Zoho Survey

It's not too much of a surprise that the Zoho suite of 40-strong business applications includes an online survey tool. But if you assumed that offering was a throwaway, you'd be wrong. Zoho Survey, the company's online survey tool, has a very competitive feature set wrapped in an exceptionally clean modern user interface (UI). That being said, Zoho Survey (which begins at $60 per month for the Enterprise plan, billed annually) still doesn't beat out competitor Qualtrics in our online survey tools review roundup.

Survey Design

Zoho Survey's main survey building UI includes a long question selector list, providing 24 types of questions. Pages and questions are listed one after another a la SurveyGizmo and SurveyMonkey. The question types all include a thumbnail that may not completely explain their function or usefulness, but at least acts as a visual cue. One curious omission is the lack of support for specifying a minimum or maximum number of choices in multiple selection questions (for example, "Please choose up to three").

As with SoGoSurvey or Toluna QuickSurveys , adding a question is as easy as dragging it into the Editor section. Entering questions and answers happens via a slide-in panel that doesn't reveal as much of the screen as the question editor in SurveyGizmo, but provides at least some sense of context. Zoho Survey doesn't allow any formatting of the text used in its surveys (so, no bolding terms for emphasis). Both pages and some questions types can be used for skip logic, although advanced page-based options can be activated only by working with custom variables, not question results. Zoho Survey supports answer order randomization for more basic question types, but it can't rotate in choices like Qualtrics can.

Like Checkbox Survey and WorldApp KeySurvey , Zoho Survey supports the triggering of emails based on answers to specific questions. Also like those more enterprise-focused packages, surveys can be shared with a workgroup, although there isn't extensive support for multiple administrative privileges, at least within the app.

On the other hand, there are some limitations. There is no support for display logic, or showing or hiding a question based on what comes before it. And there's no mixing and matching of radio buttons and checkbox response types in matrix questions like there is in Checkbox Survey . There's also no support for blocks of questions, which is a handy option for managing longer surveys. And Zoho Survey lacks any Overview mode for batch operations such as the branching trees in Qualtrics and SurveyPlanet or the Bulk Edit mode of other online survey tools. However, there's a good opportunity to build one out of the basic page navigation UI on the right-hand side of the builder screen layout.

With its main components consisting of the summary dashboard, builder, and viewer/editor, the section dedicating to launching surveys is a tab within the building UI. Zoho Survey supports a wide range of sharing options, including support for offline surveys, password protection, and quotas. The product makes it easy to customize invitations to surveys via a straightforward template editor that includes support for custom background and font colors but no additional graphics. Other workaday controls that can be specified in advance include setting a maximum number of responses and a preset end date, and the ability to limit multiple responses from the same IP address. All of these can be set to different values in multiple collector links, which can provide a lot of flexibility in fielding and tracking responses. Like SurveyMonkey , Zoho Survey offers a companion mobile app that allows for the monitoring of survey progress.

Its distribution capabilities also include the ability to import a contact list into an email managed by MailChimp or Zoho's own Campaigns offering. You can also purchase up to 1,000 consumer responses through a simple targeting UI. However, unlike with SurveyPlanet Audiences, Zoho Survey won't provide panels to answer questions with "Other" fields or that ask for additional comments, which is a significant constraint on design.

Beyond working with Zoho Campaign, Zoho Survey takes advantage of its suite's infrastructure in a couple of ways. First, it includes integrations with a few of its suitemates, including Zoho CRM , Zoho SalesIQ, and Zoho Sheet; Google Sheets is also supported. And Zoho Survey's collaborative commenting tool—while relatively simple—still goes beyond what many other packages provide in terms of review capabilities. Another unique, thoughtful touch is that its survey previews can show tablet and smartphone layouts in both portrait and landscape orientations.

Reporting and Pricing

Zoho Survey's reporting feature is also well executed. It supports multiple reports, filters, and crosstabs, and provides different chart options for data. Any report can be shared publicly or password protected, although there is no way to set restrictions on what recipients may do with the report.

Zoho Survey has a limited free tier. Many of its features are unlocked at a $20-per-month plan (billed annually), with an extra $5 per month adding features such as email notifications, question piping, use of custom variables, and white-label capabilities. Zoho Survey is also available as part of its Zoho CRM Plus app bundle, priced at $50 per month per user, and Zoho One, the company's all-in bundle of all its apps, for $30 per month per employee. However, that fee must be paid for all employees in an organization regardless of which, if any, Zoho apps they use.

Final Thoughts

If you are a Zoho shop or have a need for other products within its Sales and Marketing bundle, then you won't be missing out on much by using Zoho Survey. It is a surprisingly complete app that can compete with SurveyPlanet in terms of elegance while offering many more features and options. It may not have all the bells and whistles of the higher-end products in our online survey tool review roundup, but it has a significant cost advantage versus those products as well.