Likelihood to Recommend From my experience, I believe that Vision Critical offers the best software to manage an insights community. They are great to work with, and my opinion has only improved over time. However, that doesn't mean it is the best survey software overall. If someone simply needs to program and distribute surveys, this may or may not be the right solution. There are some other really great survey tools on the market that are competitively priced and offer very intuitive interfaces (like Qualtrics). If you are going to recruit people to answer surveys or provide feedback on an ongoing basis (re-contacting and engaging with the same people repeatedly), though, Vision Critical would be my #1 recommendation.
Read full review Google Forms works really well when you need to quickly gather information and store it in a standardized format. It also works well if your organization is already using other Google products.
If you don't use other Google products, another service may be a better fit for you. Additionally, if you need your forms to be highly customized for marketing purposes, for example, you might have an easier time with other tools.
That being said, Google Forms is well supported and is highly flexible and would likely work well for many companies.
Read full review Pros The team is helpful in creating complicated survey logic The team is accommodating in creating interfaces that suit our desired look The team keeps in regular contact in order to effectively manage our requests and goals Read full review Live results: When a user completes the form the results are added instantly. Easy to create: Google Forms has a simple interface that allows for a wide range of question types. Google will even try to guess the question type based on the question (but this can be overridden). Answers export to Google Sheets: It is easy to have each response to your form add a row to a Google Sheet, allowing for further analysis or processing. Ability to automatically collect email addresses within a domain: If you have a form that has been shared with users in your domain, you can set it to automatically collect the users' email addresses without them needing to type it in. Makes checking whether all students have completed the form easy. Read full review Cons The functionality when creating a new questionnaire is rather clunky, particularly when there are a few conditional factors in the logical flow; being able to see those factors and how they apply with some sort of other logical layout would really help when creating a longer survey. There are quite a few steps that aren't intuitive when launching a survey, for instance all the various dates (launch date, reserve date, survey date, etc etc etc). If there were a description field if you hovered above labeled areas of sections that explained what this field was for that would really help It doesn't help either that the entire site is grey; it's a cold environment to be in for a long time, and the simple design makes it seem more clunky than it probably really is. Read full review Sometimes finding the output -- a Google Sheet with all responses-- is a little difficult. It's also sometimes confusing to figure out how to get back into the Google Form Survey itself. As always, sharing among an institutional Google account and your personal Google account can be frustrating. You have to make a copy and can't share across the two different accounts very easily. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Vision Critical often requires you to dump the data to a statistical program. I hate that step. You waste time, and improve the chance of data being lost, or changed.
Read full review I will definitely renew my use of Google Forms because I really like the ease of use and the number of tools that Google forms provide. I also love that I can administer a test in real-time and get results in a timely manner
Read full review Usability I think there is a ton of room to improve, in things as simple as aesthetics and other areas of logical flow when it comes to creating and then launching a survey, as well as providing descriptors for what each field is referencing. For instance, there are like 5 date fields to be filled out, but no button near them that says "this date will determine _________" and I am not about to go back into the training module, which was confusing enough to FIND, let alone work through to find just ONE answer.
Read full review Google Forms is a very intuitive and easy to use tool, it is not necessary to have a complex knowledge to create advanced forms, it is enough with the functions and aids that the tool offers for the creation of these, even children and students can do it, also the way to export the data is really simple, simply an incredible tool.
Read full review Reliability and Availability In the years I've used GoogleForms I've never ran into any issues with the reliability or availability. Google is a gigantic company with essentially limitless resources which makes it very easy to trust that I will continue to be able to enjoy the same reliability I've come to know and expect from GoogleForms
Read full review Performance One of the things that comes as a benefit of the lack to create complex logic branching and truly custom design is that there isn't lot of room to bog down the software. GoogleForms has always loaded just as fast as my internet service and device would allow it. I'm not sure about front end integrations or integrations into the form itself, as I've never explored it, but on the backend, I've never had any issues with integrations channeling from GoogleForms from the GoogleForms's end of things.
Read full review Support Rating Absolutely fantastic support team. Willing to help you online through vast collection of how-to guides and resources, online via chatbox, or over the phone. Even though we were in different time zones, they were always available. Very helpful and knowledgeable
Read full review Google has a support team but it isn't the most helpful with Forms. I find most of my answers by searching online and watching tutorial videos. I would recommend utilizing online resources before contacting their live support team for help. Just make sure that they are recent videos or directions. Google is constantly updating their interfaces so it is easy for things to get out of date
Read full review Alternatives Considered Vision Critical is more appealing visually but no where near as complex or robust. Vision Critical is also much more expensive though.
Read full review We have also used
FormAssembly , which is far more advanced with security, analytics, and functionality, but is also more expensive and takes a greater resource investment to train others to use. While
FormAssembly can provide a lot more features, and is definitely the better choice for more complex surveys, forms, and applications, Google Forms is a very approachable and easy to use platform. We would recommend Google Forms for smaller businesses with simpler processes, and everyday use for any organization.
Read full review Scalability GoogleForms lacks the ability for complex logic branching and the ability to truly design it in a custom manner. It's pretty obvious when you land on a GoogleForm that it is in fact a GoogleForm. This rating solely reflects the lack of flexibility which in turn makes it something that wouldn't usually be scaled. That being said, if needing to scale a simple solution, GoogleForms would be up for the job.
Read full review Return on Investment Our use of Vision Critical's software has allowed us to dramatically increase the amount of research that we do, at a much lower cost. Since there is no incremental cost for each survey we field, we can ask many questions we wouldn't have been able to otherwise. Our use of an insights community has also sped up the research process, allowing us to write, program, field and report on a survey within only a few days. Because of the two advantages listed above, we have been able to listen closer to our customers' opinions. Read full review It's difficult to track ROI since Google Forms is used less formally [The] positive impact is the actionable results we receive from surveys [The] impact is highly dependent on how well the questions are asked, and how seriously the survey is taken by employees Read full review ScreenShots