A little under two years of the SAP acquisition of Qualtrics and there are already murmurs about existing customers itching to evaluate various alternatives and look at Qualtrics competitors due to increased costs, reduced importance on customer service, and renegotiated longer complex contracts.
Qualtrics is one of the most powerful robust Experience Management platforms out there. It is easy to use, highly intuitive, extremely powerful, and delivers insights that matter. To add to it, it has multiple capabilities for research, employee, and customer management.
Why then are brands looking for better alternatives to Qualtrics? And why is there a need for looking at competitors to Qualtrics?
These are the four most significant factors that are causing brands, Universities, researchers, and individual users to make the switch:
Customer-service: A merger or acquisition means a lot more work to streamline processes. An inevitable by-product of this is that there is more focus on acquisition than retention. Customer service always faces the brunt as is being voiced by multiple existing customers.
Complex product & integration: Bringing in two technology behemoths means there are changes in the product footprint. This causes integration problems with the current technology stack, and the product gets complex too.
Expensive long contracts: There have been instances where existing customers need to renegotiate contracts or sign more extended lock-in periods when their contracts are up for renewal. All of this, coupled with hiking of prices, is a drain on resources and finances and accounts for low ROI.
Not for everyone: The top three factors mean brands and organizations that are thrifty with software purchase costs face the brunt and get stuck into custom SLA’s that no longer work for them. Smaller research firms and individual researchers also cannot afford Qualtrics.
These factors and many other reasons, cause brands to look at the better and more cost-effective but powerful survey and research platforms. We have marked out ten powerful competitors and alternatives to Qualtrics for brands and researchers looking to move.
SurveyAnalytics is one of the most powerful survey platforms for insights collection on the market right now. Under the QuestionPro umbrella, it is a suite of interconnected and easy-to-use information collection and analysis tools. From online surveys, mobile data collection, advanced analysis, and data visualization, our platform let you gather and act on information to make better decisions. The product suite consists of web, mobile, and offline solutions to understand consumer behavior and feedback.
Where it lacks - The platform, while powerful, intuitive, and easy to use, the UI isn’t the greatest. But then again, once you look past that, you have a top Qualtrics competitor.
QuestionPro is the choice of brands, researchers, and Universities looking for an alternative to Qualtrics. It consists of a robust platform that allows users to deploy surveys and collect insights on various aspects, including research, customer experience, employee experience, and more. For a limited time, they are also running a 50% off your existing Qualtrics pricing campaign where you can import your data in three easy steps and get started. NPS+ program, mobile app, offline data collection, advanced logic, no scripting, panel management, 24*7 support, unique question types, powerful dashboards and reporting, and unparalleled integrations and security measures make QuestionPro the best Qualtrics alternative. They have the best free survey platform on the market that can be used by anyone without a credit card; to paid models that can solve any research problems.
Where it lacks - Since their focus is always on delivering a product that matters, including accommodating question types and features that keep them above the curve in the market, there is a little less focus on UI. Brands moving from Qualtrics to QuestionPro have only the UI complaint.
SurveyGizmo
SurveyGizmo offers a lot of powerful features and is a good alternative to Qualtrics. It is a useful tool for both internal and external projects. The tool boasts of multiple features and question types. They can integrate with external platforms, and the data analysis and reporting are very nice. The tool is set up nicely that small boutique firms can use the platform with ease.
Where it lacks - The tool is costly akin to Qualtrics on the features that it offers. The question types are also limited and may end up needing to evaluate alternatives.
Decipher
FocusVision Decipher is a good product that researchers use to create and deploy surveys. They provide the ability to develop quick, powerful surveys and questionnaires along with good reporting. You can even use the platform to run quick polls for faster and real-time data collection. Decipher provides you the ability to use pre-scripted templates or even import your survey from documents into the tool and deploy surveys within minutes. Their mobile surveys are also powerful and intuitive.
Where it lacks - The tool isn’t potent, and there are limitations with question types. The platform may not necessarily work for enterprise-grade or complex research studies.
Confirmit
Confirmit is a powerful survey programming tool that provides the ability to program and deploy surveys and collect data quickly. They have been around for a while and hence offer a robust platform for research, employee experience, and voice of customer programs. The reporting on this platform is compelling.
Where it lacks - The pricing is very steep. Due to its browser faced interface, it feels dated, and the interface is unclean.
SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey is the most widely known survey platform on the market. The tool offers 15 questions in the free version and is one of the best tools on the market to carry one-off and short surveys and studies. The UX is very slick, and it has an easy to use interface, including creating and editing survey questions. It is also very inexpensive to use.
Where it lacks - The tool doesn’t let you conduct robust market research due to the lack of relevant question types. The customer service also lacks due to the number of existing customers.
Sawtooth
Sawtooth is the leader in choice-based modeling and analysis. The platform is extremely robust when it comes to helping brands analyze consumer behavior and perceptions and how they make decisions. They also have a simulator that allows you to put in different product options and see what respondents are most likely to choose. The tool lets you run basic to advanced surveys.
Where it lacks - Sawtooth does choice-based modeling very well but lacks if you would like to conduct any other research. This limits the scope of the product’s use-case if you want to run in-depth research studies and run qualitative research.
TypeForm
TypeForm is another good alternative to Qualtrics if you want to conduct basic research studies. The platform is set up to allow you the ability to turn basic survey questions into interactive forms. The survey platform has a deep level of integration with image tools like Pexels, and you can create beautiful surveys that are incredibly appealing. The VideoAsk platform by TypeForm allows you to conduct video research with respondents.
Where it lacks - Like a lot of other competitors on the list, TypeForm does only a few things very well. There is no ability to conduct sophisticated research and conduct advanced analysis for your research studies, which may mean that you may turn to a more robust and exhaustive research tool.
Google Forms
Google Forms makes it to our list of Qualtrics competitors because it allows you to set up and distribute surveys easily. The platform's learning curve is very less, and there is also a deep level integration with the Google Suite, meaning you can deploy surveys quickly and get analytics in an interface that you are already familiar with and comfortable.
Where it lacks - Google Forms is a powerful tool for individual researchers but isn’t scalable for brands, enterprises, and serious researchers due to the lack of complex question types. The platform is also devoid of any logic making the surveys useful for smaller studies only.
SurveySparrow
SurveySparrow is one of the latest entrants in the survey and research management space, they have a good survey platform with a good survey engine. There are multiple question types, including the Likert scale, etc. and good reporting on questions. The platform’s UI is highly engaging, and creating and deploying surveys is very simple and doesn’t have a steep learning curve. Their customer service also is excellent.
Where it lacks - Like SurveyMonkey, this platform is good for one-time surveys but not for longitudinal research or to manage bivariate data. It lacks most of the existing Qualtrics question-types and hence isn’t the best alternative.
There are many competitors to Qualtrics, but these ten competitors make it to our list as they are powerful alternatives to using Qualtrics. If you are unhappy with the pricing of Qualtrics or want to move away to make sure you are using the right alternative, look no further.