Dave @ Review.casa

By Dave Carr @Review.Casa

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Introduction – What is SurveyMonkey?

SurveyMonkey is the 800-pound gorilla of the survey market. It’s a secure, easy-to-use online survey creator for building surveys and recording the data collected in the survey.

SurveyMonkey was founded in 1999.

After years of acquiring competing survey and form building platforms in 2021 SurveyMonkey Inc rebranded to Momentive Inc and has various platforms for user engagement and insights but the best known is still SurveyMonkey.

SurveyMonkey-The-World’s-Most-Popular-Free-Online-Survey-Tool

Summary – Who is SurveyMonkey not for?

SurveyMonkey is not for you if you want one platform to do multiple things like survey, forms and polls. There are platforms out there that will do a better job and are cheaper if you want to do more than just surveys.

Summary – Who is SurveyMonkey for?

SurveyMonkey is for anyone wanting a dedicated survey platform to create a survey, record the data from the survey and stay compliant while you do it. By using a platform like SurveyMonkey you stay ahead of any new privacy and security laws that might pop up.

The pros and cons of this online survey tool

The Cons

  • SurveyMonkey pricing is a bit confusing (Plans by the same name have different limits)
  • Very low limits on the free plan
  • Not the easiest platform to use

The Pros

Pricing

To me, the pricing page is a bit confusing as there are 2 plans of the same name that have completely different features and limits.

If you look at the image below you will see what I mean the standard annual and standard monthly have wildly different feature sets.

Plans and pricing

Survey Monkey has many pricing tiers for individuals, teams and enterprise.

The individual plans range from £16 per month to £119 per month (when paid annually) or £99 per month when paid monthly.

The team plans are £25 per user per month and £75 per month per user paid annually.

My experience with SurveyMonkey

I signed up for SurveyMonkey to take it for a test drive for this review. I gave it a test by setting up a survey and seeing what it could do.

After already testing a whole load of form and survey websites out there I found SurveyMonkey to be one of the most complicated to use.

I’m not the sharpest tool in the box so when things aren’t as simple as they could be I tend to give up and go and find an easier alternative but I had a review to write for you guys so I persevered.

It took me a lot longer to build a survey with SurveyMonkey than it did with some other tools out there and all the way through creating it I had that nagging feeling that if something went wrong and some pimple-faced hackers rogue bot submitted the survey a million times I would be receiving a huge bill (see subheading “free version” below).

Creating a survey

New Survey

The create survey screen starts with 3 options as shown in the image above.

When you create a survey you are first presented with three options: Build it for me, start from a template and start from scratch.

In this demonstration, I’m going to show you the start from scratch option.

New Survey

The name your survey pop up is shown in the image above.

In this part of building your survey, you can see you need to select a category your survey belongs to, select whether you are going to use your own contacts or buy some from SurveyMonkey.

I’m going to create a classic survey for you guys to see the workflow.

Survey Design

The survey builder is shown in the image above.

The survey builder is straightforward enough. You enter your question and select from the options in the dropdown (shown below) and a new set of options will appear based on your choice from the dropdown.

Survey field types

The options in the dropdown are shown above.

The thing I like about SurveyMonkey is the question bank where there is a store of questions you can quickly add to your surveys.

Survey Design2

The new options are shown after you make a selection from the dropdown as shown in the image above.

Each field has dynamic options you can configure for your survey so you can get your ideal survey created.

Once you have configured the options for that field hit save.

Survey Design3

The field saved in your form is shown in the image above.

Once your survey field is saved you can add your next survey question and follow the same process until your survey is complete.

Survey Design4

The preview and score tab is shown in the image above.

When you save your survey you come to the preview tab which gives you a score on how SurveyMonkey think your survey will do.

Survey Design5

The survey scoring is shown in the image above.

The survey scoring is a nice touch and they probably have the data to back it up but the shorter the survey the more likely the user is to complete it. This is common sense but it’s amazing how many people don’t have any so this is a useful feature for the hosted survey platform.

Getting visitors to your ideal online survey

Survey Monkey response collection

The first option in the collect responses tab is shown in the image above.

You first have two options when selecting how to collect your responses in this demonstration I’m going to show you the “Send surveys your way” option.

Survey Monkey response collection2

The second screen of the collect responses screen is shown in the image above.

I was a bit deflated when I got to this point as I wanted to embed the survey on my website but that’s not available unless you are a paying customer. 

Then when I went to post the survey to social media I was shown a pop up to upgrade because one of the questions was using a paid option (which wasn’t stated when I added it to the survey)

Surveys free version warning

The free version of SurveyMonkey is very limited with only 40 survey responses per month and on the pricing page, it states that “£0.80 per additional response” so this could add up to a mighty headache if something were to go wrong and say for example your survey went viral online and collected hundreds of responses.

Conclusion – Survey software review

As I stated earlier after testing many form and survey platforms before SurveyMonkey I found it to be one of the more complicated to figure out.

Would I recommend SurveyMonkey?

No, It just didn’t do it for me (if you get what I mean). I must say with SurveyMonkey being THE survey tool back in the day I was expecting a whole lot more, to be honest.

It felt clumsy in its implementation and the whole way through building a survey I had that nagging doubt about that bit of small print on the pricing page (“£0.80 per additional response”).

Now to a big company that 80p a response is chicken feed but if something went wrong and some A hole (it’s the internet there are many) wanted to play a silly game then this could easily cost you a mortgage payment in no time.

So no I wouldn’t use SurveyMonkey to create surveys. I’m not saying that SurveyMonkey isn’t a great platform.

But in all my testing there is one stand out winner in the survey market which is funny because they don’t specifically market themselves as a survey platform. I’m talking about Jotform which I trialled last week. It’s a very intuitive drag and drop form builder that will let you create any type of form (surveys included).

Survey software alternatives

Jotform

Jotform is an online form building platform that can be used to create much more than just surveys.

I’m a big fan of Jotform.

You can create forms, polls and surveys and it’s the most intuitive of the platforms I’ve tried.

Full Jotform review

Survey Sparrow

SurveySparrow is an online survey platform with similar features to SurveyMonkey

Full SurveySparrow review