Whenever you hear about survey software, SurveyMonkey and Google Forms will be there in the discussion. Why? Firstly, because of their longevity, and secondly, their features.

We understand the difficulty of the SurveyMonkey vs Google Forms question, but a detailed comparison between the two (and more!) will help you decide.

Before we dive into the comparison, let’s discuss this important question: What should you look for in an online survey tool?

Checklist to Select the Right Online Survey Tool

When choosing an online survey tool, consider the following factors:

1. User-Friendly Interface: Look for a tool that is easy to navigate and use, even for those without technical expertise. It should allow you to create, distribute, and analyze surveys efficiently.
2. Customization Options: The tool should offer a range of question types (multiple choice, open-ended, scales, etc.) and customization options to design surveys that fit your specific needs.
3. Data Analysis Capabilities: It’s important that the tool provides robust data analysis features, including the ability to filter responses, generate reports, and visualize data with charts and graphs.
4. Mobile Responsiveness: Ensure the tool is mobile-friendly, allowing respondents to complete surveys on various devices easily.
5. Integration with Other Tools: Integrating with other software (like CRM systems, email marketing platforms, etc.) can streamline data collection and analysis.
6. Compliance with Regulations: For healthcare surveys like HCAHPS, compliance with regulations such as HIPAA is crucial to protect patient privacy.
7. Security and Privacy Features: Strong security measures to protect respondent data are a must, including data encryption and secure data storage.
8. Scalability: The tool should be able to handle the number of surveys and respondents you need without performance issues.
9. Support and Resources: Good customer support, along with resources like tutorials and FAQs, can be very helpful.
10. Cost-Effectiveness: Consider the pricing structure and whether it aligns with your budget and needs, especially if you require advanced features.

Selecting the ideal online survey platform depends on finding a balance between various features to suit your unique needs and goals. If you’re searching for a fresh, sleek, and more engaging option that stands out from Survey Monkey or Google Forms, consider exploring SurveySparrow.

Sign Up for a free trial and experience the difference for yourself!

SurveyMonkey vs Google Forms: Detailed Comparison

So, it’s time to let the cat out of the bag here. 9 points of detailed comparison to answer the SurveyMonkey vs Google Forms question coming your way:

1. Survey Templates

SurveyMonkey

• SurveyMonkey offers over 200 survey templates that are organized by industry and purpose.
• They have templates for everything, from market research surveys to employee exit interviews.
• There are 40 templates even in its basic plan. So, there’s no shortage of templates with SurveyMonkey.

Google Forms

• You get 20 basic templates with Google Forms. You’ll find these in the events, invites, and feedback form categories.
• You don’t have much to choose from when it comes to Google Forms which leads to faster form creation.
• When it comes to SurveyMonkey vs Google Forms, SurveyMonkey does take an edge here, as visual appeal is massive in today’s time, and a wide range of aesthetic templates help you do that.

Here’s a better SurveyMonkey alternative that has 600+ survey templates. Create highly engaging and customizable surveys for FREE. Sign up here!

2. Price

Price is our first point of comparison. Let’s start with this:

SurveyMonkey

• SurveyMonkey has a free basic plan, but it’s quite limited.
• You get to create unlimited surveys here, but you can only ask 10 questions per survey and collect a maximum of 100 responses.
• To go around these limitations, you have to upgrade to its premium plans starting at $32 per month and $25 per user per month for teams with a minimum of three users.

Google Forms

• This is a free survey tool for anyone with a Google account.
• Conduct as many surveys as you want, ask as many questions as possible and collect responses from all willing people. There are just no limitations with Google Forms.
• Yes, the Google suite of products for businesses starts from $6 per month, which gives some more advanced features to Google Forms, but otherwise, it costs nothing. Cool, right?

3. Survey Design

SurveyMonkey

• For designing surveys, SurveyMonkey’s free plan doesn’t offer much.
• They have nine pre-designed themes and limited color and font capability.
• But in the premium plan, uploading logos, custom templates, and an array of font, color, and background options are all possible and available.

Even in the higher SurveyMonkey premium plans, removing its branding to put your company’s logo is also possible. We’re talking about the $99 per month plan for small businesses and the $75 per user per month plan for teams.

Google Forms

• Google Forms doesn’t support customization, especially brand-specific.
• You can pick a color template, choose from pre-designed themes by category, upload a header image, and choose a font from four options. That’s fairly limited, but enough to start with.

4. Integrations

SurveyMonkey

• This survey tool integrates with a lot of applications.
• From email marketing and project management platforms to customer relationship platforms such as Slack, Microsoft Excel, Trello, WordPress, Mailchimp, Salesforce Sales Cloud, and… phew!
• SurveyMonkey integrates with so much software; it’s crazy.

Google Forms

• The integration options in Google Forms are only available with other Google apps like YouTube, Sheets, and Google Drive.
• They don’t provide in-built integrations with other applications.

5. Team Collaboration

SurveyMonkey

• SurveyMonkey has very dedicated team collaboration features and plans.
• Companies subscribing to its team plan collaboration features like granular permissions to allow different team members to view, edit, or comment on prepared surveys.
• They can also leave comments on survey previews and results and send notifications to other members about a change or a comment in the survey.

