Choosing a Survey Tool for Pricing and Packaging Research

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There are several ways to go about pricing and packaging research, depending on your desired output, and the methodologies you want to use to get there.

With that in mind, this doc is a collection of shared experiences from the GBB Community, who have shared their experiences with some of the usual suspects.

Lets start things off with the biggest player in the game — Qualtrics.

Qualtrics

Pros 

• Widely considered the best multi-use platform, with lots of flexibility.

• Anyone can pump panel into their platform since they’re the market leader.

Cons

• Annoying sales process — they’ll try to upsell you on platform, panel, and survey building/programming. Can be challenging to get to a clear “cost per complete.”

• Pricing structure — TLDR, Qualtrics is expensive. They charge based on users and responses, with packages starting at 5 users and 5,000 responses.

• If you’re looking to do conjoint analysis, depending on the complexity, you may want to look elsewhere since Qualtrics has very basic conjoint tools.

• Support is all about using the tool, and not particularly helpful. You will get tossed to FAQ often.

Summary: Likely the best option, but typically overpriced. That said, they will heavily discount if you push them. Since they’re widely considered the market leader, and most customers aren’t looking for much complexity, their support function is pretty basic, and lacks strategic guidance.

QuestionPro

Pros

• Great UI/UX — the tool adapts with parameters and sets guidance in app

• Direct connection to QP's panel

• Services team is available 24/7 to assist in setting up questions

Cons

• Same pricing structure as Qualtrics, but cheaper per user and per response

• Not much experience using their survey tool (mainly managed panel)

• Questionable panel (not the best, but not the worst)

Summary: Mixed feedback on their survey tool and panel, but if cost is a constraint, they’re a solid alternative to Qualtrics.

SawTooth

Pros 

• Arguably the most robust conjoint platform

• Easy setup and configuration

• Very legit analytics tools

• Simulator capabilities are best in class

• Can redirect Qualtrics to Sawtooth for conjoint and redirect back to Qualtrics (lots of Sawtooth customers do this).

• Support team is practically consulting-lite — very knowledageble about their own tool but also know a ton about choice-based survey methods and can offer ideas in tricky situations.

• Solid value for the price

Cons

• Requires lots of coding

• Clunky for MaxDiff and Van Westendorp

• To unlock Gabor Granger, Relative Preference, etc. you need the desktop version which is only available on windows

Conjointly

Pros

• Tool can save and create multiple scenarios to compare at once

• Solid simulator depth like Sawtooth

• Ability to collaborate with your team on surveys and share with clients is on par with Qualtrics

• Really solid customer support

• Solid value for the money

Cons

• UI isn’t on par with Qualtrics