FluidSurveys (Discontinued) vs. KANA Express, discontinued

For surveys, and for centralized info-gathering, FluidSurveys provides an excellent solution. There are other programs out there which provide a wider range of solutions (i.e., they can be used for surveying AND comprehensive online engagement, rather than just a data-gathering type of consultation); however, for programming and implementing surveys, FluidSurveys has an effective variety of strengths and options that make it optimal for users who are focused specifically on surveys.

If your business has more than 50 users, don't use KANA Express. User management and setup is not intuitive, and back-end email management takes a large amount of time. If your business emails more than one recipient and expects replies from more than one recipient, don't use KANA Express. The system is built for one-question-in, one-answer-out. Anything more than that requires extra customization or is impossible, according to their development team. If managing your inbound email either internally or externally is critical to your operations, don't use KANA Express. Downtime is more frequent than is acceptable, and their Netherlands advanced support team's hours make down-time in the western hemisphere a lot longer than it needs to be.

Incentivized

Independently Invited by TrustRadius

A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

• User-friendly. For the majority of the general and basic tools you can use with FluidSurveys to build surveys are simple to use and intuitive. When certain issues come up, the service is quick (chat room) and effective.
• Anonymity: the software has the reputation of being safer in terms of safeguarding private information the respondents share by answering surveys (this is mainly due to the fact that the servers are in Canada). Thus, indirectly, they increase response rates.
• Extensive possibilities: FluidSurveys offers a plethora of possibilities and options that really renders the experience interesting in terms of micro-managing each details of the surveys you are sending out there. When the invitation leaves by email, it is exactly how you want it.

• Allows you to manage multiple email queues with different business rules.
• User interface is somewhat intuitive, allowing users to navigate fairly easily.
• Admin controls allow for a considerable variety of customization.

Incentivized

Independently Invited by TrustRadius

A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

• There should be more flexibility and customizability with regard to survey design (e.g. background, fonts...)

• KANA Express is NOT set up for business models where email is conversational and involves multiple recipients and responses. If your business model is one-question-in, one-answer-out, then KANA Express will probably work for you.
• Since signing on with them, KANA Express' support team has been severely lacking in expertise and acceptable turnaround times, especially when the platform encounters a system-wide issue to leads to downtime. Our assigned sales contacts jumped ship with the company almost immediately after we went live, which is never a good sign.
• Admin panel and functions are very antiquated and not user-friendly at all. Email management through the admin tool lacks crucial insight that prevents admin users from being able to easily route and manage emails. Our organization had to write our own KANA user guides that KANA Express then took and started using themselves and for other clients.
• The KANA Express platform does not have proper spam or auto-reply management tools. Admin users must manually turn off the KANA Express auto-response emails in order to prevent email loops with other parties' auto-responses.
• Analytics options are lacking. Admin users must run at least three separate reports in order to gather appropriate insight as to user activities and metrics.
• Email queue/user set up is not intuitive. If adding a new queue or user, all users must be manually adjusted to include that new queue. There is no mass-edit tool for KANA Express users.

Incentivized

Independently Invited by TrustRadius

A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

Note: I am responding to this question as a user of the system and not a representative of my organization.

On a personal level/as a user only, I would definitely continue to use FluidSurveys.On a personal level/as a user only, I would definitely continue to use FluidSurveys.

I think the average person can very quickly pick up on the basics of the system: they would have no problems programming and launching a basic survey. Organizations may benefit from having people of different backgrounds getting their hands dirty in the system: at a minimum, both web programmers and opinion research advisors should be solicited for input or help.

Although I do not have much experience with Survey Monkey, the only two reasons why I choose FluidSurveys is that clients demand it (privacy and anonymity) and because managing multiple surveys at a time is easier. As for ODK Collect, I think it is a valuable alternative to FluidSurveys if you have time to learn the coding (not very complicated). ODK is a little less user friendly and you cannot address small details as you can with FluidSurveys (e.g.: formatting).

• Confidentiality of data is a big concern for our company, and we feel more secure working with a Canadian company. Our clients feel more secure, too.

• KANA Express was originally presented as an excellent alternative to Fastraq, an email management system that was in EOL during the time we were shopping for alternatives. Unfortunately, our originally planned ROI was not achieved due to lost functionality and broken sales promises, leaving us with an email management system that's built more on workarounds than out-of-the-box solutions, requiring considerable time for admin activities that could be avoided by a better-designed system.

Incentivized

Independently Invited by TrustRadius

A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info