Qualtrics vs. SurveyMonkey vs. Pollfish: Comparing 4 Key Areas

In this post, we’ll compare Qualtrics vs. SurveyMonkey vs. Pollfish across 4 key areas: data quality, pricing, features, and customer support.

We'll start with a quick summary of key differences, then dive deeper into each category.

Key Differences at a Glance (High-Level Summary)

Data Quality

Pollfish: We exclusively use 1st-party data from audience panels we directly own and manage ourselves through parent company Prodege, the largest single panel owner in the world, and renowned industry-wide as the gold standard for quality.

Qualtrics & SurveyMonkey: They often rely on 3rd-party audience panels, which are more prone to inconsistent data quality.

Pricing

Pollfish: Transparent, pay-per-response pricing with no monthly fees and unlimited team members. For 1–5 questions, pricing is comparable to SurveyMonkey. But as your question count grows, Pollfish becomes far more cost-effective — once you exceed 10 questions, SurveyMonkey can be nearly twice as expensive.

SurveyMonkey: Pay-per-response model, but requires additional monthly subscription fees for advanced features. As the question count increases, SurveyMonkey's pricing becomes progressively more expensive than Pollfish.

Qualtrics: Significantly more costly than Pollfish and SurveyMonkey, as it’s geared towards enterprise companies. Typically operates on a subscription basis. Additional team licenses can become costly.

Note: Pricing is always subject to change. For the most up-to-date pricing details, please refer to the respective websites of Pollfish, SurveyMonkey, and Qualtrics.

Features

Pollfish: Advanced functionality with a user-friendly interface. We particularly excel at advanced survey programming, complex skip logic and branching, and data analysis.

SurveyMonkey: Good for basic to intermediate needs. More limited survey programming and data analysis capabilities.

Qualtrics: Powerful tool with enterprise-grade features and capabilities.

Customer Support

Pollfish is renowned for providing exceptional customer support, as frequently praised by customers who switch to our platform. Our support goes beyond mere technical assistance. We have a team of seasoned market researchers ready to offer expert guidance on survey programming, audience targeting, interpreting results, and more. We're also available 24/7 via live chat and phone.

Now that we’ve briefly covered the key differences at a glance, let’s dive deeper into each category.

Diving in Deeper: Data Quality Differences

SurveyMonkey and Qualtrics often purchase responses from third-party audience panels. While some of these external providers are reputable, others are more susceptible to "professional survey takers" who hastily complete surveys without carefully considering each question.

At Pollfish, we exclusively use first-party data from audience panels we own and manage directly. This gives us complete control over data quality measures, resulting in higher quality responses.

For instance, through Swagbucks, one of our core communities, we implement quality control measures such as:

30-day evaluation period: New signups cannot immediately start completing client surveys. They must first undergo a 30-day evaluation period where they fill out internal test surveys. We meticulously monitor the quality of their responses during this time. They can only participate in client surveys when we are fully confident that they provide thoughtful and high-quality responses.

Trust quality scores: We assign and track a trust score for each panelist based on the quality of their survey responses. The more consistently they provide high-quality answers, the more opportunities they unlock to earn additional rewards, creating a strong incentive loop.

Voluntary survey participation: When panelists join, they can engage in various activities to earn rewards, such as playing games, watching movies, uploading shopping receipts, and more. Surveys are simply another optional activity, and we don't actively solicit participants via text or email to take surveys (unlike some third-party providers). Instead, panelists can choose to navigate to the survey section of their dashboard when they feel ready and willing, leading to higher-quality responses.

Anti-fraud measures: We manually review open text responses, employ unique user IDs to prevent the same person from taking a survey multiple times, implement speeding prevention, anti-VPN measures, straight-lining detection (selecting the same answer repeatedly), and much more.

This is just a small sampling of our quality control measures.

With Pollfish's rigorous data quality standards, you can trust your survey results and the business decisions that follow.

In addition to our thorough audience vetting process, we deliver exceptionally fast turnaround times. For broad, mainstream audiences (e.g., such as general streaming preferences), you can receive 500 responses within hours.

For more niche audiences (e.g., doctors with certain specialties), turnaround naturally takes longer — typically several days — but remains significantly faster than most other survey software.

Diving in Deeper: Pricing Differences

Note: Before we dive into pricing, note that it’s always subject to change. For the most up-to-date pricing details, please refer to the respective websites of Pollfish, SurveyMonkey, and Qualtrics.

Qualtrics, being primarily geared towards enterprise companies, can be significantly more expensive than Pollfish and SurveyMonkey. They operate mainly via long-term contracts that can be cost-prohibitive for many organizations.

SurveyMonkey employs a pay-per-response pricing model, but access to certain survey programming and data analysis capabilities requires an additional monthly subscription. For individual plans, they offer options ranging from $39/month to $139/month. Team plans range from $30/user/month to $92/user/month, with enterprise pricing also available.

At Pollfish, we use a straightforward pay-per-response pricing model starting at $0.95 per response. This is the only cost you incur — there are no hidden fees or subscription charges.

As you create your survey, the pricing is transparently displayed upfront:

Here's how our pricing transparency works in practice:

Base cost: $0.95 per response
Add "Married" filter: +$0.55 per response
Add "Household Income $200K+" filter: +$0.55 per response
Add “11-15 questions”: +$0.15 per response
Final cost per response: $2.20
Total for 700 responses: $1,540

In this example, the total price displayed upfront is $1,540, and that’s exactly what you’ll pay. Nothing more, nothing less. There are no hidden surprises.

In comparison, the same example above is quoted at $2,100 on SurveyMonkey:

Here’s what a Pollfish customer said about our pricing transparency in their Trustpilot review:

“The dollar amount they [Pollfish] quote you in their cost calculator tool, and the number they show when you're developing the survey, is the number you pay. I was burned multiple times by SurveyMonkey charging me unexpected amounts and making it difficult to quit an expensive subscription. I'm so happy to have found Pollfish as an alternative.”

