Developing, growing, and enriching your business is all about taking calculated risks…with an emphasis on “calculated.” The more you know in advance, the lower the chance you’ll lose your shirt when your business launches a new product or makes a pivot. In many cases, the only way to get the accurate information you need in advance is by surveying your audience.
Choosing the right survey tool can set you up for gathering comprehensive, beneficial data that paves the way for smart decisions–or it can leave you guessing. To help you choose your survey tool, we’re comparing some of the most popular options.
Qualtrics: An Overview
Qualtrics is a major leader in survey tools for corporations and enterprises in particular. It’s a robust survey tool, or rather, a suite of survey tools each customized for different purposes. Whether your project is market segmentation, brand assessment, a voice of the customer program, employee experience management, or numerous other endeavors, Qualtrics has a specialized solution.
As a survey platform, Qualtrics has a variety of options and features. It offers multiple distribution channels and question formats. Qualtrics is perhaps best known for its data analysis capabilities, though. It can conduct a thorough analysis of multiple question types to put together conclusions and quantitative results.
When it comes to surveys, Microsoft Forms is the simple, straightforward option. This platform is all about efficiency and an easy user experience – much like you can expect from Microsoft’s other productivity tools.
Microsoft Forms is designed to be a clear and basic survey tool with pre-set options and customizations. It’s efficient for surveys, quizzes, and questionnaires for businesses as well as educators, but it doesn’t do much in terms of analyzing the data you collect.
Pros and Cons of Qualtrics
Trying to decide if Qualtrics is the survey tool your business needs? Keep these pros and cons in mind.
Pro: Specialized Survey Options
Qualtrics is designed by data collection and analysis experts who have put together enless options. If you have a particular type of survey you want to create, Qualtrics is detailed enough for you to customize it to your needs. The feature-packed platform also allows you to set up email triggers such as email reminders for people who have started but not finished the survey and emails with follow-up surveys.
Con: High Price Tag
Qualtrics is designed for large corporations and institutions, so unsurprisingly, it has a price tag that’s fitting for enterprises. It isn’t the most budget-friendly for small or medium-sized businesses. The pricing is also only available through the platform’s sales team, so there isn’t a way to know if Qualtrics fits into your budget without having contact with a salesperson.
Pro: Thorough Data Analysis
Qualtrics is known for its end-to-end process. It can help you create a detailed and customized survey and, depending on your plan, it analyzes the results for you. You end up with a thorough report of quantitative conclusions and (ideally) practical takeaways you can incorporate into your business strategies.
Con: Learning Curve
As with any software, more features means more of a learning curve. Qualtrics in particular can be difficult to grasp at first, so expect to invest significant time in getting to know the platform. It’s also worth noting that more isn’t always better. Depending on your research needs, you may end up paying for a more extensive library of features that you won’t actually use.
Microsoft Forms is constructed in a very different way than Qualtrics, so it has its own set of advantages and disadvantages. Keep these key points in mind as you weigh whether this tool has what you need.
Pro: Affordability
In the world of survey tools, it doesn’t get much more affordable than Microsoft Forms. The online version of this tool is free for anyone with a Microsoft account. There is a desktop app for Forms as well, and this is included in enterprise-level Microsoft 365 accounts.
Con: Minimal Audience Controls
If you’re looking for heavily reliable survey results, Microsoft Forms may not be your best bet. It is very limited in its audience controls. You can’t track who has and hasn’t responded and as a result, you can’t limit the number of times a person responds. This makes it tricky to know whether 50% of your customers are satisfied or whether only one customer is satisfied but has completed 50% of your surveys.
Pro: Easy Use
Microsoft Forms is incredibly intuitive and easy to use, especially for those who are already familiar with Microsoft Office products and the user experience they create. This is handy for creating quick and simple surveys, although part of the reason Forms is easy to use is because it has so many fewer options, so you reach a point when you aren’t able to do what you need.
Con: Minimal Data Analysis Capabilities
Microsoft Forms is designed to create surveys and gather data, but that’s generally where it ends. It has minimal data analysis capabilities beyond just compiling and tallying responses. If your survey only uses basic multiple-choice questions, though, this may be all you need.
An Alternative: GroupSolver, the Best of Both Worlds
Both Qualtrics and Microsoft Forms have contrasting disadvantages, so how do you choose where to settle? You may not have to compromise with a tool that offers the best of both worlds like GroupSolver.
GroupSolver combines the intuitive user experience of Microsoft Forms with the customizability and thorough data analysis of Qualtrics. In fact, GroupSolver goes a step further with artificial intelligence survey capabilities
. Throughout a survey, GroupSolver can incorporate past respondents’ answers into each new respondent’s survey to crowdsource insights in real-time. This allows you to get to the bottom of what your audience really thinks and why. When all is said and done, you get a report of detailed, actionable conclusions and measurable data.
GroupSolver, Qualtrics, and Microsoft Forms are all popular choices for conducting surveys, and each one has a trustworthy reputation. It comes down to a question of what you’re looking for and which one suits your research needs best. In fact, you may find that it’s best to have multiple tools in your toolbox, using Microsoft Forms for quick questionnaires and GroupSolver for more detailed insight-hunting expeditions, for example.
Read more about how GroupSolver compares to other leading survey platforms in our Comparison Guide
.
If GroupSolver sounds like a fit for your business, we’re here to help. Book a GroupSolver demo
to learn more about this unique survey tool and how it can serve you.
