching system that the questions follow. However, Typeform offers much more customising.
The Logic page is a black infinite screen that shows the connection of the questions. One of the options it allows is Question Branching.
Here, based on the answers given in the previous question, one may skip to some other question than the one directly after it. This allows everyone to have a customised and more relevant survey experience.
The next interesting feature is the provision of a customised “Bye” or “Thank You” page. Here, one can choose to recall answers or words given by the user. You can simply write a statement and recall the answer to a specific question to be included midway.
Finally, one can assign scores for multiple-choice, rating style or other quantifiable questions. Each individual answer can be assigned a score, and the total will be displayed during the results.
On the whole, the Typeform Editor has all the things required to create great and engaging surveys. It is not data-heavy, has pretty templates and allows customisation to a great extent.
Overview of Steps
After the editor, the survey creator has 4 steps that it goes through:
- Create – This includes the editor on which the layout and questionnaire are created.
- Connect – The Connect page includes all available integrations that one can use for analysing the survey data, accessing developer tools, generating leads and more.
- Share – The share option comes live only after the survey has been published. After publishing, one can choose to share the survey in multiple ways. The first is simply sharing a link. You can also generate a QR code for it or share it directly across your social channels like Instagram and LinkedIn. There are multiple options seen here, which we will discuss later.
- Results – This allows you to see the overall results of the survey. Again, we will discuss this in details in the results section.
After creating a survey, Typeform allows the option to share it via mail or convert it into a chat-style survey. In the beginning, Typeform only allows the singular type of survey creation. Again, we see this as an example of Typeform removing unnecessary information so as to not overwhelm customers. Their final “dressing” of surveys as mail or chat surveys allows much more flexibility than deciding on this early on.
SurveySparrow
Unlike Typeform, SurveySparrow asks one for the type of survey they want to create. The options include:
Classic Survey
This takes one to a display of the available templates based on the industry. After clicking on a template, SurveySparrow opens up a preview of it where you can even answer the questions and see how it works.
Once satisfied, you can choose that template. It does not offer details regarding the time needed for filling or the total number of questions.
The editor of SurveySparrow follows a similar format where the question list is displayed to the left and the centre shows the main survey. Unlike Typeform, where one can change the question type at any point, for SurveySparrow you need to delete the entire question if you want to change the type. While adding a new question, SurveySparrow asks you for the type of question needed.
The types of questions are the same as those offered in Typeform. The only new option is the Constant Sum option that checks whether the options entered the match a certain figure or remain within a limit or not.
It is interesting to note that, unlike Typeform, SurveySparrow does not offer a visual workflow of the user. The logic is instead displayed at the bottom, where you can add if/else or skipping conditions. There is no way to see the entire logic of the questionnaire as Typeform offered. However, unlike Typeform, one can see the preview of the individual question anytime from the View option located at the right.
An interesting feature is that you can add “tags” to the question which can be used to separate them later on. This is a useful feature while sifting through multiple forms and question types.
Menu Features
The Menu on the left has the following options:
- Build – This is the default section. it’s where the questions are created.
- Design – Similar to Typeform, this is where one can control the colour, font and other design elements.
- Global Variables – This allows one to create custom variables within the URL of the survey and thus pass custom parameters.
- Notifications -Here, one can opt to send a Thank You email after a customer has filled a survey.
The same format remains for the other types of surveys as well. Each survey has 4 segments – the editor, the integrations, the sharing options and the results.
Chat Survey
There are many templates available for chat surveys. However, the editor is the same as seen in the case of the classic survey.
NPS Survey
There is only one template for an NPS Survey. The editor is the same and includes rating based questions as seen in such surveys. The only difference is in the sharing stage. NPS Surveys can be directly added to your app, website, sent via a weblink, SMS, or email.
Offline Survey
As the name suggests, this allows one to fill surveys offline. For this, you need to download the SurveyMonkey Anywhere app. The app downloads the survey which you can carry anywhere. Filled data will be synced later when a net connection is available. The app has a Kiosk Mode where any device can be turned into a data-gathering hotspot. One single admin device can be used to track all the devices around.
360 Degree Survey
This allows one to conduct an employee survey. A 360 Degree Survey comes with special types of questions and breakdowns, hence its a special feature offered by SurveySparrow that one needs to book beforehand.
Apart from this, if you want to look at the survey templates based on the industry directly, you can do so by accessing the Templates option from the top menu.
On the whole, SurveySparrow offers various templates and question types, but the lack of a complete overview can hinder when working on a long survey.
SurveyMonkey
The SurveyMonkey templates are segregated based on the industry type. What’s interesting here is the “Build It For Me” option. This activates the Genius Assistant, an AI that will ask you some basic questions regarding your customer base and goals.
Based on this, a customised survey is generated which you can edit further. Some common options like adding demographic questions, or changing the layout colours, etc are already provided by the pop-up. On the whole, this is a pretty handy feature included by SurveyMonkey.
Before getting into the other templates, let’s look at the options provided by SurveyMonkey at this stage. SurveyMonkey allows one to import questions. All one needs to do is copy-paste the questions from another file with an Enter in between the questions. They will automatically be added to a survey for further editing.
One can choose to buy targetted responses in which case one can narrow down the customer criteria and ensure the survey reaches only that customer segment. This is a paid feature. One can also copy a past survey or choose to build one from scratch.
Template Editor
SurveyMonkey offers a comprehensive editor that takes care of almost all aspects. The menu is on the left whereas the editor is on the right. However, SurveyMonkey offers a new section where one can access recommended questions, past questions, and other common questions like demographics.
This makes creating a question extremely easy! The reference piece is something both Typeform and SurveySparrow lack. The Question Bank contains a list of questions segregated by type – demographic, market research, job signups and so on.