Moreover, we are often the most cost-effective option when comparing Pollfish to SurveyMonkey's pay-per-response pricing. As shown below, both survey platforms charge roughly the same for 1–5 questions. But as the question count increases, Pollfish becomes significantly cheaper:

Additionally, for many audience filters, Pollfish's pricing is lower than SurveyMonkey's. Signing up for both platforms is free, allowing you to test them out for yourself!

Diving in Deeper: Feature Differences

SurveyMonkey is best for basic to intermediate needs. They excel at ease of use, and their platform has a minimal learning curve. However, many customers report that it lags behind in survey programming. As a Reddit user mentioned in this thread:

“Survey routing logic is way more time consuming in SurveyMonkey (and sometimes does not match what Qualtrics can do period). SurveyMonkey forces me to compromise the design of my surveys because I’m not able to pipe from certain question types or route in the way I want. My impression is that SurveyMonkey started as primarily a marketing survey tool and is better for more simple survey designs.”

Qualtrics is a powerful tool with enterprise-grade features and capabilities. However, they do come at a significant cost.

Pollfish offers all the powerful features you’d expect at a reasonable cost, and we offer a great user experience.

We particularly excel in advanced survey programming and complex skip logic and branching:

Not only is it highly powerful and customizable to set up the exact survey logic you need, but it's also intuitive and easy to understand. As we'll discuss next, we also provide 24/7 live support that you can leverage. Even when the platform is simple to use, we understand that having someone available to help can make the process even easier.

As a Pollfish customer mentioned in their G2 review:

“The interface was extremely intuitive and easy to use. I especially liked how we set up the logic for the questions. Furthermore, the customer support agents were awesome. They responded to every question I had in a timely manner. (And before we even paid a cent!)”

We also offer a wide array of other survey programming capabilities, including 16 question types (e.g., A/B test, Conjoint analysis, Max Diff, and Van Westendorp), AI online survey creation, survey templates, screening questions, question and answer shuffling to collect customer feedback, and more:

Additionally, we offer robust data analysis tools & capabilities. You can enable statistical significance testing, create crosstabs and data visualizations, and slice and dice data using multiple variables simultaneously:

Another unique feature is the ability to create presentations in real-time within Pollfish for easy export while your survey results are still being collected. This way, once the survey is complete, you'll have already begun the work to finalize the report and be ahead of schedule.

The features mentioned here are merely a glimpse of what Pollfish has to offer. In short, we can accommodate any research requirements, whether simple or complex.

Diving in Deeper: Customer Support

Customers who switch to Pollfish from Qualtrics and SurveyMonkey often express their satisfaction with the quality of our service.

Our support team is not only equipped to provide technical assistance but also consists of experienced market researchers who can offer guidance on more complex issues, ranging from questionnaire design to audience selection, survey data analysis, and more.

This level of support is provided complimentary (at no additional cost), and it's an invaluable resource that many customers may not realize they have access to when using Pollfish.

In addition, we offer 24/7 support via both live chat and phone. So, whether you're working late into the night to meet a tight deadline or putting in extra hours over the weekend, we'll be there to assist if you need us.

Below are several reviews from Trustpilot that highlight Pollfish’s exceptional customer experience:

“The customer service team is super responsive too for those more complex enquiries about the tool and criteria. All in all this experience has been way easier (and cheaper) than any other 'big players' out there” (See review)

“I love this product. I feel like it gives me enterprise grade market survey tech at a consumer price. Highly recommend. I love how responsive the customer support team is.” (See review)

“The customer service I received was fantastic. Brilliant guidance that helped get high-quality results. I was really pleased with the outcome and highly recommend using them.” (See review)

Interested in Signing up for Pollfish?

Sign up for a free account today — no credit card needed.

Schedule a demo call and receive personalized guidance on how to maximize Pollfish for your needs.

by Written by John Lucero

13 Best SurveyMonkey Alternatives & Competitors: Paid & Free

In this post, we'll explore top SurveyMonkey alternatives, categorizing them into paid and free options to cater to different research needs and budgets.

Before diving into our recommendations, it's worth understanding why choosing a robust survey platform with advanced capabilities can deliver significantly better results:

❇️ Data Quality & Reliability

Advanced survey platforms offer sophisticated survey fraud prevention, verified respondent communities, and robust data quality controls that most free tools cannot match. When your business decisions depend on accurate research insights, the cost of poor data far exceeds the price of premium software.

❇️ Advanced Features & Customization

While basic tools work for simple questionnaires, advanced platforms offer more complex question types, advanced logic branching, and specialized research methodologies (e.g., conjoint analysis, MaxDiff).

Additionally, these platforms provide robust data analysis capabilities, including automated statistical significance testing, advanced filtering, and more — which can save you hours of manual work and help you uncover insights that might otherwise be missed.

In this article, we’ll discuss our own product, Pollfish, which provides upfront, usage-based pricing starting at just $0.95 per response with no subscription commitments. We’ll also explore additional paid and free SurveyMonkey alternatives.

Best Paid SurveyMonkey Alternatives

Pollfish
Qualtrics
Alchemer
Suzy
SurveySparrow
Forsta

Best Free SurveyMonkey Alternatives

Google Forms
Typeform
Jotform
Microsoft Forms
Zoho Survey
Survicate
Tripetto

Note: Pricing information is subject to change. For the most current pricing, please visit each brand's website.

Paid SurveyMonkey Alternatives

1. Pollfish

Pollfish is our powerful DIY survey platform designed for researchers who need access to a large pool of pre-recruited respondents rather than bringing their own audience.

Below, we'll compare Pollfish with SurveyMonkey Audience (SurveyMonkey's service for accessing their respondent panel) across three key areas:

❇️ Audience Quality & Targeting Options

SurveyMonkey's approach: At times, SurveyMonkey sources respondents from third-party panel suppliers, many of which are prone to "professional survey takers" who hastily complete surveys to maximize earnings, compromising response quality.

