How to choose the right survey software

Finding the right survey software provider could be a hard task. You need to take a lot of things into consideration before making the final decision. Here are some things you need to know and look for before deciding:

1. Survey Tool Features

It’s important to know what you need to create your surveys, to collect the responses to the survey and to analyze the results. Look for the followings:

• see how easy/hard is to create a simple survey with 3-4 questions
• see what question types are available
• see if there are limitations in the number of survey that can be created, number of questions or number of responses that can be gathered
•  take a look at the reports available, see if there is the possibility to view summary or detailed reports, possibility to export the data in various formats
• see if it’s possible to customize the look of the survey

2. Prices (free vs. paid survey accounts)

Depending on your target and budget you will need to take a look at the pricing structure of the survey vendor. Many survey vendors offer free online survey plans that have some limitations. See if such a plan will work for you.

Check for the following types of limitations in free survey plans:

• number of surveys
• number of questions per survey
• number of responses that can be collected
• time limitations (for trial accounts)
• how long will the data will be kept into the free survey account
• reports available
• data download if available

If a free plan is not enough for you or you have the budget to purchase a paid survey software account, you need to compare the payment plans of multiple vendors in order to take the correct decision. Look for the followings:

• price
• features included in various payment plans
• limitations in various payment plans
• subscription period
• is there a way to try it before you buy it
• are there any discounts available (many survey vendors offer discounts for academic / non-profit customers)

3. Support

This will be very important if you will be in trouble at some point. It’s best to know exactly what kind of support you will get and how fast will you get it.

We recommend you to try the support in earlier stages of your survey platform tests. Send a simple, common question (even if it might happen to know the answer for it) and see how long it will take until you get a response and see how professional the response is.

Good luck.

For more details about online surveys and survey software reviews visit http://www.survey-reviews.net/.