Best Free Survey Tools Shortlist
Here’s my shortlist of the best free survey tools I’ll go over in this article:
For businesses to succeed in today's competitive world, it's crucial to gather feedback and insights from customers. However, investing in survey tools can increase overhead costs, making it difficult for startups and small businesses to access robust survey solutions. To address this issue, I’ve compiled a list of the 10 best free survey tools. These options provide features that allow businesses to survey their customers without incurring any additional expenses.
Each tool on this list offers a range of free features, enabling businesses to gather valuable insights, measure customer satisfaction, and make data-driven decisions without putting a strain on their budget.
What are Free Survey Tools?
Free survey tools are digital solutions that streamline the process of creating, designing, distributing, and analyzing surveys. These tools automate various tasks and provide a wide range of features and options to easily create surveys with efficiency and precision — with no added costs.
Overviews of the 10 Best Free Survey Tools
Here are my detailed summaries of the best free survey tools that made it into my top 10 selections. I’ve explained why I included each system in this list and highlighted each tool’s key features and pros and cons. I’ve also clearly explained which features are free, and which aren’t, since these survey providers offer paid plans with more advanced features too.
Jotform Enterprise
Best for a large collection of pre-built survey templates
Jotform Enterprise is a versatile product that's all about creating and managing online surveys and forms. Whether you need to whip up a quick customer feedback survey, a registration form for an event, or a detailed questionnaire, Jotform Enterprise has got you covered.
Why I picked Jotform Enterprise: I included Jotform in this list because the scale of their free template library is super impressive. They have over 10,000 templates ready-to-go for pretty much any purpose you can think of. Key templates to note include their Customer Satisfaction Service Survey, New Customer Registration Form, Market Research Survey, and numerous others.
Another reason I included Jotform Enterprise in this list is that they have a very generous free plan - which is definitely a big plus.
Jotform Enterprise Standout Features and Integrations:
One of Jotform Enterprise's biggest standout features is its drag-and-drop form builder. You don't need any technical skills to create a survey - you just pick the elements you want to include, drag them into your survey, and drop them where you want them to go. It's that easy. And if you want to get a bit more advanced, you can customize your surveys with conditional logic, so you can show or hide fields based on the answers to previous questions.
Another feature that I really appreciate is the ability to collaborate with other team members. You can easily share forms and data with your colleagues, and you can even assign different levels of access to different people. This makes it a great tool for teams that need to work together on form creation and data management.
Free integrations include Airtable, Asana, Dropbox, Google Drive, Google Sheets, Mailchimp, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, Slack, Trello, and numerous others.
What's Free: Jotform's free plan includes 5 surveys with 100 monthly submissions, 1,000 monthly views, and up to 100 MB of space. You can also include up to 100 fields per survey, which is a very generous amount. Their free plan only covers 1 user per team, and includes the Jotform branding. If you want to customize the branding to match your company style, you'll need to scale up to one of their paid plans.
Pros
- Can collect up to 10 signed documents per month on the free plan
- Large volume of templates
- Easy to use
Cons
- Custom branding is not available in their free plan
- HIPAA compliance features are limited to their Gold plan, or above
Sogolytics
Best for in-depth surveys
Sogolytics is a comprehensive platform that primarily focuses on the provision of advanced survey tools and data analysis capabilities for businesses.
Why I picked Sogolytics: The SogoSurvey features include pre-designed templates, step-by-step wizards, and versatile question types. Additionally, you can quickly send invitations directly to email addresses without using the setup wizard. Sogolytics provides detailed reports on bounced emails and allows you to generate short URL links for social media sites like Twitter.
Sogolytics Standout Features and Integrations:
Standout features include multilingual surveys, with the ability to translate content into up to 40 different languages. It also provides a survey template bank, which is a collection of commonly used survey formats that users can preview and adopt for their own projects.
Free integrations include Delicious, Digg, Pinterest, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Tumblr.
What’s Free: The free plan includes all fundamental question types for creating simple surveys, supports multilingual surveys, offers a built-in poll tool, provides basic real-time reports, and also includes access to a survey template bank.
