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)

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