Pollfish's approach: We utilize first-party data from our parent company, Prodege (the world's largest single-panel owner), where we manage communities like Swagbucks. As we'll cover in more detail later below, these communities have rigorous measures in place to ensure high-quality responses. Moreover, Pollfish offers a wider range of targeting criteria than SurveyMonkey.

❇️ Survey Pricing

For 1–5 questions: Pollfish: $0.95 per response vs. SurveyMonkey: $1.00 per response

6–10 questions: Pollfish: $1.00 per response vs. SurveyMonkey: $1.40 per response

11–15 questions: Pollfish: $1.00 per response vs. SurveyMonkey: $2.00 per response

And the cost advantage continues to grow. We'll include a comprehensive pricing chart demonstrating how SurveyMonkey consistently costs more per response than Pollfish across all question ranges.

Note: Pricing is always subject to change. For the most up-to-date pricing, please visit Pollfish and SurveyMonkey’s websites.

❇️ Customer Support Quality

What makes Pollfish unique: 24/7 complimentary guidance from experienced market researchers (not just technical support staff) who can assist with survey design best practices, optimal audience targeting and filter selection, data analysis and interpretation, and more. Many of our customers have expressed how much they appreciate this level of support, noting that it's rare in other survey platforms.

Pollfish’s Audience Quality & Targeting Capabilities

At Pollfish, we own and maintain our own respondent communities through our parent company, Prodege. This direct ownership allows us to implement rigorous quality control measures.

Our flagship community, Swagbucks, exemplifies this quality-first approach:

❇️ Surveys Are Just One of Many Earning Opportunities

Unlike traditional panels where respondents join solely to take surveys, our community members engage in diverse activities — watching movies, playing games, shopping online, uploading receipts, and more. This variety means surveys aren't their primary focus, reducing the "professional survey taker" mentality that leads to rushed, low-quality responses.

❇️ Opt-In Participation, Not Aggressive Outreach

We deliberately avoid sending frequent survey invitations via email or text. Instead, members access surveys through their dashboard when they choose to participate, ensuring they're in the right mindset to provide more thoughtful responses.

❇️ Mandatory 30-Day Evaluation Period

Prospective survey takers must complete a mandatory 30-day period of filling out internal surveys. Only those who demonstrate high-quality responses during this time are permitted to participate in client surveys.

❇️ Trust Quality Scoring System

We continually monitor survey response quality through both manual and automated means. Panelists with higher quality responses earn greater trust scores, unlocking more earning opportunities within our ecosystem.

❇️ Advanced anti-fraud measures

We employ several methods, including tracking unique user IDs (to prevent duplicate survey takers), trap questions, speeding prevention, anti VPN measures, gibberish detection, straight lining detection (consistently selecting the same answer), conducting human review of open-text responses, and much more.

Prodege provides access to over 100 million respondents across 160 countries and 345 cities. This massive scale enables a wider range of targeting options compared to SurveyMonkey:

This comparison highlights several key differences, particularly in geographic targeting. Pollfish supports more regions and postal codes, and even allows targeting by congressional district or custom radius (select any location and specify distance parameters).

Another area where Pollfish differentiates itself is behavioral targeting. Through Prodege's ecosystem, panel members upload actual purchase receipts to earn rewards, enabling remarkably precise audience targeting based on verified purchase behavior rather than unreliable self-reported claims.

For example, instead of targeting people who simply check "outdoor activities" on a survey, you can target consumers who actually purchased camping equipment with verified REI receipts — ensuring you reach genuinely relevant respondents.

Note: We encourage you to contact us directly with questions about reaching your specific target audience. No matter how broad or niche, we can likely accommodate your needs.

Pollfish vs. SurveyMonkey: Cost Breakdown

Note: Pricing is always subject to change. For the most up-to-date pricing, please visit Pollfish and SurveyMonkey’s websites.

At Pollfish, you pay only for the survey responses you collect — no monthly subscription plans and no extra fees for premium features. Just straightforward pay-per-response pricing.

❇️ Per-response pricing comparison: For 1–5 questions, Pollfish is $0.95 per response vs. SurveyMonkey at $1.00 per response. This is a relatively similar rate. However, for surveys with 6+ questions, SurveyMonkey consistently charges significantly higher per-response rates:

Additional Cost Advantages

❇️ Demographic Targeting

Pollfish offers more competitive pricing for basic demographic filters like gender and age selection.

❇️ Screening Questions

While Pollfish charges $0.50 per completed response for screening questions, SurveyMonkey’s pricing starts at $0.65, and this number increases with incidence rate.

❇️ Skip Logic and Advanced Survey Programming

Essential survey design capabilities like skip logic, question randomization, advanced question types (e.g., matrix), etc., are included at no additional cost with Pollfish. SurveyMonkey requires you to upgrade to a paid subscription plan to access these same features.

…and more.

Customer Support Quality

One of the most frequent compliments we receive from customers is about our exceptional support quality — something that's surprisingly rare in the market research survey industry, which often requires expert guidance beyond basic platform navigation:

❇️ We have experienced market researchers on our support team who help you design better studies, not just customer service representatives limited to basic technical troubleshooting.

❇️ Expert guidance for any research question, whether simple or complex. Need help structuring branching logic to maximize response quality? We'll walk you through it. Unsure about the optimal sample size for statistical significance? We'll explain the calculations. Survey results appear contradictory? Our researchers will guide you through proper analysis and interpretation techniques.

❇️ This level of support comes at no extra cost. You're not paying premium consulting fees for expert guidance — it's simply part of how we ensure our customers' success.

❇️ Always accessible when you need us. We offer genuine 24/7 support via live chat or phone, including evenings and weekends.