Pros
- User-friendly
- Tons of free features
- Fast support
Cons
- Customization restricted on free plan
- No NPS on free plan
Canva
Best for creating simple surveys
Canva's free survey form builder allows you to easily create visually appealing surveys for various purposes.
Why I picked Canva: I chose Canva because its survey maker provides various question formats, including yes-or-no, multiple-choice, Likert scale, and open-ended questions. The tool is excellent for collaboration and sharing, enabling real-time teamwork and feedback gathering.
You can collaborate with teammates on survey creation and editing while sharing surveys with others for valuable input or pretesting. Lastly, Canva's customizable designs allow you to add personalized survey questions and adjust colors and fonts. You can create surveys that reflect your brand or theme, ensuring a cohesive and tailored survey experience.
Canva Standout Features and Integrations:
Canva’s biggest standout feature is its wide range of survey templates, which are already formatted and ready to use. Canva also offers visually attractive elements like free illustrations, stock images, and icons that users can add to their surveys to make them more engaging and visually appealing.
Free integration with Canva’s worksuite.
What’s Free: In Canva's free plan, users have access to thousands of free templates, a drag-and-drop editor, customization options, editing existing files, professional styles, print designs with free delivery, stunning charts and infographics, sharing options, mobile and desktop apps, and community and learning resources.
Pros
- User friendly
- Mobile app
- Includes collaboration tools
Cons
- No data analysis
- Limited integrations
Opinion Stage
Best for creating engaging surveys
Opinion Stage offers a user-friendly platform that enables users to easily set up engaging and fun interactive content.
Why I picked Opinion Stage: Its easy-to-use platform lets users quickly create engaging content that captivates their audience. Opinion Stage excels in integrating seamlessly into any website and offers flexibility in sharing content across social media platforms and via email.
With its conversational and visual approach, the tool enhances user engagement, encourages thoughtful responses, and increases conversions. The platform also provides valuable analytics and tracking features to help users optimize their interactive content and maximize submissions, leads, and revenue.
Opinion Stage Standout Features and Integrations:
Standout features include fully responsive layouts that automatically optimize content to fit the screen of any device or browser. With its core customization options, users can personalize their content's appearance and branding, aligning it with their brand identity.
Free integrations include Google Sheets, Mailchimp, Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and Slack. You can also connect Opinion Stage to a paid Zapier account to unlock additional integrations.
What’s Free: Opinion Stage is free with no time limit. You can create quizzes, polls, surveys, and forms, and receive up to 25 responses per month. It provides core features such as unlimited creation of feature-rich interactive content, conversion-optimized templates, fully responsive layouts, and the ability to embed on websites.
Pros
- Easy to use
- Customizable
- Wide variety of templates
Cons
- No lead generation on free plan
- Limited integrations
Survicate
Best survey for comprehensive customer insight
Survicate is a customer feedback survey tool that helps businesses gather customer insights at various touchpoints along the user journey.
Why I picked Survicate: Survicate offers a range of survey options, such as email, link, NPS, website, in-product, and mobile app surveys, making it versatile for businesses. It also captures responses quickly, even from partially completed surveys, allowing you to gather continuous user insights in a shorter amount of time.
Survicate's advanced targeting capabilities increase survey engagement by displaying surveys when users are most likely to respond.
Survicate Standout Features and Integrations:
Survicate’s biggest standout feature is its in-product surveys, an approach that allows businesses to gather direct feedback from users within their software or application, providing insight into the user's experience, right where the interaction occurs.
Additionally, Survicate's Feedback Hub offers a centralized location for managing and analyzing all survey responses, creating a comprehensive and organized overview of customer feedback
Free integrations include ActiveCampaign, Drip, FullStory, HubSpot, Intercom, Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Pardot, and Salesforce.
What’s Free: The free plan gives you unlimited access to all survey features. It lets you have one active survey at a time which can collect responses from up to 250 customers for up to seven days.
Pros
- 1-click native app integrations
- Unlimited free plan
- User-friendly
Cons
- No Google sheets export on free plan
- No custom domain option on free plan
MailChimp
Best free survey tool with unlimited responses
Mailchimp's email marketing platform includes a survey tool for businesses to gain insights into customer preferences and behaviors.
