Are you looking to collect data for a project? When creating online surveys, Google Forms and SurveyMonkey are two popular options that come to mind. Both platforms offer distinct features and advantages, making them suitable for different purposes.
In this blog post, we'll compare their features, ease of use, and pricing to help you decide which tool is better for your specific needs. By the end, you'll understand clearly which survey tool aligns best with your goals. Ready? Let’s go!
Google Forms vs. SurveyMonkey at a glance
Google Forms, a product from the tech giant Google, is known for its simplicity and seamless integration with other Google services. On the other hand, SurveyMonkey, a dedicated survey platform, offers a wide array of advanced features.
Let’s see how they fare against each other at a glance:
- Ease of access: Google Forms excels in ease of use. It offers a straightforward interface and a simple form-creation process. On the other hand, SurveyMonkey has a steeper learning curve due to its broader feature set. This makes it less suitable for beginners.
- Customizations: SurveyMonkey provides robust customization options. Users can tailor surveys with various question types, themes, and branding options. Customization options in Google Forms are more limited as compared to SurveyMonkey. However, it offers basic design and question formatting features, which can be expanded through various add-ons.
- User Base: Google Forms has a vast user base due to its free availability and seamless integration with Google Workspace. Users primarily consist of educators, small businesses, and solopreneurs. SurveyMonkey attracts a more experienced audience, including larger enterprises and researchers.
- Pricing: Google Forms is completely free, available to anyone to use. SurveyMonkey has a free plan, but this version lacks a lot of basic capabilities. The lowest tier plans SurveyMonkey offers are $39 a month for an individual and $25 per user per month for a team.
- Best suited for: Google Forms is best for quick, straightforward surveys. SurveyMonkey offers greater flexibility for creating tailored and branded surveys.
Google Forms vs. SurveyMonkey: in-depth comparison
Let's get into a detailed comparison of these two platforms. Below, we’ll compare them on such parameters as price, ease of use, customization, and advanced features.
Pricing: Google Forms is free
Google Forms is entirely free, offering unlimited surveys and responses. This includes all their images, fonts, templates, question types, and other features. Google Forms holds absolutely nothing back.
In contrast, SurveyMonkey offers a free version with limitations, restricting you to 10 questions per survey and 100 responses per month. The free plan is glaringly insufficient and doesn’t even include features like file upload that you can get for free with Google Forms.
To access the advanced features and higher response limits, you must sign up for a SurveyMonkey paid plan. For individuals, their plans start at $39/month, while their team plans start at $25/month per user. This makes Google Forms the number one choice for those that don’t want to spend too much and/or don’t need many surveys.
Ease of use: Anyone can use Google Forms
Google Forms excels in ease, earning its reputation as one of the most user-friendly tools in the field. Whether you're a tech-savvy professional or someone with minimal digital literacy, Google Forms caters to all skill levels.
Since it’s part of the Google Workspace, it seamlessly integrates with other Google platforms, like Google Sheets for data storage and Google Drive for easy file management. If you’re signed into Google, you can access Google Forms in just a few clicks. On the other hand, SurveyMonkey is a separate platform, so it requires a separate sign-in.
The key strength of Google Forms lies in its intuitive interface. Whether you start a fresh form or choose from the pre-made templates, you can start your form creation process in literally 2-3 clicks. SurveyMonkey’s interface can be a tad intimidating for the first-time survey creator.
Adding questions, altering question formats, adding images, or customizing themes is straightforward in Google Forms—there’s absolutely nothing hidden from view. Yes, that means there are limited features compared to SurveyMonkey, but many don’t need a lot for their surveys.
Customization: SurveyMonkey has more options
The theme and branding options you get in SurveyMonkey are impressive. You can choose from various professionally designed themes or customize your own. Custom logos, fonts, and colors can be effortlessly incorporated, creating a seamless brand experience for respondents.
SurveyMonkey also gives you a vast selection of templates classified by industry. There are also question formats, ranging from multiple-choice and open-ended questions to more advanced options like matrix questions and ranking scales. The ubiquitous star rating is a feature you can’t find in Google Forms.
Theme and branding options are also available in Google Forms. However, they’re not as extensive as those you find in SurveyMonkey. Google Forms favors simplicity. When tailoring your surveys to meet specific needs and preferences, SurveyMonkey emerges as the frontrunner.
Advanced features: SurveyMonkey has more features
When it comes to advanced survey functionality, SurveyMonkey outshines Google Forms. SurveyMonkey's toolbox includes a range of sophisticated capabilities that cater to the needs of researchers, businesses, and organizations seeking in-depth insights.
Features like “Build it for me” are helpful. Here, you’re prompted to enter your survey objectives and target audience. Based on this information, SurveyMonkey generates a preliminary survey structure. This simplifies the survey creation process for users who may be short on time or lack experience in survey design.
With SurveyMonkey, you can also create question-and-answer piping. This feature allows questions and answer choices to be personalized based on respondents' previous answers. Advanced question types like “click maps” and “best worst scale” are helpful for gathering nuanced data or conducting in-depth research.
For users working with Google Forms seeking advanced survey features, using Google Forms add-ons is an option. There are many valuable add-ons that expand on the platform’s capabilities, like Form Publisher for automatic response documents and approval workflows.
SurveyMonkey vs. Google Forms? It depends on what you need
Now you have all the information you need to choose between the two popular survey creation platforms. Your choice will ultimately hinge on your specific requirements.
If you’re a large enterprise looking for comprehensive data collection with layered data analytics for large-scale marketing surveys, maybe SurveyMonkey is for you. However, if you’re a small business, an educator, or a solopreneur looking for simplicity and basic data collection, Google Forms offers a user-friendly, free solution. While SurveyMonkey gives you more features, its intricate platform can be excessive for those with simpler needs. Plus, with the right add-ons, there’s virtually nothing you can’t do with Google Forms. Check out our very own add-on: Form Publisher!