Ion Interactive vs. QuestionPro vs. SnapSurveys

If you want to choose a quick start template and fill in the fields with your content, Ion will be fantastic for you. We've done this with whitepapers and quizzes and it's been great and extremely easy to use. If you have an exact idea of what you want, and a background in web development, you may get frustrated. Ion has some quirks that make it tricky to fully customize - everyone once in a while I really just want to go into the HTML and make some changes, but can't. If you are looking to reuse a piece of content for specific targeting (industry or account-specific), Ion is great. The dynamic substitutions are great and very helpful.

Incentivized

QuestionPro is great for forced-choice and Likert-scale data, and it easily turns raw data into readable statistics. The simple interface lacks attractiveness but is easy to learn and use, even for members outside the digital age. QuestionPro is less effective for qualitative data and short answer responses in large quantities. Reporting and analytic features leave this information in the bulky design, clogging the report and preventing cohesive presentation of the data.

Incentivized

I think it is very important to go through their training videos and user guides. Devote the time to learning it correctly from the beginning. In the long run you will enjoy it much more than plowing right into it and then trying to find out if you did it right. Also, while you are not required to buy the annual maintenance contract, I think if you are going to use the program, don't skimp, buy the annual maintenance contract. The free technical support is necessary, especially when you are up against deadlines.

• Quick Starts make it so easy to get started.
• Real-time updates are awesome and save a ton of wasteful process.
• The combination of user friendliness for simple things and the flexibility to do more complex things is great.
• Chat support is excellent and deeper-dive support has been super helpful.
• The ability to use these tools in the cloud or embedded has given us tactic flexibility.

Incentivized

• Before choosing QuestionPro, we evaluated it and Qualtrics, SurveyGizmo, and SurveyMonkey. A committee tested each of 141 key features on all four products. QuestionPro did well in the comparison and we have ended up using even more features that we tested. The summary of that work can be found here: https://oit.utk.edu/research/documentation/qualtrics-to-questionpro/.
• The way it handles anonymous surveys is particularly good. With most products, you have to remember to check the "anonymous" box to prevent it from saving email addresses or other identifiable data. But if you forget to do so, you can't tell by taking the survey. Question pro uses "Respondent Anonymity Assurance" that must be turned on by the company (a quick request from the chat window will suffice) and then it can never be turned off. This activates a link that appears on the bottom left-hand of each survey page. Clicking it takes the survey participant to a company page which assures them that the anonymous feature is indeed turned on.
• It has a very nice combination of great power and ease of use.
• The support we have received from the company has been excellent. Our team has worked with around 30 research software vendors for over 35 years and this company stands out as being extremely responsive to our needs. We told them we needed a migration tool to help us move from Qualtrics to QuestionPro and they created one in just a few weeks. They've added or improved a number of other features for us, at no charge.

• The training helped me to customize surveys for the different departments that the office of IR served.
• Surveys were easy to create and gathering information was made easy because SnapsSurveys worked well with SPSS.
• Once surveys were created I could scan them and have the results to my boss in less than an hour depending on the size of the survey group.
• Snaps customer service reps were always willing to help.

Incentivized

• Ion University, while stacked with a wealth of information, is difficult to navigate from a troubleshooting perspective. The tutorial videos are all very helpful, but they are also very long. Sometimes I would want to search for how to address a particular issue I was struggling with and it would be a two-minute segment buried in a 45-minute video.
• Again, getting back the self-guidance side of things. I think a lot of the tutorials are set up in a way that makes sense to Ion, but not as much to the end user.
• I think the controls admins use when creating new users could be a bit more straightforward.

Incentivized

• The current user interface for designing and editing questions is truly awful. A big step backwards from earlier user interfaces which were great.
• Customer support is not very helpful.
• Results of survey are not exported in a way that is easy to translate into R data frame.

• Though the user interface is easy to navigate, it would be nice to see is design updated to something more aesthetically pleasing.