Why I picked Mailchimp: I chose Mailchimp because it seamlessly integrates survey creation into a comprehensive marketing platform. This allows businesses to create and distribute effective surveys while utilizing real-time data for marketing efforts.
Mailchimp offers unlimited survey creation and response collection, even on the free tier, which sets it apart from competitors and makes it an ideal tool for businesses expecting high survey participation. The automatic survey response tagging in the CRM helps businesses segment customers based on their responses, enabling more targeted and personalized marketing campaigns.
Mailchimp Standout Features and Integrations:
One important standout feature for Mailchimp is their flexible question customization feature where businesses can customize their surveys according to their specific informational needs. Collecting unlimited responses allows for extensive data gathering from a broad audience.
Mailchimp supports various question types, such as multiple-choice, rating scales, and open-ended text, providing versatility in the information gathered. The data export feature also allows for easy transfer of survey data to various formats for further analysis.
Free integrations include a Google Workspace integration that gives you access to Google Calendar, Drive, and more.
What’s Free: Mailchimp's free survey plan allows unlimited creation of surveys with no restrictions on the number of questions per survey or the responses you can gather. The plan includes multiple question types, data export capabilities, and custom design options. It provides free email support for the first 30 days and access to step-by-step videos, guides, and tutorials.
Pros
- Customization included
- Unlimited responses
- Integrates with Mailchimp
Cons
- No customer support after 30 days
- Limited integrations
SurveyPlanet
Best for unlimited surveys across 30+ languages
SurveyPlanet is an online survey tool that allows users to create and distribute unlimited surveys and responses.
Why I picked SurveyPlanet: With SurveyPlanet, you can create as many surveys as you need with no restrictions on the number of questions or responses. One unique feature is the ability to conduct surveys anonymously, ensuring the privacy of respondents and promoting honest feedback.
In addition, SurveyPlanet offers support for over 30 languages, allowing you to create surveys in a variety of languages. You can also choose between two different survey display styles to best fit your needs. The tool's sharing capabilities are also extensive, including direct sharing on social networks, making it easy to reach a wide audience.
SurveyPlanet Standout Features and Integrations:
Standout features include pre-written survey templates for different topics, making it easy for users to create surveys quickly and efficiently. The platform also allows users to duplicate surveys with just one click, saving time and making survey replication effortless.
Customization options include welcome and success messages and basic survey themes to add a personal touch. The platform also boasts robust management capabilities, such as deleting unwanted participants, archiving surveys for future reference, and generating basic in-app reports for analyzing results.
Free integrations include Google Analytics, KISSmetrics, Optimizely, Segment, and Woopra.
What’s Free: Unlimited surveys, questions, and responses, customizable welcome messages, two survey player types, social network sharing, and anonymous survey capabilities. The plan ensures SSL security, no data-mining, allows email sharing, survey embedding, and provides 90+ pre-written surveys. You get basic survey themes, 30+ language options, in-app reporting, deletion of unwanted participants, survey archiving, and categorization.
Pros
- SSL security
- Surveys can be archived
- Easy to use
Cons
- Limited customization
- Limited integrations
Zoho Survey
Best for a wide range of question types
Zoho Survey is an online survey and questionnaire creation tool. It allows users to easily create surveys for various purposes such as customer satisfaction, feedback, market research, HR evaluations, and more.
Why I picked Zoho Survey: Zoho Survey stands out with its extensive range of question types, skip logic, and piping features, allowing for dynamic and personalized surveys tailored to specific needs. The tool also offers customizable themes to maintain brand consistency, easy survey distribution through social media and email campaigns, real-time results and reporting for prompt analysis, collaborative features for team collaboration, and strong security and compliance measures ensuring data protection.
Zoho Survey Standout Features and Integrations:
Standout features include an easy-to-use interface for creating and managing over 25 question types, including multiple-choice, rating scales, and open-ended questions. Additionally, the platform is optimized for mobile devices, ensuring that surveys are user-friendly on all screen sizes.
Free integrations include Facebook, Gsuite Marketplace, Mailchimp, Zoho Analytics, Zoho Campaigns, and Zoho Recruit.