Online Reviews from SurveyMonkey Customers Who Switched to Pollfish

Below are several Trustpilot reviews from customers who switched from SurveyMonkey to Pollfish:

“The dollar amount they quote you in their cost calculator tool, and the number they show when you're developing the survey, is the number you pay. I was burned multiple times by SurveyMonkey charging me unexpected amounts and making it difficult to quit an expensive subscription. I'm so happy to have found Pollfish as an alternative. Their support team also responds VERY quickly to chat messages and has been tremendously helpful the few times I had questions.” (Read full review)

“Cheaper than SurveyMonkey and gives so much more demographic data”. (See review)

“Excellent insights, easy to use. Pollfish's audience data and survey flexibility were a perfect match for my needs. I've used SurveyMonkey as well and prefer Pollfish. The question logic tools are more straightforward, the image-based question capability is easier, and the audience data was meaningfully less expensive.” (See review)

Sign Up for a Free Pollfish Account or Book a Demo

Interested in learning more about Pollfish?

We invite you to create a free account (no credit card required) or book a personalized demo.

2. Qualtrics

Qualtrics is a SurveyMonkey alternative that’s best suited for enterprise organizations. We cover what differentiates Pollfish in this post.

Qualtrics’ features can be categorized into three areas:

1. Customer Experience

Voice of Customer
Omnichannel Experience Management
Digital Experience Analytics
Website & App Feedback
Location Experience Hub
Online Reputation Management
Contact Center Analytics
Quality Management & Compliance
Agent Coaching
Edge Instant Insights

2. Employee Experience

Employee Engagement
Employee Pulse
Employee Research
Candidate Experience Management
Employee Onboarding & Exit
360 Development Feedback
Employee Retention Analytics
Continuous Employee Listening

3. Strategy & Research

Strategic Market Research
Product Research
Brand and Communication Research
User Experience Research
Edge Audiences

3. Alchemer

Alchemer (formerly known as SurveyGizmo) is a SurveyMonkey alternative with various features and functionality, including:

Market research surveys
Real-time, in-app customer feedback
Brand health tracking and consumer insights
Text sentiment analysis

It offers solutions by industry, including Education, Government, Non-Profit, Food & Beverage, Financial Services, Retail, Software, etc.

4. Suzy

Suzy is a SurveyMonkey alternative with various features and functionality, including:

Quantitative surveys
Qualitative multi-person focus groups, 1-on-1 interviews, and in-home product testing
AI survey creation and templates to help save you time
Email, CRM, and social media integration to help connect with audiences
AI-powered analytics and reporting, helping you easily gain actionable insights

5. SurveySparrow

SurveySparrow breaks down their features into 5 categories:

1. Surveys

Conversational Surveys
Offline Surveys
SMS / Text Surveys
Executive Dashboard
SpotChecks: In-app Feedback
AI-powered Text Analytics
Multi-lingual Surveys
Security
Workflows
White Labelling

2. CX

NPS
CSAT
Voice of Customer Surveys

3. Reputation

Review Monitoring
Social Listening
Boost Reviews

4. Ticketing

SLA Management
Automated Workflows
Ticket Dashboard
Locations

5. 360 Assessments

Personalized Insights
AI-driven PDPs
Heatmaps
Team Analytics

6. Forsta

Forsta is a SurveyMonkey alternative that offers a variety of features and functionality, including:

Market research surveys
Panel management
Online focus groups
Digital diaries & communities
Social listening
Research automation
Text analytics
Voice sentiment analysis
And more

Free SurveyMonkey Alternatives

7. Google Forms

Google Forms is a free SurveyMonkey alternative with a minimal learning curve that can help you:

Build forms via a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface
Easily share online forms via email or social media, or embed them on your company’s website
Optionally utilize premade templates for online surveys and questionnaires
Build custom flows and quizzes
Analyze survey data and customize visualizations to match your brand identity

…and more

8. Typeform

Typeform is a SurveyMonkey alternative that offers a free plan, and it boasts a wide range of features and functionality, including:

Form builder
Survey maker
Quiz maker
Test maker
Poll builder
Application form builder
Landing page builder
NPS form builder
Registration form builder
Short form builder

You can use it for a variety of use cases, including:

Market research
Lead generation
Employee onboarding
Employee satisfaction
Employee engagement
Customer feedback
Customer satisfaction
Event planning
Customer engagement
Customer testimonials
Candidate feedback

…and more.

9. Jotform

Jotform is a SurveyMonkey competitor that offers a free plan, and it boasts a wide range of features and functionality, including:

Form Builder
Jotform Enterprise
Jotform Apps
Store Builder
Jotform Tables
Jotform Inbox
Jotform Mobile App
Report Builder
Smart PDF Forms
PDF Editor
Jotform Sign
Jotform Workflows
Jotform for Salesforce
Jotform AI Agents
Jotform Boards

They offer a user-friendly interface and integrate with Microsoft Teams, PayPal, Slack, Google Sheets, Mailchimp, Zoom, Dropbox, Google Calendar, Salesforce, and many other tools.

10. Microsoft Forms

Microsoft Forms is a SurveyMonkey competitor with a free plan. It has an intuitive interface and offers several features and functionality, including:

Surveys, polls, and quizzes to collect data
Built-in AI and smart recommendations
A wide variety of seamless integrations to connect with your audience and streamline operations
Data analysis visualizations and automatically generated reports in various formats

11. Zoho Survey

Zoho Survey is an alternative to SurveyMonkey that offers a free plan. It boasts several features and functionality, and lets you:

Create surveys, polls, and quizzes
Translate surveys
Share surveys
Secure surveys
Personalize surveys
Analyze reports
Display logic
Apply other customization options

Their product can help you with multiple functions, including market research, product experience, candidate assessment, customer experience, brand experience, and more.

12. Survicate

Survicate is a SurveyMonkey alternative that offers a free version. They break down their features into 3 categories:

1. Survey Software

Create Surveys
Distribute Surveys
Analyze Surveys
Act on Feedback

2. Digital User Feedback

Mobile App Feedback
Website Feedback
In-Product Feedback
Email Surveys

3. Feedback Analytics

Dashboards
Insights Hub
AI Analysis

Survicate can be used by various teams, including product management, marketing, user research, customer experience, and more. It can also be used for different industries, including SaaS, apps, E-commerce, healthcare, financial services, and more.

