Best survey software: Depends on your choice of platform, needs, and budget while focusing on WPForms and JotForm

Last Updated on November 3, 2020 by admin

Armed with online form builders that are easy to create using drag & drop features, one can carry survey/poll campaigns to get insights that should help either improve an existing workflow/product or come out with a new one. The online survey/poll feature with today’s form builder software also comes with reports (in the form of tables and visual graphics) that can either be useful by itself or suitable to carry on advanced statistical studies following techniques like on Survey Methodology by Grooves or Survey Research Methods by Fowler. For this article, I take a look at WPForms and JotForm, two popular online form builders with specific addons for surveys/polls.

WPForms

The Suggestion Form created using WPForms lite can be your first survey form that indeed takes care of getting a feedback in text form.

In order to create polls or surveys with conditional logic and reports with visualizations for each type of questions and more, you need to go for a paid Pro or Elite plan.

Features of forms designed using Surveys and Polls addon with WPForms

All WPForms comes with the following four features:

Drag & Drop Form Builder
Responsive Mobile Friendly
Easy to Embed
Spam Management (intensity differs by choice of the plan)

The following three comes with the paid WPForms plans:

Form Templates
Instant Notifications
Entry Management

The following four features are geared towards surveys/polls in particular with WPForms Surveys and Polls Addon:

Smart Survey Fields
NPS Surveys
Real-time Polls
Interactive Survey Reports

1. Smart Survey Fields

1A. CONDITIONAL LOGIC

Surveys and Polls Addon comes with extended conditional logic for designing questions based on previous responses.

*TO KNOW MORE ABOUT CONDITIONAL LOGIC WITH WPFORMS, CLICK HOW TO USE CONDITIONAL LOGIC WITH WPFORMS.*

1B. RETROACTIVE CONVERSION

The fields specific to surveys/polls with Smart Survey Fields activated once you press Enable Survey Reporting/Enable Poll Results. With it, any form can be converted to surveys/polls retroactively.

*ONE OF THE REASONS WHY SMART FIELDS INTRODUCED WITH SURVEYS AND POLLS ADDON IS TO MAKE ANY PREVIOUS FORM GENERATE REPORT SPECIFIC TO SURVEYS AND POLLS ADDON RETROACTIVELY.*

1C. LIKERT SCALE

*ALSO INTRODUCED IS LIKERT SCALE FIELD, SO USEFUL FOR SURVEYS.*

1D. RANDOM APPEARANCE OF CHOICES

*TO REMOVE BIAS BECAUSE OF ORDERING IN MULTIPLE CHOICES, OPTION TO RANDOMIZE THE ORDER OF ITEMS.*

2. NPS Surveys

Making use of conditional logic and smart survey fields, under NPS (Net Promoter Score) surveys, if someone answers your NPS field as a detractor (0-6), this will ask question something like How did we disappoint you and what can we do to make things right? If someone answers 10, a text like Would you like to recommend us to your colleagues? can be placed.

3. Real-time Polls

*USERS CAN BE SHOWN CURRENT POLL RESULTS AFTER SUBMITTING THE FORM.*

4. Interactive Survey Reports

4A. VISUAL REPORTS WITH REAL-TIME INSIGHTS THAT CAN BE CUSTOMIZED.

4B. EXPORT / SHARE INDIVIDUAL CHARTS.

4C. CUSTOMIZABLE PRINT STYLES.

WPForms comes with a library of Form Templates so that you need not start from scratch while leveraging from the experience of others in the field. Poll Form and Survey Form are two templates added for polls/surveys.

JotForm

Let’s take a look at JotForm, an alternative online form builder software.

One of the notable difference between WPForms and JotForm is that while with free lite version of WPForms, you cannot have a survey/poll feature, JotForm allows 5 free forms on which you can use its survey/poll features.

Here is a quick way to embed a survey form using JotForm while accessing its reporting features.

Here is the output of survey form using JotForm.

As can be seen, although you can use survey/poll feature with free plan, there will be mention of JotForm along with a JotForm link at the bottom of the form. WPForms does not have this limitation on its free plan.

Click here to view sample Report for the above JotForm survey form.

While the paid plans of WPForms are differentiated mainly on the basis of features, JotForm differentiates on variables like monthly submissions, storage space, monthly form views.

Datanyze for technology tracking while analyzing WPForms

To view the current state of affairs regarding usage of WPForms while comparing it with similar software including JotForm and GravityForms, click here.

An earlier article of relevance here: Datanyze for technology tracking while analyzing WPForms.

In your search for a best survey software, you need to figure out if it is survey/poll exclusively that you are willing to undertake or along with surveys, you will be needing other kinds of online forms. In case you are not an agency focused solely on survey campaigns, it may not be cost effective to have subscription of an online survey software exclusively (like SurveyMonkey). You will then have to select out of the likes of WPForms, JotForm, and Gravity Forms. Here are our two earlier articles covering the topic:

Web forms as part of business growth engine with surveys as crucial but part of the complete package.

Making sense of software applications for form management needs with competing Gravity Forms and WPForms and complementary PickFu and SurveyMonkey.

While for WordPress website, you can contemplate WPForms, JotForm, or Gravity Forms, anything other than WordPress, and you cannot have WPForms or Gravity Forms. JotForm can be embedded on all websites.