Online Survey Sites

[mktgurl]

This is a multi-question post. I'm evaluating SurveyMonkey.com right now, and on their site, they have posted their competitors:

Active Websurvey http://www.webintel.net/websurvey4/
Apian Software http://www.apian.net/
Cool Surveys http://www.coolsurveys.com/
CustomerSat http://www.customersat.com/
EZSurvey http://www.raosoft.com/
Greenfield Online http://www.greenfieldonline.com/
Hosted Survey http://www.hostedsurvey.com/
Infopoll http://www.infopoll.net/
Inquisite http://www.inquisite.com/
InSite http://www.insitesurveys.com/
InstantSurvey http://www.netreflector.com/
LiveSurveys http://www.livesurveys.com/
mantaINSIGHT http://www.mantacorp.com/
Mercator http://www.mercatorcorp.com/
ObjectPlanet http://www.objectplanet.com/Surveyor/
Perseus http://www.perseus.com/
PollCat http://www.pollcat.com/
PollPro http://www.pollpro.com/
QuickSense http://www.quicksense.com/
StatPac http://www.statpac.com/
StatSurvey http://www.statsurvey.com/
SumQuest http://www.sumquest.com/
SuperSurvey http://www.supersurvey.com/
Survey Select http://www.sajasoftware.com/
Survey System http://www.surveysystem.com/
SurveyCrafter http://www.surveycrafter.com/
SurveyGold http://www.surveygold.com/
SurveyHeaven http://www.surveyheaven.com/
SurveySaid http://www.surveysaid.com/
SurveySite http://www.surveysite.com/
SurveyTrends http://www.surveytrends.com/
SurveyView http://www.surveyview.com/
Surveywire http://www.surveywire.com/
Zoomerang™ http://www.zoomerang.com/

Have you used or considered to use any of them? And, are the results of using one of these online survey firms decent (e.g., the results are what you had expected for the price you were charged)?

[shantirao]

As the guy who writes EZSurvey, I can tell you that SurveyMonkey is pretty good at what it does. Of course, I'm still in business because EZSurvey does things that SurveyMonkey doesn't. Can you tell us more about your objectives?

If it's just a short survey to a few people without anything complicated, just use a free service like SurveyMonkey or Zoomerang. Don't spend more time evaluating software than the project is worth! I do have reservations about both of these products, but that's not appropriate for this forum.

If you work for a company or government and do surveys often, then you have vastly different needs than independent researchers do. Read EWeek's recent revews SurveySolutions, Inquisite, EZSurvey (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1662463,00.asp) and WebSurveyor (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1658786,00.asp).

If you're doing sophisticated marketing research, like most of the regulars on this forum, you're into a whole different ballgame, and I'm sure others will weigh in.

Shanti Rao

[mobileman]

i'm happy with the surveysystem. it has some disadvantages but for it's price it's very good quality. easy to work with and a good tutorial

[Dustin]

Wow. As a former employee of a web survey software company that's not included on your list (i.e. one who's relatively in the know about these things), I still never fail to be impressed by how many providers of these products are out there. I wonder if they're all successful businesses. I mean, are there really that many people doing self-designed web surveys out there? I've been out of that particular domain for a little while now (i.e. evaluating competitors' web survey software), but that list really surprised me. And I'm sure it's not complete.

By the way, I'd agree with Mr Rao's comments. Unless you need something that handles large samples or quite sophisticated questionnaire designs, you'll probably be fine with one of the cheapies out there. But unless it's a simple one-off, you'll probably find yourself more frustrated about the lack of features than it's worth. And then you'll need to try some of the others, provided, of course, that you're not fleeced for the cost!

Personally though, I'm an even stronger advocate for outsourcing these kinds of projects, unless web surveys are destined to become part of your core service offering. For reasonable rates, you can have an expert like Scott Spain or others set up your survey quickly, with no hassle, and with great results. And you don't have to look at a single line of code.

(Scott, you send my fee for that plug to P.O Box 203...

[Scott Spain]

LOL. Thanks.

*sends check*

Dustin brings up some good questions though. There seems to be a gazillion companies offering similar services. I wonder how they're doing.

[jwh_123]

For the turnkey web-based solutions, maybe their overhead is not that high, depending on site traffic (which would make it a variable cost anyways). If you've got a full-time programmer/developer and a business guy, I suppose you could stay in business for a while. It just seems like such a boring business model. The interesting stuff is custom, with specialized programming, samples, etc.

Cheers,
Jeff

[shantirao]

The short answer to Scott's question is that a lot of web survey ASPs fold after a couple of years. I know that some of the small ones have sales of around $20-40k/yr.

Let's imagine that you wanted to start your own. You'll need at least two servers at a co-location facility, and a bunch of computers for testing your web pages on different operating systems. Call that $12k for the first year. VeriSign charges another $1k to do CC processing. Miscellaneous expenses, around $2k. If you want to advertise with Google or Overture, figure on spending $5-10 per click for a good search term like "web survey software".

Since you're competing against 35 other companies, you'd think that 1 in 35 serious visits might result in a sale, except that you're not the major player, and some people click on your ad twice, so the number is more like 1 in 50. Or worse. And not all visits are serious. That means your cost of acquisition is at least $250 per customer. Note that SurveyMonkey charges $200/year (but they dont pay for search engine ads).

Say you'll charge $400/year. Then you need 100 customers in the first year to cover expenses. If you believe the NYT's article on SurveyMonkey, they had a few thousand paying customers in the first year. Could you do that too? Probably not. Say 500 optimistically. Then your net is $60k before taxes.

Of course I'm writing this to discourage you from competing with me. But I'd also like to point out that in commodity markets, margins tend to zero. And low-end web surveys have become a commodity.

[ryansmith]

I have seen most of the survey websites offering standard template based solutions. At times the research requires customized survey with no mention of the company doing the survey. I like to introduce a fairly new company: http://www.surveyrapid.com that offers all such facility considering that respondent/requestor may require assistance over the weekend too.

They have listed good samples which look very professional:

http://www.surveyrapid.com/Sample_Survey.htm

Regards,
Ryan

[genius]

Hello friends, It is my first post on this forum. Hope you are all fine. OK now back to the topic. I have tried almost every survey website i found on google but non did pay me. Why is it always fraud? I had wasted a lot of time on survey websites. BTW i am located inside Pakistan. Can you tell me about any survey website which actually paid you? I am almost dishearten now.