They offer various survey templates and metrics, including Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), Customer Effort Score (CES), Software Evaluation, 1-10 Rating Scale, and more.

13. Tripetto

Tripetto positions itself as a tool that’s “like SurveyMonkey, Typeform and Landbot united, but with a fresh take on truly smart form building and safe data collection”. They provide a free plan and offer several features and functionality, including:

Create conversational forms
Sharm forms with a link
Embed forms in a website
Optimize and style forms
Unlimited number of forms
Unlimited questions per form to collect responses
Unlimited conditional logic jumps
Unlimited number of closing messages per form
Unlimited number of responses per form

Sign Up for a Free Pollfish Account or Book a Demo

Interested in learning more about Pollfish, our paid survey tool with premium functionality?

We invite you to create a free account (no credit card required) or book a personalized demo walkthrough.

by Written by John Lucero

8 Best Market Research Services: In-Depth Look

8 Best Market Research Services (In-Depth Look)

Companies turn to market research services to free up their time and leverage specialized expertise because:

Programming surveys is often more time-consuming than anticipated. We recommend this guideline: if programming your survey would take more than 30 minutes, consider delegating it to a market research service instead. This frees up your time for higher-value work.

Market research firms bring deep expertise across multiple areas. This includes survey programming, sample and fielding, data analysis & visualization, reporting, and more. Also, while you may excel in certain areas, partnering with a market research service allows you to leverage their expertise in other critical domains where you may have less experience.

There are different types of market research services depending on your needs:

For high-quality services at a reasonable cost, consider options like Prodege (our own service), Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, and SG Analytics.

For more consultative, high-touch engagements — typically at a higher price point — firms like Kantar and Ipsos are strong choices.

Looking for niche services? MarketResearch.com offers high-quality market research reports, while federal, state, or local agencies might explore GSA.

Next, we'll dive deeper into each of these options, starting with our own market research service, Prodege.

Table of Contents

Prodege
Qualtrics
SurveyMonkey
SG Analytics
Ipsos
Kantar
MarketResearch.com
GSA

1. Prodege (Pollfish’s Parent Company)

Up next, we'll focus on Prodege's full-service market research offering. However, it's important to note that Prodege operates as both a full-service research provider and a technology company. We've built and acquired several proprietary market research platforms over the years, including Pollfish — a leading DIY survey tool for companies who prefer to manage their own research projects.

Below, we’ll cover:

How Prodege’s assisted service for market research works

Key benefits of choosing Prodege over other market research services, namely:
- Dedicated specialists for each project instead of spreading one person too thin
- Higher data quality through Prodege’s owned and operated audience panels
- Prodege's proprietary tech platforms, such as Pollfish, increase speed, efficiency, and cost savings for clients

How Prodege’s Done-for-You Market Research Service Works

Choose the level of support that fits your needs

You have the flexibility to choose between an end-to-end service option, where we handle the entire process from start to finish, or select specific areas you need assistance with, such as:

Research design: Our team of market research experts can advise on the type of research needed to achieve your objectives and draft the survey.

Survey programming: We handle complex survey logic with ease and create engaging surveys optimized for desktop and mobile.

Sample & fielding: We leverage Prodege's proprietary respondent network to precisely reach your target audience, manage quota fulfillment, and ensure high-quality data collection.

Data processing & analysis: Our Insights Builder platform automatically visualizes your data in exportable, editable PowerPoint graphics so you can spend your time on the insights instead of the visuals, saving you countless hours. Traditional crosstabs with full stat testing are also available.

Reporting: We create polished, visually engaging presentations ready for sharing with stakeholders.

Beyond quantitative surveys, we can also handle your qualitative research needs, including online focus groups and one-on-one interviews. Here’s a customer testimonial from Remesh:

“Working with Prodege has allowed us to provide quality sample and a smooth recruitment process from beginning to end for our large-scale qual sessions. We can always count on the team for fast recruitment programming, excellent screening and quota delivery, low incidence rate audiences, and timely turnaround for all our projects. The customer service of their project management team is unmatched.”

Dedicated Specialists for Each Project Instead of Spreading One Person Too Thin

At industry conferences, the most common feedback we hear is, "your team goes above and beyond" — a reputation we've earned by putting dedicated specialists behind each project instead of spreading one person too thin.

Each project typically includes both a sample manager and a project manager, with additional specialized roles added based on your specific service needs.

This approach means:

Reliable follow-through, since we have the dedicated resources to deliver on every commitment.

Exceptional responsiveness when you have questions or need updates.

Expert knowledge across all aspects of your research.

Higher Data Quality Through Prodege’s Owned and Operated Audience Panels

Survey Fraud and Bots: A Growing Industry Challenge

Survey fraud and bot responses have become a major problem across the market research industry, with incidents increasing dramatically since the pandemic began.

Why Is This Important?

Data quality is arguably the most important consideration when choosing a market research company. Even the most expertly designed survey becomes unreliable if responses are low quality, and business decisions based on flawed data can be extremely costly.

Our Solution: First-Party Audience Data

Unlike many research firms that purchase respondents from third-party panel providers with unknown quality standards, Prodege owns and operates its own first-party audience networks.

This ensures authentic, reliable responses. For example, through one of our flagship communities, Swagbucks, we maintain rigorous quality standards, including:

30-day evaluation period: New members can only participate in internal surveys (not client-facing ones) for their first 30 days while we closely monitor their response quality. They gain access to client surveys only after proving they provide consistently high-quality, thoughtful answers.

Identity verification through purchase receipts: Members earn rewards through multiple activities beyond surveys, including uploading purchase receipts. Bots cannot replicate this behavior, allowing us to confirm that respondents are real humans while also validating the accuracy of their self-reported preferences and behaviors. For instance, if someone claims to be a dog owner but their receipts show consistent cat food purchases and cat litter with no dog-related products, we may flag this inconsistency for review.

