Frequently Asked Questions

General FAQs

SurveyMethods.com is one of the most powerful online survey software applications. SurveyMethods.com enables individuals and businesses to easily create professional surveys, deploy them via email, post them on the web or distribute via social media, and collect and analyze respondent data through its easy-to-use graphical-based analysis module. The founders had a mission: to develop an easy-to-use, user-friendly, full-featured survey application at an affordable price. While most of our competitors charge several thousand dollars for an equivalent system, our subscription rates range from $15 to $49 per month.

Simply sign up for an account on SurveyMethods and you can start creating and deploying surveys immediately. Click on the Create Survey button in your account and select from 20 different types of questions. For each question, enter the question and the answer choices and that’s it! You can choose additional settings like making the questions mandatory, optional, creating skip logic, and more. Additionally, you can change the color combinations of your survey and add your logo. Once you create your survey, simply click on the Launch button to send it to email addresses, or generate a survey web URL to post it on a website, paste it in your email, or distribute on social media.

SurveyMethods.com is feature-loaded, making it one of the most powerful survey solutions available to you. Visit our Features page for an overview of our powerful features, or compare our subscription plans to see which features are available in each subscription level.

There is absolutely NO programming required. Designing your survey is extremely easy. Click on the Create Survey button in your account and select from 20 different types of questions. For each question, enter the question and the answer choices and that’s it! You can choose additional settings like making the questions mandatory, optional, add skip logic, and more. Additionally, you can choose from over 100 graphical presentation styles, change the color combinations of your survey, and add your logo. Once you create your survey, simply click on the Launch button to send it to email addresses, or generate a link (URL) to post it on a website or paste it in your email.

Our goal is to help you execute a successful survey project. As a result we offer a variety of resources and support options:

  • Survey Templates from Our Survey Library: The SurveyMethods.com survey library contains a large number of surveys that you can copy and modify for your own use.
  • Email Customer Support: If you have any questions, you can  contact us via email at any time and a representative will be happy to help you with your question or concern.
  • Phone Support: Advanced, Professional and Enterprise customers may call us during regular business hours (U.S. MST) to receive live support: Toll Free 1-800-601-2462 or regular at 1-214-257-8909. International customers should call +1 214-257-8909.

As compared with paper surveys, the benefits of online surveys are (1) much higher response rates – mailed surveys traditionally receive <2% responses, online surveys can achieve 15% – 90%+ depending on design and target audience; (2) speed – a survey can be designed and launched in 20 minutes and most responses are usually received in the first 24 to 48 hours of sending out a survey; (3) cost – for a low monthly cost you can design and launch unlimited surveys; no need for postage; and (4) data usability – data analysis is easy, integrated, and real-time. There is no risk of responses being lost in the mail, you know exactly when they were submitted and who submitted them (unless it’s an anonymous survey), and you can view detailed analysis at the click of a button with no data entry required. SurveyMethods.com enables you to easily gather meaningful feedback without the headaches and at a reasonable cost. In fact, Capterra, a Gartman company, named SurveyMethods to its Best Value and Best Ease of Use categories for 2018.

No! SurveyMethods.com does not tie its users to contracts. Sign up with your credit card through our secure sign-up process and you subscription will renew every month. You can upgrade, downgrade, or cancel your account at any time by going to the My Account section of your account.

Absolutely! Just sign up for a free account and you’ll be automatically upgraded to a 7-day Free Trial Professional account to experience all the features of SurveyMethods.com.

The Basic package is free and includes limited survey, poll, event management and newsletter functionality. The Advanced package is $15 per month ($150 for annual subscription) and the Professional package is $49 per month ($490 for annual subscription). If you are an enterprise customer looking for 5+ user licenses or pricing for a custom project, please Contact Us to speak with a sales representative and receive a risk-free quote.

Online survey software applications that have near equivalent features cost between $1,000 to $15,000 per year. SurveyMethods.com was designed to be extremely easy to use, very powerful, and affordable for everyone.

SurveyMethods.com users consist of Fortune 500 companies, small to mid-sized businesses, marketing professionals, HR professionals, students, and many others. We have clients of all sizes all around the world. You can view a sample of our clients here.

Questions on the SurveyMethods.com Application

Yes, SurveyMethods.com is extremely secure. You can access your surveys and data only by logging into your account. When you launch a survey with SurveyMethods, a survey URL is generated with an encrypted suffix. Hence a person can only take your survey if you provide them the survey URL.

There is no messy software installation process to go through. Simply access SurveyMethods with your web browser, log into your account, create surveys, launch them, and analyze your survey data. Because our application is web-based you can access them from any internet-connected device anywhere in the world.

Survey Design Questions

Yes there are two ways to ensure anonymity in your survey results:

  • Web URL launch: All users can launch with a web URL, which will create an encrypted URL for your survey that you can post on a website or paste in your email. When users click on your link to take your survey you cannot track them. The system does however record their IP address and if you have open-ended fields you may be able to identify users by their responses to questions.
  • SurveyMethods anonymous settings: Professional and Enterprise users can select the “Make survey anonymous” setting on their surveys which will hide the email address of respondents (if survey completed from email link), mask IP addresses, and, if desired, hide any custom field responses. If custom fields are hidden, you may also display the SurveyMethods anonymous seal to give your respondents additional comfort that their responses are truly anonymous.

SurveyMethods also offers third-party deployment and analysis projects for enterprise customers, which are often used for employee feedback surveys. In this case we will launch the survey from a custom SurveyMethods email account and ensure anonymity by collecting and reviewing responses before delivering consolidated results to clients. Survey responses are significantly more candid and useful when survey takers are assured of anonymity.

