If you are like me you are probably always looking for a bargain and free survey software is something that grabbed my attention straight away. At first I was pleasantly surprised when I googled “Free Survey Software” and I received a large number of responses (150,000,000 to be precise). It is only after digging a little deeper that my excitement turned into despondency. The quality of the surveys was indeed found wanting and the functionality that I wanted all came at a price??

After trying out some of the software I realised that there was a pattern emerging. After signing up for an account with these free online surveys software companies I began building my survey and thinking about survey deployment. Once I got to this stage (a good hour into the process) I realised that the survey tool did not have the logic conditioning that I required, I was unable to customise the look and feel of the survey and the amount of respondents I was able to have was limited to only 100, – not much use when my sample pool was 200. Coincidentally, they did have a survey tool that did fit my needs, though it would cost $99.00 (USD). It then stuck me what a fantastic marketing technique this was, I had invested a substantial amount of my time into a project that I thought was going to cost me nothing only to find out to that for the survey tool to be of any use I was indeed going to have to purchase the product.

It was after this experience that Rock Research decided to commit to a full service online survey product built by the team at Ubiquity Software. We liked it so much that we have now become certified suppliers of the uSuite solution.

Now, I’m not saying that the free online survey products do not have their place. I know of a number of community groups, social clubs where the free products will do the trick fine. Yet, if you care about things like support, brand profile and a great interface, one of the paid online survey products like uSuite would be seriously worth considering.