Opt-in survey participation: While many 3rd-party panels inundate panelists with aggressive email and text campaigns to drive survey participation, we take a different approach. Within our dashboard — which features games, videos, and other engaging activities to earn rewards — surveys become just one appealing option among many that panelists can naturally navigate to on their own accord when they feel ready and motivated to participate, resulting in higher-quality responses.

Trust quality scoring: Members who consistently provide high-quality responses unlock increased earning opportunities, creating strong incentives for thoughtful participation.

Advanced anti-fraud procedures: These include unique user IDs, anti-VPN measures, trap questions, speeding prevention, straight-lining detection, manual human review of open-text responses, and the list goes on.

These examples highlight just a few of our comprehensive data quality measures.

In short, data integrity is fundamental to our mission, and Prodege is recognized industry-wide as the gold standard for research data quality.

Prodege's Tech Platforms Increase Speed, Efficiency & Cost Savings for Clients

Prodege is a technology company that has acquired multiple proprietary platforms to deliver faster, higher-quality services at lower costs — advantages we pass directly to our clients.

A prime example is Insights Builder (a powerful data analysis and visualization tool), which allows us to manipulate complex survey data, create sophisticated graphs, perform statistical testing, and more — all within minutes directly on our platform:

Without Insights Builder, these same tasks would require hours of manual work in other external tools, significantly increasing both project timelines and costs.

Below is a customer testimonial from BuzzFeed regarding our data visualization technology.

Furthermore (as previously mentioned), Prodege owns and operates its own audience panels instead of purchasing from third-party providers. This internal control makes a substantial difference in terms of cost, speed of delivery, and most crucially, data quality.

In addition, Prodege owns and operates Pollfish (a leading DIY market research survey platform) for companies who prefer to manage their own research projects. We explore Pollfish capabilities in our article on the best survey software for market research.

Interested in Learning More?

We invite you to:

2. Qualtrics

Qualtrics’ market research services can support you across multiple areas, including:

Design & Programming

Survey methodology
Survey design
Programming
Translations

Sample and Fielding

Panel/sample recruitment
Project Management
List distribution
Incentive distribution
IHUT Studies
Focus Groups
Computer Moderation

Data Processing

Data Weighting
Open-ended Coding
Data Cleaning
Tabulations (stats testing)

Analysis & Reporting

Conjoint / MaxDiff
Regression Analysis
Segmentation Analysis
TURF Analysis
Pricing Analysis
Key Driver Analysis
Perceptual Mapping
Reporting

3. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey's Professional Services team can support you across multiple areas, including:

Customer Experience (CX) Services (e.g., Voice of Customer Programs)
Survey Design and Programming
Real-Time Survey Results
Survey Translations
Data-Driven Reporting (e.g., available as a one-pager, executive summary, or comprehensive full report with actionable insights for improved decision-making)

4. SG Analytics

SG Analytics’ market research services can optimize and support you across multiple areas, including:

They serve various industries, including BFSI, Capital Market, TMT, and others.

Some of their market research solutions include market segmentation, product development, UAT studies, concept testing, competitor analysis, ad effectiveness, pricing strategy, and more.

5. Kantar

Kantar specializes in serving larger enterprise organizations. They offer a variety of solutions that can help you make more informed decisions and gauge market opportunities, including:

6. Ipsos

Ipsos specializes in serving larger enterprise organizations. They offer a variety of capabilities, including:

Online Communities and Panels (comprehensive demographics coverage)
Omnibus
Ipsos UU - Qualitative Research
Ipsos Synthesio
Ipsos.Digital Platform
Global Science Organization
Total Operations

7. MarketResearch.com

MarketResearch.com lets you browse their in-depth market research reports and industry analysis by category:

They also have other reports that provide valuable insights, which can help with benchmarking, forecasting, and more.

8. GSA

GSA's MRAS (Market Research as a Service) provides market data to federal, state, and local agencies at no cost. As they collect data, they take into account RFIs (FAR Part 10 compliant Requests for Information), sources sought, industry days, and more.

To learn more about GSA’s MRAS, see this brief introductory video.

Interested in Learning More About Prodege’s Market Research Services?

We invite you to:

by Written by John Lucero

6 Best Suzy Competitors & Alternatives (Key Factors)

6 Best Suzy Competitors & Alternatives in 2025 (Key Factors)

Suzy is a popular market research platform, earning positive reviews on sites like G2. However, some users have reported challenges in certain areas:

🚫 The audience isn’t always diverse enough, making it hard to reach specific groups.

Several reviewers have mentioned that the sample can skew more heavily towards females and millennials, falling short when it comes to Gen Z, males, various ethnic groups, and other key demographics.

🚫 Some users have expressed difficulty trusting the survey data.

Without a clear understanding of where respondents come from and how they are vetted, some users have doubts about the accuracy and reliability of their survey answers.

🚫 Pricing can be restrictive for many companies.

Suzy uses a subscription-based pricing structure where costs are determined by the volume of questions asked. For many companies, a pay-per-response pricing model could be more economical and better suited to their needs compared to Suzy's approach.

🚫 Some users feel Suzy’s built-in data analysis features are limiting.

In some cases, users find themselves having to export the data to external tools like Google Sheets in order to parse it by the specific metrics they require.

Based on the above feedback and drawing from our first-hand experience helping companies transition from Suzy to our survey platform, we've put together this comprehensive overview. First, we'll present our solution, Pollfish, and then delve into other Suzy alternatives.

Best Suzy Competitors & Alternatives

Pollfish
Qualtrics
Attest
SurveyMonkey
Alchemer
Forsta

1. Pollfish

Pollfish, our survey-focused DIY platform for market research, is a popular alternative to Suzy for several reasons:

✅ Diverse respondent pool for reaching broad and niche audiences.

Through our parent company, Prodege (a renowned market research giant and the largest single panel owner in the world), you'll gain access to over 100 million respondents. This vast pool allows you to target any demographic you need, whether it's specific age groups, gender, ethnicities, or other criteria. Additionally, you can target based on behavioral filters (such as products purchased, stores visited, etc.), as we'll cover in more detail.