What’s Free: The free plan includes unlimited surveys with up to 10 questions and 100 responses each, in-mail and pop-up survey options, the ability to embed surveys in a website, over 250 templates, survey creation in 26 languages, scoring, HTTPS encryption, social sharing, password protection, unlimited collectors per survey, real-time responses, and the option to export results as PDFs.
Pros
- You can build surveys in 26 languages
- Mobile app
- Security compliant
Cons
- Webhook integration available on paid plans
- No customization on free plan
Qualtrics Survey
Best survey tool for analytics
Qualtrics is an online tool that allows you to create, distribute, and analyze surveys to gather valuable insights.
Why I picked Qualtrics Surveys: With Qualtrics' free survey maker, users can create dynamic and personalized surveys using intricate question logic, including skip, display, and branch logic. The survey flow editor offers an intuitive way to control the flow of questions, allowing for a fully customized survey experience.
Additionally, the ExpertReview feature offers pre-built templates and recommendations to guide you in creating your survey. It also includes a survey expert feature that ensures you ask the appropriate questions every time.
Qualtrics Surveys Standout Features and Integrations:
Standout features include over 50 pre-built survey templates designed by industry experts to cover various use cases and scenarios. With easy collaboration features, multiple team members can collaborate on survey creation, editing, and reviewing for a streamlined process. The platform also provides diverse options for survey distribution and analysis of results. Surveys can be distributed through various channels, and the online reporting capabilities enable efficient summary report generation. For advanced analysis, users can export survey data in various formats like CSV, TSV, Excel, XML, and SPSS.
Free integrations include Apple messages and Quantum Metric.
What’s Free: The free plan for Qualtrics Surveys includes a survey maker for creating three active surveys with up to eight question types, plus choice randomization, and skip, display, and branch logic. It provides access to 50+ survey templates, a survey flow editor, collaboration features, contact management, multiple survey distribution channels, a question library, basic result reports, advanced report building, data export capabilities, and support through email and chat.
Pros
- Email and chat support
- Customization and branding options
- Easy to use
Cons
- Access to 75+ languages is limited to their paid plans
- Limited customization on free plan
FreeOnlineSurveys
Best for privacy-focused surveys
FreeOnlineSurveys allows users to create and conduct surveys, quizzes, and forms.
Why I picked FreeOnlineSurveys: I chose FreeOnlineSurveys because it prioritizes privacy and data protection. To ensure the security of survey participants' data, it employs measures such as pseudonymization of respondent IP addresses, absence of tracking cookies, and separate storage of respondent personally identifiable information (PII).
FreeOnlineSurveys also offers an AI question prediction feature that analyzes question text in real-time and suggests suitable question types. This streamlines the survey creation process and ensures well-structured surveys for effective data collection.
FreeOnlineSurveys Standout Features and Integrations:
Standout features include personalization options using logic and piping. You can customize pages, insert text, and add fields. You will also receive email or Slack notifications when responses come in. Their A/B testing feature helps you find the most effective content, and survey tracking helps you manage your data. Finally, there are comprehensive reports and data analysis tools for easy result interpretation.
Free integrations include Slack.
What’s Free: The free plan includes privacy-focused design, all question types, logic, piping, A/B testing, and up to 1,000 responses. It also features AI question prediction for efficient survey design.
Pros
- Mobile option
- Free forever plan
- All question types included in free plan
Cons
- No exit pages on free plan
- No quiz scoring on free plan
The 10 Best Free Survey Tools Comparison Chart
This comparison chart summarizes basic details about each of my top survey tools that offer free plans. View the pertinent details side-by-side to help you find the best tool for your budget and business needs.
Tool | Free Option | Price | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Jotform Enterprise Best for a large collection of pre-built survey templates | Free plan available | From $39/user/month | Visit Website |
2 | Sogolytics Best for in-depth surveys | 10-day free trial + free plan available | From $25/month (billed annually) | Visit Website |
3 | Canva Best for creating simple surveys | Free plan available | From $14.99/user/month | Visit Website |
4 | Opinion Stage Best for creating engaging surveys | Free plan available | From $32/month | Visit Website |
5 | Survicate Best survey for comprehensive customer insight | Free plan available | From $99/month | Visit Website |
6 | MailChimp Best free survey tool with unlimited responses | 30-day free trial + free plan available | From $13/month | Visit Website |
7 | SurveyPlanet Best for unlimited surveys across 30+ languages | Free plan available | From $20/month | Visit Website |
8 | Zoho Survey Best for a wide range of question types | 7-day free trial + free plan available | From $35/month | Visit Website |
9 | Qualtrics Survey Best survey tool for analytics | 30-day free trial + free plan available | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
10 | FreeOnlineSurveys Best for privacy-focused surveys | Free plan available | From $20/month | Visit Website |
Other Survey Options
Beyond the top picks, numerous other survey tools excel in different areas, each tailored to complement specific needs. These options shine individually, offering standout features that make them distinct, allowing you to choose one that best aligns with your objectives.
