If you don’t live alone on a tropical island, chances are at some point you will be able to use a survey.  Whether for your PTO, book club, block party, bowling league, etc… if ever you need to collect information from a group of people, the survey is the can opener of choice to get at the rich goodies of collective opinion. There are tons of options for free surveying.  So many in fact, that it becomes a bit of a challenge to determine which might be best for your task.  Never fear, free apps to the rescue!

For the casual searcher, it is difficult to find a review of free survey products done within the last two years.  A good example of the 2008 era is this blog post.

The big dog on the porch for those who have some experience is Survey Monkey.  The site has been around for probably 10 years now and is one of the, if not THE biggest market share holder in this field. It’s maturity and size are now weaknesses though!  While I still use it for most of my survey related tasks, I will be checking out a few of the others I am mentioning here, because the cloud based software experience is improving rapidly, and the interface for Survey Monkey has not kept pace with the times.  Thanks to Alex at estartup.org.  Some will prefer the more simplistic interface, and the free account is adequate for almost all small audience work.

To learn more about the various survey tools as well as mass email products that integrate polling into their services, check here.

Each of these tools is provided at a free level with the intent to get users to upgrade to a paid version of their product.  As a result of this focus, each has features that they withhold from free accounts and provide to those willing to pay.  With Survey Monkey, this upgraded feature set is tied to your monthly or annual upgrade, and if you let it expire, you don’t lose the account, you simply slip back in to basic ‘free’ mode again.  This is handy for those that have light need for a tool most of the time, but may have one  or two periods where they need to ramp up use.

The free tools separate the entry level from paid with a few key factors.  Typically the number of responses that you can accept per month, the number of questions you can ask per survey, the number of question types available to create a survey, email invites and especially the ability to use graphics and share the results of the survey.  To get an idea, here is Survey Gizmo’s feature comparison chart.

Finally, be careful what you click on when you decide to open an account.  There is a trap at each of these sites.  Large colorful buttons tell you to do the free trial, and in very small letters at the bottom or other unobtrusive location is the link to create a free account.  The free trial makes it easier for them to transition you into the paid customer level, while the free account makes it easier for you to stay in control of your spending.  I provide links here to the free account pages, not the free trials!

The top 3:

1. Survey Monkey – Over 3 million use it, google integration.
2. Zoomerang – Facebook Survey available with free account here.
3. Survey Gizmo – Facebook Survey App and student accounts.

Other survey tools of interest:

1. Essential Polls – A tool that is more for the website designer who wants to imbed a survey in an existing site rather than the email user that wants a dedicated survey.  Good tutorials.
2. Survey Pirate – this tool has a different angle.  The surveys are free.  They want you to survey their demographic multi-country database and will provide you online quotes to do so.  As long as you use your own list, you stay free.
3. Poll Daddy – This site has fairly severe restrictions compared to the others, but seems to be a heavily used site.  With limits of 10 questions per survey, no exporting and other crimps on the free account, this would not be my first choice.

J-learning – Excellent ‘how-to’ on survey creation.  Review before creating your own, even if you have some experience under your belt!

If you want to check out the Facebook App, here is an example.

OK, now I have to go wrestle with my conscious, because if anyone hates surveys, it’s me!  What I have just done may be punishable by imprisonment in some countries, sharing all this survey spamming power!  Arghhhhh…  Remember, with great power comes great responsibility – use these tools wisely!