✅ Rigorous audience quality control for reliable data.

We employ several strict processes to ensure the integrity of your survey responses. These include a thorough 30-day evaluation period for new panelists, assigning trust scores to each respondent based on the quality of their answers, among other measures. We'll provide a detailed breakdown of how these processes work. By being transparent about our audience quality control measures, we aim to give you complete confidence in the insights you gather through our platform.

✅ Transparent pay-per-response pricing model.

At Pollfish, we charge a flat fee per response, starting at $0.95 each, with discounts available for high-volume users. Our pricing is completely transparent — you can see the total cost update in real-time as you build your survey. There are no additional costs, such as subscription fees, base charges, or hidden fees, making the per-response price the only expense you'll incur. This transparency allows you to plan your research budget effectively and confidently.

✅ Advanced built-in data analysis functionality.

Effortlessly segment your data using multiple variables and create custom-branded charts and graphs, all without ever leaving Pollfish. You'll save a significant amount of time and effort by eliminating the need to export data to spreadsheets or other external tools for analysis.

Up next, we’ll explore each of these areas in more depth.

Diverse Respondent Pool for Reaching Broad and Niche Audiences

As we've mentioned, Pollfish, powered by our parent company Prodege (the world's largest single-panel owner), offers access to an exceptionally vast pool of over 100 million respondents across 125+ countries. This extensive reach ensures you can effectively target even traditionally hard-to-reach groups, such as Gen Z, males, particular ethnic groups, and others, without limitations.

What sets Pollfish apart is not just the sheer size of our respondent pool, but also the wide range of targeting options available:

❇️ Choose from 50+ targeting filters in 6 key categories: Demographics, Geographic Criteria, Consumer Lifestyle, Employment & Occupation, Behavioral Data, and Media.

For example, an outdoor equipment company might leverage Pollfish to survey males and females aged 29–44 (Millennials) and 45–60 (Gen X), who live in Seattle, have a household income exceeding $200,000, and have recently made an in-store purchase of a high-end hiking or camping product (e.g., tent, backpack, sleeping bag).

❇️ Reach your precise target audience based on specific products purchased or stores visited.

Whether you need to survey recent buyers of Ben & Jerry's or Häagen-Dazs, or frequent shoppers at Walmart or Target, and more, we can identify and target these individuals with high precision.

What sets Pollfish apart is that we gather this information using self-uploaded receipts from our panelists, who are rewarded for their participation. By relying on actual receipt data instead of potentially misrepresented self-reported information, Pollfish ensures significantly higher data accuracy than other platforms.

Conduct global research with ease. Reach respondents in over 160 countries and create multilingual surveys in more than 50 natively supported languages.

These are just a few examples of the extensive targeting capabilities Pollfish offers. If you have any questions about your specific audience needs, we invite you to reach out.

Rigorous Audience Quality Control for Reliable Data

At Pollfish, data quality is our top priority. We understand that even a perfectly designed survey can yield flawed results if the respondents are bots or real people providing rushed, low-quality responses. That's why we have invested significant time and effort into developing robust data quality measures that are at the core of our company's DNA.

Our commitment to data quality is what sets us apart in the industry. Here are some key aspects of our approach:

❇️ Diverse earning activities encourage optional survey participation, improving response quality.

When members join our panel communities (such as Swagbucks), they access a dashboard offering several activities to earn rewards. These options include playing games, watching content, uploading purchase receipts, and more. While surveys are another way to earn rewards, they are presented as just one more choice that members can optionally select via the dashboard.

The word "optionally" is crucial because, unlike many other providers, we don't inundate our members with constant text messages and emails urging them to complete surveys. Such an approach can lead to survey fatigue and lower-quality responses. Instead, our members can participate in surveys at their own pace and on their own terms (without feeling pressured). This fosters more thoughtful, engaged, and higher-quality answers.

❇️ Members undergo a 30-day evaluation period before they can fill out client surveys.

Before new members can participate in client surveys, they must complete a mandatory 30-day evaluation period. During this time, they fill out internal profiling surveys, and we meticulously track their response quality.

Only those who consistently provide high-quality responses are allowed to participate in client surveys. This rigorous screening process sets us apart from providers who may be short on respondents and accept most sign-ups without thorough testing.

❇️ Each member of our community has a trust score, which increases response quality.

Each community member has a trust score that directly impacts their earning opportunities. Surveys are a significant component of this score, and members are aware that we track the quality of their responses through manual and automated means. This significantly incentivizes members to provide thoughtful, high-quality answers.

❇️ We employ a range of anti-fraud measures for each survey response, including:

Human review of text-based responses
Unique identifiers to eliminate duplicate responses
Technical consistency checks to ensure the respondents' carrier and targeting information align
Carefully designed trap questions
Minimum time limits for each question to prevent speeding
Detection and removal of straight-lining (consistently selecting the same answer)
Anti-VPN measures

This is just the tip of the iceberg. With Pollfish, you can confidently reach your target audience, no matter how specific or hard-to-reach they may be, while ensuring the highest level of data accuracy and quality.

Transparent Pay-per-Response Pricing Model

At Pollfish, our pay-per-response pricing model is designed to be cost-effective and give you complete control over your research costs:

❇️ No long-term commitments or minimum spend requirements.

With Pollfish, you have the flexibility to run surveys as often or as rarely as your research needs dictate. You only pay for the responses you receive, and you're not locked into long-term contracts.

❇️ Unlimited team members at no extra cost.

Your entire team can access Pollfish to create surveys, view results, and generate reports, all under a single account at no additional cost per user. There's no need to worry about individual license fees or seat restrictions. Plus, if your organization has multiple teams using Pollfish, each with their dedicated dashboard, you can effortlessly switch between them in just a few clicks.

❇️ Transparent pricing displayed as you build your survey.

As shown in the above photo, let's say you start with the base cost of $0.95 per response, and add two additional audience filters, such as:

US household income between $75,000–$99,999.
Type of home is a rented apartment.

