From high school projects to full-fledged businesses, surveys are a widely used method to gather information for a variety of research and analysis purposes. They provide substantial data to make important decisions, help identify and understand the market, get feedback on current aspects, and much more.
Survey tools help you create your surveys online easily and reach a much larger audience for little to no cost. They also provide some analysis of the data. There is no shortage of survey tools available online to help you create exactly what you are looking for, but Survey Monkey and Google Forms remain some of the most popular ones.
So which survey tool is right for you? Keep reading for a detailed comparison of Survey Monkey vs Google Forms that’ll help you make your decision.
Price
Google Forms is completely free. All you need is a Google account, and you can access all the features it has to offer. You can make as many surveys as you want, collect data from all the responses received, and ask as many questions as required.
Survey Monkey also has a free plan. However, what you can do with it is very limited – you can use only 10 questions on the survey and view only 40 responses for free.
For anything beyond that, you would have to upgrade to a paid version for which they have options ranging from 27 CAD to 99 CAD per month. These prices may work well for a business that can be pricey for personal use.
Survey Features
Template Variety
Google Forms has about 16 types of basic templates you can choose from under personal, work, and education categories. Personal templates are based on party invites, contact information, RSVPs, etc. Work templates have feedback forms, job application forms, order requests, and work-related requests.
Education templates have assessments, worksheets, and course evaluations. While this may work out fine for some instances, surveys with specific topics cannot be created using Google Forms.
Survey Monkey has almost 200 different templates for a number of categories ranging from work and education to streamlined options like business-related surveys, specific market research, and healthcare, among many others. They also have frequent updates. For example, a few COVID-19 surveys were released in light of the pandemic.
When comparing templates of Google Forms vs Survey Monkey, the latter comes out the winner but, of course, at a cost. As mentioned before, the full range of services is available only on paid versions.
Custom Design
Google Forms deals with a very simple format. They have four main customizing options: font, color, category, and header image. Moreover, the number of choices under each option is also very limited.
Survey Monkey’s premium plans allow you to work with a lot more at hand. You can add a logo, customize the fonts and colors, and also add a background image. You can also remove the branding from your surveys on some of the higher-priced plans.
However, the free version is not too much of a step up from Google Forms as you get about nine pre-designed themes to work with.
In terms of design and customization between Google Forms and Survey Monkey, either of the two should work out just fine for you if you want to stick to a minimal look, but if you’re creating a professional or branded survey, Survey Monkey is the way to go, though you’d have to shell out some money for a paid plan.
Question Types
Google Forms features nine of the most common question types an average user may need, such as multiple-choice, dropdown, and short answers.
Survey Monkey has a slightly larger range of 15 question types, including sliders, payment-acceptance fields, and Net Promoter Score, which is beneficial to businesses.
Though Survey Monkey has a slightly larger number of question types than Google Forms, most of the advanced ones are only available on a premium plan such as file uploads, which can be found for free on Google Forms.
Response Collection
Google forms gives you a few options to collect your data. You can email it out, send a link online, or embed the form onto your website.
While these are perfectly doable, Survey Monkey makes it a little easier to broaden your reach and collect your responses. They have all the standard options, such as emailing or sending a link, but in addition to these, your survey can be taken on social media too.
They also have Survey Monkey Audience, where they find suitable people to take your survey for a certain fee. Another feature is Kiosk Mode on the Survey Monkey Anywhere App. This turns any device into a “survey-taking station,” where as soon as a survey is complete, the next one is ready for another person. This feature works great at events.
So in this section of Google Forms vs Survey Monkey, Survey Monkey comes out the winner as the number of response collection methods considerably surpass Google Forms.
Survey Reports and Analysis
Your survey report is made available on Google Forms through graphs, pie charts, and simple text based on the type of questions in your survey. The data is then automatically exported to a spreadsheet.
If you want to customize it, you will have to go into the spreadsheet and rework the data manually. However, having the content on a spreadsheet allows you to analyze it further, if needed.
Survey Monkey lets you choose how to display your data and also customize it in different colors. Unfortunately, the data cannot be exported on a free plan, so for further analysis, you would have to go in for a paid version.
So which survey tool do you pick? In a comparison of Google Forms vs Survey Monkey, Survey Monkey does seem to have more features and better functionality than Google Forms, but these features are mostly available on paid versions.
If you are looking for a simple, easy-to-use survey, either one should do the job, but a business-related professional survey would work better on an advanced platform like Survey Monkey. If you are still confused, try both free versions and figure out which one is best for you.
