ProProfs Survey Maker vs. Square 9 Softworks

If you have many hours to spend on the phone or chat with customer service and want to save $100, ProProfs is your platform. For those with limited time to invest, it's worth spending a bit more to get quality service and functionality without a hassle.

Square 9 Softworks is great in data management and flow. For us, they've done an excellent job with the Health Screening Tools, Cloud Storage/Management and Online Applications. It seems to be a very diverse product. I think because of that, you can talk with Square 9 Softworks about what you are envisioning to see if they are capable of it. I would not do that with many other products - they just don't have that flex.

Incentivized

• ProProfs is cheaper than its competitors.

• Fast Manual indexing with what we consider the best in point-n-click OCR indexing.
• Webserver that incorporates Full-Text Content Searching, Workflow Queues, Full Document Management and Live document Signing on any mobile device or location.
• Fast workflow designers for rapid implementation
• Broad range of capture and information processing tools, easy to configure
• Loaded with essential security options
• Low price, and about 10X more powerful than MS SharePoint right out of the box.
• Multi-database support for a very low price with disaster recovery licensing, this is very rare in the industry.

• [I feel] Customer service closes tickets without resolving the issues first....and there are a lot of issues.
• I paid for the upgraded version, but couldn't get the upgraded functionality without spending days on the phone, chat, and remote desktop with customer service.
• We paid for 500 responses/month, but the survey closed before we reached that number. We asked for a refund so we could pay for another month of advertising, but they ignored the request, instead giving us more days to use the platform (not sure how this was supposed to help).
• Every time you view the Welcome Page, the changes to font and formatting revert back to default and you must re-do them every time.
• The reports aren't what you expect. They are very limited. I expected Q1- 75% answered Yes, 25% No. Instead the reports are listed across columns in an Excel spreadsheet with every respondent's answer in the rows below. The stats are a bit better, but I don't think you can share them with others.
• Very limited functionality in the free or 1st upgrade. You need to go to premium and get on the phone with customer service to get basic functions that appear in Survey Monkey. {I think] their advertising is misleading.

• Some of the administrative/security configuration with Windows Active Directory can be tricky when managed by separate corporate IT personnel (alignment in strategy)
• User adoption with any new process can be challenging, but overall user friendly menus
• As Database sizes grow (200,000+ records) paging through records can be cumbersome, probably need to migrate to an archive process to offload some of the data.

Incentivized

We absolutely can't imagine not continuing software maintenance as there are always new additions that improve the system not to mention the excellent tech support when issues are encountered. Response times for troubleshooting are very quick and usually, my issue is resolved in less than an hour after connecting with support.

Incentivized

They shouldn't have opened for public use before they figured out their tech glitches, functionality, how to report, billing issues, and customer service. [I feel] it's poorly run and creates hassle, negative ROI, and frustration for organizations using the platform. Unfortunately, needing to call or email ProProfs every week to get the platform to work is not a good service model.

Super simple software to operate and configure. Very granular permissions and controls. Browser based setup with everything and very intuitive visual workflow building makes it easy to set things up. Troubleshooting document workflow issues is also made easy via the batch manager when you can track each document as it moves through the workflow.

Incentivized

Square-9 can get this product out to you in almost the same hour your order it. We got ours very fast.

With the PDF projected viewer, the document retrieval-to-display can drag for a second more than some systems, and the capture workflow if you overload a server array can also drag, but those are the only two issues we've ever seen with this product, and they are not serious issues at all.

The customer service is not well trained on the issues I've needed to call about. There doesn't seem to be good interaction cross-department at ProProfs and every time I talk to someone new, I have to re-explain the situation or they blame the situation on another department. They don't get quick results for the client.

The support we received from Square 9 Softworks was exceptional. From deployment to implementation, we always felt supported. The team we worked with had patience and exceptional response time. They were amazing to work with, I always felt supported. No matter how simple or complex my question was they always delivered.

Incentivized

It would have been higher, but the training is a bit muted for the lesser qualified office equipment vendors who signed up as partners to sell and support it. The more experienced ECM vendors and customer end-users will find the training very good, but a bit slow.

I think the implementation could have gone a little smoother than it did. Now that I know how to use the software, I could do it myself. I feel that as an organization, we could have been a little better prepared. If the consultant was more aware of what we were looking for, they could have assisted in setting up some workflows for us as per the contract. But because we were not prepared, the initial implementation process was a little painful. That said, adding a document management system to ANY business kinda means everyone has to re-think the way they do their work which can be difficult for some staff.

Incentivized

ProProfs feel like a garage start-up that didn't really figure out the functionality or customer service before they launched, while Survey Monkey is reputable and reliable. ProProfs has very limited reporting, but Survey Monkey is exactly what you expect with the basic package- analyzing percentages of each response. Survey Monkey is more customizable, even if you have to pay a bit more.

A similar product I have used was Time Matters. For a Law Firm, I think Time Matters is more useful as it keeps track of everything for a client, including billing. However, since I now work for a legal department of a corporation, SmartSearch is definitley more useful. It is not possible to seperate the documents we have internally in neat client files. We have various miscellaneous documents for many different services and customers or vendors. SmartSearch allows us to organize in broad categories that make sense to internal employees using it and to make sure security is set on specific documents. Time Matters would not have been sufficient for our managers to have access to, since it uploads all documents to the file - some of which are confidential.

The scale-ability is quite good actually, but you need competent sales/support folks providing it to you, so the scale is set right for the demands of your system use. Some resellers are not good at doing this, some are fantastic. If you are scaled correctly at first implementation, you'll be very happy with this system.

• Negative ROI based on extra money spent on upgrading, losing days with the survey not being upgraded on time, losing money on external advertising when the survey closed early, and losing many work hours reaching out to customer service.

• OCR capabilities allow users to quickly and accurately index files without data errors from manually keying in data
• Administrators can update users access through active directory without ever opening Square 9 and without generating accounts in yet another system
• Users can find files needed without ever leaving their desk

Incentivized