Surveys can also be configured with skip logic to serve up questions, or skip questions based on how previous questions were answered. This is extremely easy to do. While designing your survey, click on the Add Skip Logic button on the page you want to add skip logic on. Skip logic is configured on a question level and is processed when the page is submitted. Some page logic is available for Advanced users while complex page logic is available to Professional and Enterprise users.

SurveyMethods.com makes adding your logo extremely easy. While designing your survey, click on the Add Logo button. You can either upload a file or point to your website and import your logo. This feature is available to all paid subscribers (Advanced, Professional, and Enterprise accounts).

SurveyMethods.com provides you with a color palette feature to configure your color combinations. You can either select a predefined presentation style for your survey, or you can create your own color combinations using the color palette.

SurveyMethods.com has several survey libraries from which you can copy and modify surveys. The libraries include: Customer Satisfaction, Event Planning, Human Resources, Meetings, Organizational Development, Organizations and Groups, Product Development, Sales, Strategy Development, and Training and Education libraries.

Yes they can be. While designing your survey, edit each question and select whether you want the question to be mandatory or optional.

Yes. While designing your survey, click on the Spell Check button to spell check your survey. This feature is available to all paid subscribers (Advanced, Professional, and Enterprise accounts).

SurveyMethods allows you to create a survey and then collaborate with other SurveyMethods users. This feature is available to Professional or Enterprise packages. Select a survey and then click the “Collaborate” button on the main screen when you’re logged into your account. When you collaborate on a survey with others, you can allow them to view, edit, or copy your survey.

Note: You can only initiate collaboration on a survey that you own and from a Professional or Enterprise account.

Questions on Sending and Launching Surveys

You can generate a survey link (URL) to post on your website for individuals to access, or paste in your email.

When you launch a survey through SurveyMethods, you can choose to upload or paste a list of emails through the launch process and send your survey through the SurveyMethods email launch system. SurveyMethods.com then sends each individual a unique encrypted survey URL via email that appears to be coming from your email address. This email contains a URL for the recipient to click on and take the survey. When you use this method of launching surveys, you are able to see who has responded, who has not responded, and who has opted out of your survey. Paid users (Advanced, Professional, and Enterprise accounts) may also configure surveys to be sent through their own SMTP servers.

With the Advanced, Professional, or Enterprise packages you can create an advanced email list and assign up to 5 values to each email address. For example, you can assign the First Name, Last Name, Customer ID, Region, and Support Rep to each email address you send the survey to. You can insert these custom values into the email that is sent (e.g. “Dear [First Name]”), use them to develop page logic (e.g. certain individuals may skip certain pages or sections of the survey), and conduct analysis by segmenting the data using the custom values.

Yes, simply launch the survey using a custom web link (URL) and paste it into your post or profile on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

Questions on Taking Surveys

With the Basic package there is a limit of 100 responses per month across all surveys in your account. With the Advanced, Professional, and Enterprise packages there is no limit on the number of responses per month or per year across all surveys in your account. Visit our Plans & Pricing page for a full comparison of the features available in different subscriptions.

Yes. When you launch your survey, the system will prompt you to select if you want each respondent to take the survey only once.

Yes. When you launch your survey, the system will prompt you to select if you want each respondent to take the survey multiple times.

If you launch your survey through SurveyMethods’ email launch feature, SurveyMethods.com sends out a unique URL for each recipient to click on to take the survey. SurveyMethods.com is able to track who has taken the survey, who has not, and who has opted out. You can see this information on the dashboard for that survey which is displayed in the Analyze or Manage sections.

Yes. Respondents can take a survey and then come back to finish it later. This feature is activated when you launch a survey and enable the Save and Resume feature in the survey settings.

Yes. Create your survey on SurveyMethods.com and launch your survey to generate a web URL. You can then click on the survey URL to take the survey and enter the data from your paper surveys. After you have entered all your data, go to the Analyze section of your survey to conduct in-depth analysis.

If you’d liket o go fully digital for your next survey, Contact Us to get a free quote a one-time custom project to convert and configure your survey in our application.

Yes. Once you launch your survey, go to the Settings section and click the Set Up Automatic Reminders link. Here you can configure SurveyMethods.com to send automatic reminders to recipients who have not responded.

Questions on Conducting Data Analysis

The Analyze module is one of SurveyMethods strongest feature sets. When you launch a survey and have collected sufficient responses, the Analyze section enables you to:

  • View summarized results
  • View individual results
  • Create reports that compare the results for groups of respondents
  • Create Graphs and Charts and export them to PowerPoint or other applications
  • Create custom PDF reports which you can email to others

Additionally, to conduct what-if analysis, SurveyMethods provides you with the ability to apply criteria/filters to display how different groups of respondents answered questions.

You can publish your survey results to the Internet and also password-protect your published reports. To do this, go to the Settings section of your survey and click on the Publish Survey Results link. Here you can configure your publish results settings and activate them. SurveyMethods.com provides you with a URL that you can distribute to your friends and colleagues with whom you want to share your survey results. When individuals click on this URL they will be able to view your survey results. You can turn off the publish results settings for your survey at any time to remove access.

You can export your data to Microsoft Excel for further Analysis. You can also generate a full-fledged PowerPoint presentation that you can edit and present to your audience or export a custom report to a Word document.

SurveyMethods.com enables you conduct powerful cross-tab analysis on your survey data. You can create criteria/filters to show how different groups of respondents answered questions. Example: A mobile phone service company has surveyed consumers in multiple cities to understand how mobile phone usage differs by consumer type and other factors. Using the Apply Criteria feature, it can conduct in-depth analysis on the survey data. The company could build criteria along the lines of:

  • “Show data for those who live in Dallas”
  • “Show data for people who live in New York and are below the age of 30”
  • “Show data for respondents above the age of 30, who live in Dallas, and are married”
  • “Show data for female respondents who are above the age of 30 and have children”

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