Formstack Forms vs. SurveyMonkey vs. Zoho Survey

Formstack makes it easy to create a variety of forms. I have used it for event interest and registrations, email list sign-ups, and surveys. I have found it easy to customize, and easy to export data for import into other systems (e.g., CRM).

Incentivized

SurveyMonkey is well suited for external, professional, client-facing forms and complex question types. I've tried generating forms on HubSpot, and it's not nearly as intuitive or clean-looking, and not all question types are supported (e.g. Likert scales). For quick, internal forms that don't need to be as pretty or professional, I find that Google Forms is the quickest and easiest to pull together, especially since it has a single, universal respondent link. If I wanted to embed a link in a mass email, SurveyMonkey doesn't allow multiple respondents to use the same link on my plan.

Incentivized

Zoho Survey is everything you need in a survey platform. If you already have the Zoho One suite, it makes a complete replacement for Survey Monkey. I don't think anyone would need this app on a standalone basis, however, mainly because Zoho has a full suite of other apps you should be using on top of Survey.

Incentivized

• Allows for unique situations. As a school, we don't have the luxury of being cookie cutter. Neither do our forms.
• Support. If we don't know how to do it, their support team has been very helpful and actually attempts to understand the issue on hand.
• User friendliness. In our field we have a phrase: "what if you get hit by a bus?" With Formstack, you can "get hit by the bus" and someone else can jump in and still keep things running (this is used as a phrase for illness, not termination).

Incentivized

• Keeps identifiable information anonymous.
• Being able to close the survey at a set time without having to remember to do so.
• Takes the guess work out of response collecting.
• Makes it easy to categorize responses within the same survey. Being able to add tags to open-ended questions makes it easy for us to identify patterns in responses.
• An array of survey options and questions.
• An all around great product that meets multiple needs.
• Can have multiple collectors for the same survey to included manual input.

• Zoho Survey comes with a simple UI and the builder offers many different question types. Its strength may be in simpler or more basic surveys, but it is definitely intuitive enough to design a very in-depth survey. Publishing surveys is again a straightforward process and is easy to do.
• The piping and logic features provide a better user experience for survey respondents, and are easy to configure within Zoho Survey. New features are always being added to Survey and the resources pages offer great detailed info on how to use the features of Zoho Survey.
• The integration with other Zoho apps (Zoho CRM, Zoho Analytics, etc.) is a real strength. Zoho has ingeniously created an entire "operating system" for business that integrates all their apps so perfectly. For example, if you send a project survey to a contact you can view their response contextually within the CRM system. So basically, project managers can stay in the CRM and see all Zoho Survey responses from their customers.
• Survey scoring is a great feature as well!

Incentivized

• Setting up our multi-step form took some getting used to. Some of the branching logic configuration wasn't as intuitive as would be ideal.
• Since we were pushing data directly into Hubspot, I found it cumbersome to deal with data storage limits within Formstack. I would get frequent notices that new responses were not being stored in Formstack and that I needed to upgrade or delete data. I got tired of that.
• More/easier support for custom fonts would have been a huge plus. We were able to customize the form's appearance, but had to make some concessions in that regard.

Incentivized

• I would like to have more customizable options for branding it to our hospital colors. Some survey options allow you to enter html color codes. SurveyMonkey allows you to change colors and you have to pick from selected options.
• Embedding the surveys into a webpage, like WordPress is not as seamless as other services.

Incentivized

• I honestly can't think of anything wrong with it (on our end). It does what it needs, and I've never had any issues retrieving surveys received.

Incentivized

Our user base has come to rely on Formstack to get forms done. The Formstack tools make it easy to start from scratch or copy an existing form to "quick start" a new, similar form. The price is right and frees up IT staff to do more transformative work.

Incentivized

Compared to other competitors in the market (including a few I've used internally), if you're looking for a survey application, this one does the job and it's quite inexpensive too. Considering the fact that it comes with a handy mobile application too (on iOS and Android), you also get flexibility thrown in the deal too.

It's easy to learn how to use, generally easy for clients to use, and overall I've never had an overwhelmingly negative experience with it. While there are a few tweaks that could make it really shine, Formstack Forms serves almost all our needs and we're super happy with it.

Incentivized

It does everything a survey software should do, and it does it very well. I can't speak for how well it would work for a business that was surveying tens of thousands of people - but for a small business of 50 employees with a couple of thousand clients, it does everything it needs to do.

Incentivized

Zoho Survey is really easy to use. We've used Doodle and Survey Monkey in the past, and Zoho Social is just as easy, if not easier to use.

Incentivized

still to many limitations for more complex surveys --skips, filtered questions, etc.

The agents in the original group, especially the ones in cahoots with the developers, are really solid and know what they're talking about--I'm looking at you, Collin. The 'Tier 1' support agents that typically reply to the tickets are really spotty. If you have an overly technical question, i.e. bugfix, or describe a feature from a few years back that randomly disappeared, these agents typically will give you what feels like a generic reply and not know what you're talking about.

Incentivized

I've never had to contact the SurveyMonkey customer care team directly, but they have a pretty good library of help articles on their website. Everything from designing and executing your survey to account and billing questions. I never had a need for further support from Survey Monkey.

Incentivized

Zoho's support is always quick to respond and troubleshoot any issues

Incentivized

We implemented on one of the earlier versions. Through continuous engineering improvements, the interface keeps getting easier and more intuitive. Therefore, later implementations keep getting easier and better.

Incentivized

Implementation not required.

Drupal is a much more customizable platform, however you must have someone build the forms first and then you can work with them if you do not have the programming knowledge. If you have any changes to make, it can sometimes be both a time consuming and difficult process. Formstack is much more efficient if you do not have an in house programmer.

Incentivized

SurveyMonkey is easier to customize and provides much more in depth analytics. SurveyMonkey also provides better templates providing us with a better presentation to our employees. SurveyMonkey also comes with a more trustworthy platform that ensures confidentiality, which is incredibly important to our employees and means we're getting more reliable results from the surveys.

Incentivized

We went with Zoho Survey largely because we use other Zoho products. I did try SurveyMonkey and actually found it a little overwhelming in terms of how much customization you could do with it. Once back with Zoho Survey, having used other Zoho products, I was more comfortable with the way it worked (although Zoho's UI does have its quirks to get used to). Recommended for Zoho Users especially.

Incentivized

• Positive - ability to analyze submission trends - e.g. when a marketing email is sent, looking at increased form viewing and submissions in relation to the sending of the campaign.
• Immediate response - those that submit forms receive immediate response that their form has been submitted.

Incentivized

• The speed at which we can develop, program, execute and generate actual usable results provides significant value, particularly when we need fresh numbers to illustrate a point.
• The fact that we can execute a research project so quickly means that new research is always a primary option when we're developing campaigns. That's a huge value proposition.

Incentivized

• The results obtained have been great in relation to the saving of time and money that we have saved.
• It's so simple to use, has allowed everyone in the organization to use it, which is great for the contribution that each partner offers.

Incentivized