Google Forms

• Collaboration in Google Forms is not as impressive as in SurveyMonkey.
• Sure, you can add collaborators, but the only permission it gives is to Edit.
• It does not support comments and has no view-only option. Even when you add collaborators, there’s no notification or record of changes made in the form.
• That makes it hard for team members to stay on the same page without poking each other from time to time.
• The sole point of collaboration in a survey tool is eliminating constant communications and meetings between teams. Google Forms doesn’t help here.

6. Array Of Solutions

SurveyMonkey

• Guided employee experience, enterprise feedback management, brand tracking, NPS programs, employee engagement and retention, industry tracking, diversity & inclusion, and customer satisfaction, SurveyMonkey has AI-powered solutions with analytics for them all.
• They also come with enterprise-grade solutions to cater to your specific business needs. Very few SurveyMonkey alternatives will beat them with such an array of solutions. Simply superb.

Google Forms

Google Forms doesn’t offer specific solutions like SurveyMonkey, but they have templates for different purposes. Still, SurveyMonkey trumps Google Forms on this point of comparison.

7. Language Support

SurveyMonkey

• SurveyMonkey has translations in 55 languages for all buttons and fields.
• Further, you can include the options for different languages in the same survey for bilingual responders to suit them.
• There’s a multilingual library of common questions for automatic translation of the questions and options in a survey.

Google Forms

• Google Forms currently does not support more than one language in surveys, which really restricts its use in demographics with languages other than English.
• Though third-party apps can do the translations, it’s a time-consuming process with less accuracy.
• SurveyMonkey scores a point here in SurveyMonkey vs Google Forms question.

Source: Rushly Written

8. Analytics

SurveyMonkey

• One of the most applauded SurveyMonkey features is its analytics.
• With this survey tool, you can select how exactly to display your respondent data, choose the colors of your graphs, and even change the labels of these graphs.
• You can also export the results for deep analysis in their paid plan.

In most cases, there’s no need to export results, as SurveyMonkey’s in-built analytics tool, like its ‘Genius feature’ has powerful capabilities. Using this, your team can score the prepared survey based on the survey length, question types, and estimated completion time. This score provides an overall assessment of the survey, even before you’ve sent it, and clearly highlights the areas of improvement.

Using SurveyMonkey’s question bank questions, you can benchmark responses on commonly tracked metrics—like employee satisfaction—against other respondents’ results. The data in these benchmarks is driven by millions of answers that SurveyMonkey collects, giving you an idea of where you stand. Other options, such as filtering responses to analyze those from a specific group, measuring sentiment, and evaluating statistical significance, also become possible using SurveyMonkey’s analytics features. Quite powerful, isn’t it?

Google Forms

• There are no analytics features inside Google Forms, but Google has a suite of mind-blowing products that do this job.
• You have to send the collected data to Google Sheets to prepare custom charts and graphs.
• Pivot tables and the explore option can be used for in-depth analysis.
• And for better visualizations, send the data to Google Data Studio and see the magic!

9. Customer Support

The last point of comparison in the SurveyMonkey vs Google Forms question is customer support. Let’s see how both these survey software do here:

SurveyMonkey

• SurveyMonkey offers 24/7 email support for all customers regarding urgent questions or issues regarding some of its features.
• For instant answers, its Help Center has a comprehensive collection of articles and videos explaining how to use each feature.
• They also give tips and guidance for creating effective surveys that bring success in Surveys 101. Check it out.

Google Forms

• In the free version, only the Docs Editors Help Center is available for users to resolve all issues.
• But if you go for Google’s business suite, you get dedicated email and even call support from their team.

Pros & Cons of SurveyMonkey & Google Forms

SurveyMonkey Pros & Cons

Pros: Advanced customization, comprehensive analytics, and many question types.

Cons: Limited features in the free version can be more expensive.

Google Forms Pros & Cons

Pros: Completely free, very user-friendly, seamless integration with Google Workspace.

Cons: Basic customization, more straightforward analytics, fewer question types.

Benefits of Online Surveys—And of course, an Online Survey Tool

What’s the need for conducting online surveys? How does it help a person or a business?

It’s crucial to answer such questions regarding the use of surveys before we start comparing. So, with no further ado, here are why online surveys are a game-changer for every business:

1. Quality Data

• With online surveys, the respondents are directly entering their answers. No interviewer or coordinator enters their responses, which reduces errors massively.
• The collected data accurately paints their opinions on questions, helping businesses and solopreneurs make informed decisions or changes.
• Also, when a coordinator or interviewer is involved, respondents are not completely honest with their answers. People always prefer anonymity to reveal genuine opinions, especially in surveys. Online surveys offer them that, hence, quality data is collected.

2. Quicker Process

• Market research was a real pain for companies in the past, as traditional survey methods took days, if not months, to complete and show results.
• With online surveys, the entire process has quickened a lot. That obviously saves companies a lot of time, which they can utilize to improve things based on the survey results.