We use it for every landing page and we plan on only doing more dynamic content creation. We dont see that option coming in-house any time ever in the future. ION has a very robust platform for us to work with that really allows us to do more for our customers in regards to having the one-to-one conversation.

Incentivized

It's a fine product, but it's also a very competitive field, so it wouldn't take much to knock QuestionPro from top tier status. I would like to see more functionality in all programs, so whichever program does that first is likely to get my money in the next round of budgeting.

The main reason we will renew is that it does the job, it supports our system, and we have budgeted for it so why change?

Usability is straightforward, with extensive documentation and tutorials provided to ensure landing pages are built to specifications and can be optimized for performance. Built-in platform funnels give insight into customer dropoff, success/failures, and conversions (at a glance). Setting up a landing page can be done quickly and easily, with numerous integrations (CRMs like SalesForce, for instance) supported

Incentivized

QuestionPro is very easy to use. There are lots of question types and drag and drop functionality. There are lots of ways that make the platform easy to use

I think as an organization there is always room to grow, however, this application has really helped us with our dilemma with offline, online, and paper surveys. We are able to make our surveys fun and engaging and the interface for the person creating the survey is user-friendly. Customer service is very helpful if you need additional support.

Incentivized

Sometimes the editor can be a little slow.

The ION support team is amazing. There has not been a single issue they they could not solve for me. If there is a feature or request that they do not have, they have even, on occasion, created custom scripts for our team. *Update 6/5/17 - ION has continued to delight on multiple occasions. I appreciate their attention to detail and ability to solve whatever issue I have. After 3+ years of use and support, ION still has my full endorsement.

Incentivized

They offer email, chat, and phone support. I have used the chat support several times. Response time was fast, but the rep did not always have the answer. Inquiries are answered quickly and thoroughly.

They offer a great amount of online training, videos, articles, etc. There is usually an answer available if you run into an issue. I would recommend taking advantage of the online training they offer. I wish I would have done it sooner.

Incentivized

There were a lot of things we learned about the tool once we really got in and got our hands dirty. Being hands-on was essential for our team to be able to utilize ION in the most effective manner.

Incentivized

Try every feature and test take your surveys multiple times, running through different scenarios.

I was not the decision maker to choose this over Uberflip, but the UI is much more appealing to me. It's incredibly easy to use, clean, and from a backend standpoint, it requires little to no tech savvy'ness. Our team has really enjoyed using it and has required no training what-so-ever.

Incentivized

First of all, QuestionPro has powerful futures when we compare it with others. I am not sure but somehow interface of the product is always important for some more than its functionality. QuestionPro has many features, functionality and has a great interface. It is easy to use and a software that is easy to understand.

Incentivized

It is an in between option. The options we evaluated were Qualtrics and SurveyGizmo. It's cheaper than Qualtrics and easier to design surveys than SurveyGizmo. Nonetheless it's not the worst option out there like SurveyMonkey.

Incentivized

Separate client portfolios enable scalability, however, some elements are still grouped for all accounts so it's difficult to scale for an ad agency with multiple clients. Would prefer totally separate sections of the platform for all clients with each element housed separately.

Incentivized

• Though we have not had the service long enough to see any measurable outcomes, we've been able to create interactive web content faster than ever before
• The speed with which we can build interactive pages and re-use assets has been critical as projects we've done with Ion have made their way around and more and more internal clients have said "me too" for their own projects
• It is very pricey at $28K for the base annual subscription (dropping to $24k after the first year), so depending on your budgetary situation, that may make no sense for your team--but we had contract money set aside for a company to build us a microsite for around the amount, so we just used it for Ion instead and will now be building the microsite ourselves using it

Incentivized

• QuestionPro is being used to automate surveys that were previously done by hand. We would not have been able to do this without the anonymous tracking feature. It has cut turnaround of reports by more than half.
• This is of course more efficient, but this could be expected of any software that automates a survey for you.

• Using a professional survey package enhances my reputation as a research professional.
• I have been able to use the software's functionality to exceed my clients expectations.