FreeOnlineSurveys.com Survey Software Review

Searching on Google for free online surveys will invariable display FreeOnlineSurveys.com as the first result. We will try to have a look at this survey software platform to see how good and how free it is. The site is not too informative, so we will need to create an account to find out more details related to the features they offer.

Registration appears to be done right on the front page, just by entering you name, password and email. That was too easy.

Right after signup, a welcome page is displayed that answers some of our questions. The free account gives you:

• Reporting on up to 50 responses per survey
• 10 days per survey (if you exceed this you will need to upgrade to view the results)
• An unlimited number of surveys
• Use up to 20 questions in each survey
• Choose from several major languages, or add another at no extra cost

So, the main limitations are 50 responses per survey and 10 days per survey. No so much a “free online surveys” site.

We will start creating a new survey now.

The user interface seems rather old and rudimentary. However, there are several predefined styles that you can choose from and you also have the possibility to choose the language of your survey. That’s a nice feature.

Let’s add a few questions to our survey now. Clicking on “Add a question below” button sends us to some sort of wizard to begin adding the question.

 

In this first screen, you can choose the question type and enter the question text.

There are 10 types of questions:

• Multiple choice (choose one of the following)
• Multiple choice (choose all that apply)
• Simple: true or false
• Simple: yes or no
• Open-Ended: Single text box
• Open-Ended: Multiple text boxes (used for contact details, etc)
• Matrix: Rating Scale for single or multiple items
• Ranking: order a list of items
• Presentation: Descriptive text and images (no answer required)
• Presentation: Insert YouTube video, Google video or other HTML code

At the first look, seems like very few choices here, especially if you take into consideration that “Simple (true or false)” and “Simple (yes or no)” are also single choice questions like “Multiple choice (choose one of the following)”.

A nice thing is the presence of the rich text editor for the question text.

The second screen of the add question wizard finally allows us to add the answer options for the question and also setup some other things.

The extra settings are:

• Possibility to allow a free answer (other – please specify)
• Question style: list answers vertical or use a drop down
• Display answers over multiple columns
• Make question mandatory

We will add more questions now. Interesting thing related to the matrix question. Although it seems that it only supports single choices per row, there are some really nice features:

• Possibility to treat the last column of the matrix as “Not applicable”
• Possibility to add an other or comments box to the matrix question.

The survey editor looks like this:

For each question, you can edit it, delete it or copy it. Questions can also be moved, but only 1 position up or down. That could be kind of hard if you would like to move your question 3 pages down for example.

We will move on now to try to publish our survey. Clicking on “Go to Step 2” button at the top, it sends us to a “Survey Settings” page where for the free account we cannot do anything. Paid accounts will allow you to:

• Create a custom thank you page / message
• Replace the FreeOnlineSurveys.com logo with your own logo
• Receive completed surveys by e-mail instantly
• Password protect your survey
• Prevent duplicate responses using ‘cookies’

These are not available for the free account, so we will continue to the next page: “Launching your survey”. The only option available for the free account is to generate a link to the survey, and here it is:

http://FreeOnlineSurveys.com/rendersurvey.asp?sid=p636miwl7kk96ys624805

Here is a screen shot of the live survey page:

We will add a few responses now to be able to take a look at the reporting section. Here is a screenshot of it:

Again, very few options for the free account. You can only see a summary report. You cannot view individual responses, filter or download results. The only nice thing for the free account seems to be the possibility to generate custom charts for multiple choice and matrix questions.

 Things we liked about FreeOnlineSurveys.com:

• Easy registration process
• Possibility to choose the language of your survey
• Possibility to add comments to the matrix questions

Things we did not like about FreeOnlineSurveys.com:

•  This is the MOST RESTRICTIVE “free” survey platform available on the internet. It really should not be called “free” because there is not much you can do with the “free account” that they give.

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