Each of those filters would add $0.55 to the per-response cost. The total cost per response would now be $2.05 ($0.95 base + $0.55 + $0.55).

If you set your desired number of responses to 700, the total cost for your survey would be clearly displayed as $1,435 before you confirm your purchase.

You’ll see the full price upfront with no hidden fees or additional charges. With Pollfish, the price you see is what you pay.

Advanced Built-In Data Analysis Functionality

With Pollfish, you can effortlessly segment your survey data, hone in on specific subgroups, and create visually appealing charts in your brand's colors — all within a single, intuitive platform. There's no need to rely on external tools like Excel or Google Sheets.

❇️ Automatic Chart Generation

Pollfish intelligently generates the most appropriate chart types for each survey answer, such as bar graphs, pie charts, tables, and more. This saves you time and ensures your data is presented in a clear, easy-to-understand format.

❇️ Targeted Insights through Filtering

Use Pollfish's filtering capabilities to hone in on subsets of your data based on specific survey responses and audience attributes. For instance:

Filter by survey responses: Isolate and examine data from respondents who provided particular answers, such as those who indicated they are "highly dissatisfied" with pricing, to understand their perspectives better.

Filter by audience segments: Focus on specific demographic segments, like Gen Z, while excluding other age groups, to identify unique trends and preferences within that cohort.

Please note: The header in the illustration above includes the logo for Proedge, Pollfish's parent company. Proedge offers done-for-you market research services and can help with survey programming, fielding and sample, data processing, and reporting.

❇️ Multi-Variable Analysis and Visualization

With Pollfish's advanced Insights Builder, you can create compelling visualizations that incorporate several variables simultaneously, without needing external tools.

Say you want to gauge consumer attitudes toward a new streaming service. You could create one comprehensive chart showing likelihood to subscribe (variable 1), broken down by:

Age group (variable 2)
Household income (variable 3)
Marital status (variable 4)

With just a few clicks, Pollfish will generate this multi-dimensional visualization, optionally with statistical significance testing to highlight key differences between groups. You can even customize the chart with your own brand colors.

❇️ Statistical Significance Testing

In testing product name concepts for a new home appliance, Pollfish might shade the "EcoSmart" name in dark green with an "A" label, while "GreenTech" appears in a lighter shade with a "B" label, showing that the EcoSmart name generates significantly higher memorability and brand affinity scores among target consumers.

❇️ Build a Presentation Deck within Pollfish

Create presentation slides directly within Pollfish, just as you would with PowerPoint, even while your survey is still actively collecting responses. This feature lets you have a nearly finalized report ready by the time your survey concludes, giving you a valuable head start. Once you've created your presentation within Pollfish, you can easily export it as a fully editable PowerPoint file (.pptx), allowing you to make any additional adjustments.

❇️ Flexible Export Options

Export your survey results and visualizations in various formats, including PDF, Excel, Crosstabs, and SPSS. (Click here for more info.).

The data analysis capabilities we've discussed are merely a fraction of what Pollfish has to offer. No matter how complex your data analysis needs may be, Pollfish is well-equipped to handle them. If you have any questions about your specific requirements, please don't hesitate to reach out.

Interested in Trying Out Pollfish?

We invite you to:

Sign up for a free account, which you can begin using immediately to launch DIY surveys.

Book a demo call, where our team can answer your questions and provide guidance on making the most of Pollfish.

Inquire about our full-service market research services, where we'll collaborate to understand your unique requirements and manage the complete survey process from beginning to end. This option is ideal if you're short on time or looking for additional expertise.

2. Qualtrics

Qualtrics is a Suzy alternative that’s best known for its survey functionality. Its pricing structure is best suited for enterprise companies, and we cover what differentiates Pollfish in our post on the best Qualtrics alternatives.

Qualtrics categorizes its features into three categories:

1. Customer Experience

Voice of Customer
Omnichannel Experience Management
Digital Experience Analytics
Website & App Feedback
Location Experience Hub
Online Reputation Management
Contact Center Analytics
Quality Management & Compliance
Agent Coaching
Edge Instant Insights

2. Employee Experience

Employee Engagement
Employee Pulse
Employee Research
Candidate Experience Management
Employee Onboarding & Exit
360 Development Feedback
Employee Retention Analytics
Continuous Employee Listening

3. Strategy & Research

Strategic Market Research
Product Research
Brand and Communication Research
User Experience Research
Edge Audiences

3. Attest

Attest is another Suzy competitor that is best geared for enterprise companies. It’s a solid research solution used by marketing, insights, brand, and product teams to run end-to-end surveys.

Some of Attest’s key use cases include:

Brand tracking
Consumer profiling
Market analysis
New product development
Multi-market research
Creative testing
Concept testing
Campaign tracking
Competitor analysis
Quant & qual insights
Seasonal research

4. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is an alternative to Suzy that is best suited for simpler survey needs. Some of its key survey-related features include:

SurveyMonkey Genius for AI-powered survey creation
Customizable survey templates
Survey branching and skip logic
Response quotas
A/B testing for better decision making
Survey branding and theme customization options
Custom URL survey links
Multiple survey distribution channels (email, web link, social media)
Real-time results tracking
Real-time insights
Text analysis tools for open-ended responses
Integrations with 100+ platforms

5. Alchemer

Alchemer is a Suzy competitor and a great market research tool that offers various features, including:

Market research surveys
Real-time, in-app customer feedback
Brand health tracking and consumer insights
Text sentiment analysis

It can help you make better data-driven decisions and offers solutions by industry, including Government, Education, Non-Profit, Financial Services, Food & Beverage, Retail, and Software.

6. Forsta

Forsta offers quantitative and qualitative research features for understanding consumer behavior, including:

Market research surveys
Panel management
Online focus groups
Digital diaries & communities
Social listening
Research automation
Text analytics
Voice sentiment analysis

Interested in Trying Out Pollfish?

We invite you to:

by Written by John Lucero

Written by John Lucero

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