- Crowdsignal
Best for collecting and exporting feedback from various sources
- Google Forms
Best survey tool with custom conditional logic
- SurveyLegend
Best for customizing surveys
- SurveySparrow
Best for creating recurring or automated surveys
- SurveyMonkey
Best for targeted responses
- Checkbox
Best for cloud-hosted surveys
- Typeform
Best for personalized surveys
- SuperSurvey
Best for creating fast surveys
- Slido
Best for interactive meetings and events
Selection Criteria for Free Survey Tools
Here’s a short summary of the main selection and evaluation criteria I used to develop my list of the best free survey tools for this article:
Core Functionalities
For a free online survey tool to even be considered for this list, it must at minimum support the creation and distribution of various survey types, and the collection and storage of responses. In addition, each survey platform needed to offer some sort of a free plan: either a free forever plan, a freemium plan with limited features, or a free trial.
Key Features
Apart from the core functionalities, there are certain features that truly set a survey tool apart. These features provide additional value to the user and often make the survey creation process more efficient and effective. I also assessed these points in fine detail in order to make my final selections for this list:
- Question Variety: It should support a variety of question types, such as multiple choice, free text, Likert scales, NPS, etc., enabling users to gather diverse data and provide insightful survey results.
- Data Export: It should allow users to export the collected data easily, facilitating data analysis in external programs if needed.
- Mobile Optimization: Surveys should display well on all devices, especially mobile phones, as many respondents use mobile devices.
- Privacy & Security Measures: In an era of data breaches, it's vital for survey tools to offer robust privacy and security measures to protect respondents' data.
Usability
The survey tool must be user-friendly with an intuitive interface that is easy to navigate, even for individuals without a technical background. Clear instructions, helpful tool tips, and a smooth workflow from survey creation to distribution and analysis are essential.
Branding and Customization
This feature empowers users to tailor their surveys to reflect their brand aesthetics. From incorporating custom logos to adjusting color schemes and fonts, surveys become an integral part of the brand's communication strategy, enhancing recognition and credibility.
Software Integrations
The capability to integrate with other software is crucial. Good survey tools should easily sync with popular tools such as Google Sheets, Excel, CRM systems, email marketing software like Mailchimp, or team collaboration tools like Slack.
Pricing
While the focus is on free tools, the details of what "free" entails should be clear. Some tools may offer limited features in their free version, or restrict the number of responses. Thus, understanding the pricing structure beyond the free offering is important to anticipate future costs if scaling becomes necessary.
People Also Ask
If you’re interested in using free survey tools, you may have some questions about their availability and how to use them effectively. Here are some commonly asked questions and their corresponding answers.
Why are some survey tools free?
What’s the best way to initiate a customer survey?
What are the best questions to use when asking customers for feedback?
Other Survey Tool Reviews
There are many survey tools to choose from depending on your specific needs and goals. To help you find the best option, I’ve put together a list of top survey tool reviews that cover a variety of online software options.
- Best Online Survey Software
- Best Survey Maker Tools for Customer Feedback
- Best Survey Analysis Software
- Best Net Promoter Score Software & NPS Survey Tools
- Best Customer Feedback Software
- Best Voice of Customer (VOC) Software for Customer Analytics
Summary
I hope you found my recommendations for the top free survey tools insightful. These tools are not just about designing and conducting surveys, they're about fostering a deeper understanding of your audience. The right tool can assist you in gathering critical data, enhancing collaboration, ensuring mobile optimization, and more. And all while respecting privacy and security concerns, too.
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