Zoho Corp. has added another app to it’s ever-growing roster of SMB tools, Zoho Survey. I’ve been a devoted SurveyMonkey user for some time and I was skeptical
that Zoho’s survey tool could be as feature-rich or as user-friendly. Except for a couple of quibbles, I’m duly impressed. Here are some of the features that I particularly like:
- Nice interface: Surveys are easy to build, and look great.
- Comprehensive: There’s a broad variety of question types to choose from (Zoho says 19 – I think it’s 15, but there are some rating-type questions that offer alternate rating scales, so I guess those counts.)
- Analytics: Charts and graphs are included in the built in reports.
- Page and question logic: The survey remains consistently relevant to the survey taker based on previous answers.
- Responsive design: Surveys display correctly on all devices types.
- Email campaign integration: Zoho Survey integrates with both MailChimp and Zoho Campaigns.
- Social: Surveys can be shared via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google +, and can also be embedded in a web page, iframe, Javascript, and QR code.
- Price: Starts at free and, unlike some freemium offerings, it includes really useful stuff in the free version. Paid versions are $19/month for Standard or $180/year for professional.
You can see all features and pricing here.
Here are my quibbles: You need to click the Publish button before some settings are revealed, such as linking to a campaign or setting a cutoff date for submissions. Surveys need to be published to be shared, so I suppose it makes sense. But I did fret about finding those settings for awhile so it didn’t feel 100% logical. .
The other quibble, which I think is a unfortunate omission, is that the survey can’t be paused and resumed. That’s a nice feature in SurveyMonkey and I’d like to see it added here in a future update. [Note: Zoho Survey added this function shortly after this article was posted, based on my feature request – wow, that’s service!] But, other than those two issues (and I’ll own one of them for being lazy), I think Zoho Survey is a solid survey application And, yes, I’ve switched from SurveyMonkey to Zoho Survey. As a Zoho CRM and Zoho Campaigns subscriber, it makes sense to have that level of integration.
If you use surveys or questionnaires in your business, give it a try. If you want to experience Zoho Survey for yourself before you build your own, take a look at a sample survey that demonstrates every question type, along with a description of how it’s used and various attributes that are included. You’ll also find examples of question logic and best practice tips. Enjoy!