The type of questions offered by SurveyMonkey is the same as seen in Typeform, however, they do not offer images, and videos. The question typologies can be changed anytime without deleting them.
The Page Logic can be accessed from the top right. Here, one can opt for question skipping, question randomisation or page randomisation. Page Logic allows one to skip to a particular question or reach the end of the survey. There is no further branching allowed.
From the menu option on the left, one can change the colours of the survey as well as its display type. You can choose to display questions one after another, in the form of a chat or all at once. Other customisations include the display of a progress bar, exit option, page number, title and so on.
Overview of Steps
Once done, the next stage is the Preview & Score step. Here, SurveyMonkey rates the survey, assigns a completion score and the time required to complete it.
They also offer a recommendation which is a great feature and one not seen before. This is also the preview stage and SurveyMonkey offers a desktop, tab and laptop preview.
The SurveyMonkey editor is intuitive, to say the least. Creating a survey has never been easier. The recommendations and references are a great way to encourage one to build an engaging survey. SurveyMonkey believes in the power of the NPS survey and thus, they recommend that each survey begins with an NPS question.
However, it certainly needs a better and cleaner UI. The option of setting page logic also required multiple clicks. The option to convert a survey into a chat survey is hidden deep within the menu.
Sharing Options
Typeform
Typeform offers multiple sharing options like sharing via a link, embedding it onto your site, using a slider, a pop-up ad, a full-page Typeform and more. The share stage is also where you can convert the survey into a chat or email survey.
On clicking the sharing option you prefer, Typeform will take you to another preview editor from where you can get a link and embed it within your site. The entire process is easy, quick and most importantly – streamlined.
SurveySparrow
SurveySparrow offers a similar sharing interface and options as that of Typeform. You can share a URL, a QR Code, send an email, embed it onto your website, share it on a Slack channel and so on.
SurveyMonkey
Since SurveySparrow offers the options of targeting customers, it asks you whether you would like to try targeted segments or get a general link for everyone. For general sharing, the options available are seen below. SurveyMonkey provides the additional option of adding manual data.
Reports
Typeform
Typeform allows an overall Insight section. This contains the basic things like completion time, drop rate and so on. Typeform divides them all based on the device which the users used.
Typeform then offers a question-by-question summary. This helps one to see where the customers dropped off the survey.
Apart from this, one can check the overall summary of each respondent and also check the individual responses.
SurveySparrow
SurveySparrow also allows one to see a sample report data by filling in some random data automatically. It’s a great way to introduce one to their insights section without actually creating and sending out a survey. The Default Report shown is an overview of all the customer’s.
Next, one can see the individual responses of each customer. The data can be exported as an Excel, CSV, SPSS file or made into a Google sheet. There are sorting and filtering options.
A cool thing is that upon clicking on a respondent, their answer does not open up on a newly loaded page, but rather a simple half-tab slides in from the right. This saves quite some time and frustration! Any customer can be added to a Case for reviewing later.
SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey offers two sections – Analysis Reports and Presenting Reports. The former section allows one to see the response for each question one-by-one. Here, we can see the response rates. What’s interesting is that there are multiple display options.
This displays the answers for every question in that format.
The Present Results section essentially allows one to create a custom dashboard or report. The actual editing occurs in the earlier stage itself. SurveyMonkey’s reports are customisable, easily understood and most importantly, quite detailed. One can see a lot of things at once like question categories, common answers, data trends and so on.
Integrations
Typeform
There are a total of 79 integrations available for Typeform. This can be done by visiting the “Connect” option from within a template. This includes Google Sheets, Analytics, Slack and more. Some like Salesforce are paid.
SurveySparrow
SurveySparrow allows a similar array of integrations like Google Sheets, Analytics, Facebook Pixel and more. There are also marketing tools like Marketo, Eloqua, ActiveCampaign and more.
SurveyMonkey
Among the three, SurveyMonkey has the fewest integrations, however it supports all majorly used tools.
Others
Typeform
Typeform does not allow 360-degree assessments. Neither does it allow NPS surveys. The surveys are not posted on custom domains. It is also the only one among the three that is not supported by an Android or iOS mobile app.
SurveySparrow
SurveySparrow allows one to set up customised workflows. That is, after a person fills up a form, you can choose to export the data using a webhook, or send the respondent an email, or add them to a mailing list using integration and so on.
SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey’s integrations mean one can use APIs to trigger an NPS survey to a customer. However, SurveyMonkey does not allow the addition of images and videos onto their survey.
All three platforms allow white-labeled surveys, support multiple devices, conditional logic, and payment gateways.
Pricing
Typeform
Typeform offers three different pricing stacks, and there is no free plan, though there is a free trial plan. For more than 50,000 responses per month, Typeform offers customized plans.
SurveySparrow
SurveySparrow offers pricing for personal accounts, business accounts and those for only NPS or only 360-degree assessment accounts.
There is a Forever Free plan only for personal account users who can only add 10 questions in each survey and collect 100 responses per month.
The 360-degree assessment account has a completely different pricing plan set. This is dependent on the number of assessments and users.
SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey also offers both personal and business plans. There is a forever-free personal plan that can support up to 40 responses per survey.
Apart from this, there are business and enterprise plans. These allow 10,000-15,000 responses per month.
Conclusion
On the whole, all three tools are great at what they do. However, they are aimed at different audiences. SurveyMonkey is great for a larger enterprise, whereas Typeform works best for SMBs, and schools.
Typeform’s easy and customises logic workflow is a great feature. Whereas SurveyMonkey’s Genius AI makes the form creation task a pleasure.
You would also enjoy reading our guide on the best online quiz builders. You might also find VideoAsk – a new customer engagement tool by Typeform.
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