The term “data-driven” is more than just a business buzzword; it’s a game-changer. Today’s technology gives your business more access to data than ever before. There’s a catch, though: you need an effective research plan to find and effectively use that data. Whether you’re trying to assess and improve your customer experience, evaluate your brand awareness, or work toward countless other goals, it all begins by asking consumers questions.
The survey tool you choose can either enhance your research or hold it back. To help you find the right fit, we’re taking a comparative look at two survey giants: Qualtrics and SurveyMonkey.
An Overview of Qualtrics
Qualtrics is designed to be an end-to-end solution for enterprises. It’s built from an experience management (or XM) perspective, with a focus on helping you pull together all the information you need to strengthen your customer experience and employee experience.
Qualtrics isn’t one product but a brand of several survey products, each with its own specialty, like customer experience, brand metrics, and so on. The brand offers advanced analytics to turn your data into practical, quantitative conclusions, along with technical reporting so you can share your data throughout your organization.
An Overview of SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey has a very different brand and focus than Qualtrics. SurveyMonkey is set on making survey research accessible. Ease of use is the name of the game, so this tool was created primarily with small to mid-sized businesses and individuals in mind with less complex research questions, though there is an enterprise version too.
Pros and Cons of Qualtrics
Now that you have a general understanding of Qualtrics and SurveyMonkey, let’s get into the real question: how do they compare? While each has its pros and cons, let’s start with a critical look at Qualtrics.
Pro: Exceptional Data Analysis
Qualtrics’s claim to fame is that it claims to go beyond building surveys. It takes your survey data and performs quantitative analysis to take it from a jumble of survey answers to a report of practical use. Keep in mind, though, that this is primarily limited to quantitative data with minimal qualitative data analysis.
Con: Complex Use
The typical trade-off for a feature-rich product is the ease of use. Without mincing words, Qualtrics comes with a steep learning curve. It takes time to learn how to use the tools in their simplest forms and more time to dig into the features so you’re getting the greatest possible benefit from each tool. This could be too much of a burden for companies whose staff is already spread thin or companies with high turnover who constantly have new employees learning about the software.
Con: High Pricing
You probably read the writing on the wall when you saw words like “enterprise” and “feature-rich,” but Qualtrics is pricey. There is a free tier but it is highly limited. The exact pricing is customized to each business as well, so there is also the challenge of non-transparent pricing, leaving you wondering if the price you’re paying is reasonable or on par with other customers.
Pros and Cons of SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey is a very different tool compared to Qualtrics, so it has its own pros and cons too. Consider these positives and negatives in comparison to Qualtrics.
Pro: Ease of Use
Ease of use has been SurveyMonkey’s top priority since day one, and it remains that way. The tool is easy for even people with limited tech knowledge to hop onto and pick up quickly.
Con: Limited Survey Design Features
Because SurveyMonkey aims for easy use, it’s largely based on survey templates. That’s great if the template has everything you need and if you’re conducting fairly simplistic surveys for simple questions. If you have more ambitious research questions, though, customizations are limited so you may not be able to create the more complex question formats or survey logic you need.
Pro: Simple Integrations
As part of its ease of use manifesto, SurveyMonkey has made it easy to integrate the tool with many other items in your digital toolbox. The tool can smoothly coordinate with popular marketing tools, CRMs, email tools, office tools, cloud storage, and more. This can make up for some of its limitations in the reporting department because you can pull the data in spreadsheets and other tools to use however you wish.
Con: Little More Than Basic Data Collection
The primary disadvantage to SurveyMonkey is mostly a matter of what the tool is lacking. It’s primarily just a data collection tool. While it covers the essentials, it has very limited options for analysis, reporting, and other parts of the research process.
As popular as Qualtrics and SurveyMonkey are, they’re far from your only options. In fact, there’s another tool that merges the best of both: GroupSolver.
GroupSolver is an AI-driven survey tool that seamlessly combines qualitative and quantitative capabilities–getting you to the why faster. The intuitive survey platform focuses on conversational surveys with open-ended questions. It’s designed to get to the root of your audience’s thoughts and ideas so you get genuine, thorough insights. Behind the scenes, the tool analyzes and processes those answers into quantitative, usable conclusions you can put into action. You get the rich data analysis capabilities of Qualtrics with the ease of use of SurveyMonkey all in one tool.
The Verdict: Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, or GroupSolver
At the end of the day, every survey tool has its strengths and weaknesses and different tools work better for different circumstances. For many businesses and enterprises, though, GroupSolver is the whole package. To learn more, request a GroupSolver demo today and explore this tool’s capabilities for yourself.
See how GroupSolver compares to other leading survey platforms in our Comparison Guide.
