WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN QUESTION PRO, SURVEY MONKEY, QUALTRICS AND ROTATORSURVEY?

Among such an avalanche of software and services on the Internet to conduct surveys, and the similarity of prices of the companies providing these tools, many users have difficulty deciding which is the ideal package or service they should hire to conduct a particular study. In this document we will explain the similarities and differences that exist between these systems, so that you can make the right decision about which is the best tool for your survey.

GENERAL USE VS. SPECIALIZED USE

As you may have noticed, both QuestionPro and SurveyMonkey focus more on mass online surveys for a spectrum of general users. RotatorSurvey and Qualtrics are aimed more at specialized companies, at market research professionals who conduct social, marketing or political research, so they offer finer and more elaborate options and features, some of them hardly found in general use systems, or if they have them, the support they give to those options is limited or expensive. This does not mean that SurveyMonkey and QuestionPro do not have large market research companies among their clients, nor does it mean that Rotator or Qualtrics do not have students as clients, for example. There is something for everyone in the Lord's vineyard, however here we are referring to the profile of the obvious target client, not to the profile of the installed base of each product.

OFF-PREMISES VS ON-PREMISES

Let me explain what these terms mean, "OFF-PREMISES" means that your survey data will reside on a server outside of your office and that your data will be visible to the company providing the survey service you have contracted. "ON-PREMISES" means that your survey data resides on your own machine or local network, and will not travel to an external server located outside of your office. Survey Monkey and Question Pro are off-premises systems, which means that when you conduct a survey with these systems, your data will reside on their servers and will be visible to their employees and technicians. This does not mean that when you use SurveyMonkey or QuestionPro your data is at risk, we assume that these companies have strict policies and business ethics that will ensure that your data is not disclosed or copied. Therefore, before publishing highly confidential surveys with these providers, please consult their privacy and data security policies. When you conduct a survey with RotatorSurvey, the data will reside wherever you choose, either on your company's servers, on your own machine, or on Rotator's cloud servers. If you use RotatorSurvey, the system will allow you to work in both modes, but it will be you as the user who will decide whether you want to work locally or in a cloud. If you choose to work in the Rotator cloud (OFF-PREMISES), the data will be saved on our servers in encrypted form, so our staff will never know the meaning of your data, unless you share your login and password.

ONLINE VS OFFLINE

SurveyMonkey and QuestionPro definitely focus more on online surveys, while Qualtrics and Rotator offer all kinds of alternative methods to collect data, including offline surveys with mobile devices, telephone surveys and paper surveys. Although RotatorSurvey and Qualtrics also support online surveys, and Question Pro and SurveyMonkey both support offline surveys, so the difference between them is a matter of technical approach and strengths in each area, while SurveyMonkey and QuestionPro offer many facilities for online survey execution, Rotator Survey and Qualtrics offer many facilities for surveys that are not necessarily online.

SOFTWARE AS A PRODUCT OR SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE (SaAS)?

SaAS stands for SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE and SaAP stands for SOFTWARE AS A PRODUCT. SaAS means that what QuestionPro and SurveyMonkey sell in essence is not a "physical" product that will be installed on your computer or company, but an online service that you will be hiring for a certain period of time. Typically SaAS software services are cheaper as they are more massive and are purchased on a flexible basis, for example monthly or semi-annually, while SaAP systems tend to have a higher price and tend to be purchased for at least a year, however, the attention and support provided by these services are of better quality. SaAS systems may be more vulnerable to attacks by Internet hackers and may run the risk of the survey information being copied or viewed by third parties, especially if the provider does not have auditable policies for the handling of customer data. In SaAP systems, such as RotatorSurvey, the client company is the one who has full control of its data. RotatorSurvey and Qualtrics are SaAP systems, which means that when you contract, what you are acquiring is a product that you will install in your company's machine. Although, to tell the truth, both Rotator and Qualtrics also offer SaAS as an option, but in the cases of QuestionPro and SurveyMonkey they are SaAS only as far as we have investigated.

WINDOWS APPLICATION VS. WEB APPLICATION

Another big difference between RotatorSurvey versus the other 3, is that all of them require a permanent internet connection to operate, the more bandwidth you have, the better. Rotator Survey does not require internet connection to operate, since it is a Windows application. You will require Internet connection only to publish the questionnaire (if it is an online survey) or to download the data to your PC. If you have a slow or intermittent internet service, neither you as administrator, nor your respondents will be able to work comfortably with QuestionPro or SurveyMonkey, with Rotator Survey you will always be able to work, with or without internet. Another aspect has to do with the speed of working, an advanced user of Rotator could model a survey of 30 questions in less than 20 minutes, while an advanced user of Question Pro or Survey Monkey could take between about an hour to perform the same activity, because the navigation times between the various pages of the system will always be slower.

WHAT ABOUT PRICE, IS THERE A DIFFERENCE?

Actually, there is little difference in price among all the survey systems available on the Internet, with the exception of Qualtrics, which is considerably more expensive, since Qualtrics is aimed at the premium segment of the market, i.e., the market research units of the American Fortune 500 companies. Survey Monkey, Question Pro and RotatorSurvey maintain fairly similar prices, each acting in specific markets and satisfying well differentiated needs.