3. Money Saver

• With online surveys, you’re not spending on a coordinator, a venue, printed surveys, and other amenities required to conduct physical surveys.
• The only thing you’ll spend on is top-notch survey software like SurveyMonkey. That is also unnecessary as there are free options, like Google Forms. And this spending is way less than you’ll spend on conducting physical surveys. That’s a fact.

4. Highly Flexible

• In an online survey, the order of questions changes as and when required. Also, errors get corrected, and language changes are made in just a few clicks to suit a demographic.
• For respondents, skipping a question based on their previous reply is fully automated. They can take surveys from the comfort of their couch, on any device, and at any time. You won’t find the flexibility of online surveys with any other data collection method.

5. Large Sample Group

• One of the possibilities of online surveys is you have a large sample group taking your survey.
• There are no boundaries to the areas you can tap to collect rich data. Isn’t that fantastic?

6. Organic Marketing

• Every online survey with a custom background and company logo allows the company to market itself organically.
• Yes, you market your products and services while trying to get rich data from potential audiences. How cool is that?

7. Powerful Analytics

• Online surveys are standardized, providing quantifiable data for compiling and analysis. People may give interesting answers and opinions in qualitative survey techniques, such as focus groups or phone interviews, but analyzing that becomes more difficult.
• With online surveys, statistical tools, and machine learning techniques analyze survey data that determine validity, reliability, patterns, and significance for further use.

SurveySparrow—A Better SurveyMonkey Alternative

If you’re looking for the best of these tools, SurveySparrow is what you need. Here’s why we’re saying that:

1. Free & Paid Plans

• SurveySparrow’s plans are better than SurveyMonkey’s. Period. The number of monthly submissions in its free plan is similar but look at the features SurveySparrow offers in the free version. It’s simply mindboggling! Even in the paid plans, SurveyMonkey doesn’t have the features and variety of products better than SurveySparrow.
• Also, the pricing plans of SurveySparrow are much more diverse, cheaper, and suitable to your needs compared to SurveyMonkey.
• You get four categories of premium plans in SurveySparrow, i.e., personal, business, NPS, and 360-degree assessments. And the plans in three of these categories are built to maximize your buck’s value.
• Plus, there’s a free trial, too. Can you believe it?

Sign up here for FREE!

2. More Than A Form Builder

• The question of SurveyMonkey vs. Google Forms is about the best form builder.
• What if you could get all the features from these plus more? It is a one-stop destination for all NPS, feedback, market research, employee 360-degree surveys, and more. SurveySparrow has a fully efficient solution for all that.

3. Conversational Interface

• Google Forms severely lacks here, and SurveyMonkey can do a better job. Neither has a quality interface that engages the audience and gives a better conversion rate.
• SurveySparrow takes pride in excelling at surveys with a conversational interface. It offers a highly engaging survey experience that boosts the survey completion rate by 40 percent.

4. Do Everything At One Place

• With SurveySparrow’s employee 360-degree assessment solution, your teams can create customizable employee 360 reports and emails.
• You can conduct appraisals and performance reviews from the same dashboard, track assessments in the employee portal, and create custom 360-degree feedback surveys.
• The start-to-end solution in one place. Fantastic, isn’t it?

5. Chatbot

• All of SurveyMonkey and Google Forms’ features are centered around creating forms. That’s right, just forms.
• There’s no way to collect audience data using these tools other than forms. With SurveySparrow’s in-house chatbot – Feedbot, you collect prospect data directly from the website.
• In 2024 and beyond, this will be a massive capability.

6. Analytics & Collaboration

• SurveySparrow fits the requirements of teams of all shapes and sizes. Enterprises get the right analytics tools and collaboration features. Small teams get valuable features at the right price.
• For solopreneurs’ survey requirements, too, SurveySparrow does the job.
• SurveyMonkey has brought good collaboration features only after the pandemic’s wake, and Google Forms is still the same, with the same minimal collaboration and average analytics features.
• So, in the contest of SurveyMonkey vs Google Forms, we’ll not be surprised if SurveySparrow is the winner!

SurveySparrow vs Google Forms & SurveyMonkey—Final Verdict

Whichever survey software you choose, SurveyMonkey, Google Forms, or a quality alternative to them like SurveySparrow, make sure you’re getting these features in particular:

• Branching—To get a smooth survey experience for respondents by skipping irrelevant questions based on their previous responses.
• Anonymity—You’ll get the most qualified data when respondents know their identities will be kept anonymous.
• Team collaboration—Conducting a successful survey campaign requires a team effort, and a survey tool must have the features for it.
• Customer support—While conducting surveys, your team might face issues and trouble understanding some features. Attentive and hyper-responsive customer support becomes a must-have, then.
• Data security—It goes without saying that you want the collected data to be secure, and the survey software you choose should make sure that with a focus on data security.

That’s it. Now the choice is yours. Try Google Forms and SurveyMonkey’s free version to see which one suits your business needs. Then, we would suggest giving SurveySparrow a try. If you want to get the best of both SurveyMonkey and Google Forms, SurveySparrow is the tool for it.

Try its free version, too, and for any help or discussion, talk to us 24/7. We’re always here for you. Make the best decision.

Kate Williams

Content Marketer at SurveySparrow