Don’t want to get bogged down by the lengthy bureaucracy of corporate purchase decisions? You might choose to stick with the free plan just to avoid the hassle. Or you might need some time to test the tool out before committing to a subscription. The most frustrating experience is when the free plan offers minimal value and is barely usable unless you upgrade to a paid version.
We’ve done a comparison of the free plans available on all form builders so you can skip the research and start building your survey with Smore today.
TL; DR
What every good form builder should have
The product should be usable in practice, even if the user is on the free plan. These four elements are what we believe a good form builder should have.
Unlimited Responses
Many survey tools monetize response counts. On free plans, the limit on responses is as low as 10 per month. However, regardless of the purpose of the survey, it is important to collect as many responses as possible. Quality data accumulation is essential for meaningful analytics, leading to insights or feedback.
In other words, if there are constraints on the core of customer communication, surveys that listen to the voice of customers will have difficulty functioning properly.
Intuitive UI/UX
Surveys require a lot of effort in question design and response analysis. That's why efficiency in online survey creation becomes crucial. Therefore, survey tools need to be intuitively designed so that technical expertise is not required, and users don't have to constantly look up guides. This way, surveys can be created quickly and easily.
Lots of ready-made, customizable templates
Templates are what can maximize the efficiency of survey creation. They shorten the production time, minimize concerns related to design, and make it even easier to create and distribute surveys. Especially when you need to collect responses urgently, you can simply modify the details using the appropriate template and share it immediately.
Engaging user experience
The biggest factor that reduces survey response rates is negative customer experience. Surveys that have minimal design and give off a stiff and impersonal feeling tend to hinder respondent immersion, sometimes leading them to drop out due to boredom during the survey.
Furthermore, surveys serve as a space for two-way communication between brands and customers. It’s especially crucial to actively communicate the brand's customer philosophy rather than solely collecting customer data. Therefore, interfaces and interactive survey UIs that embody the brand's identity are essential elements for providing a positive customer experience. To achieve this, customization features such as font formatting, theme color customization, transition effect changes, embed functionality, etc., should be supported.
Smore VS Survey Sparrow
✔️ Comparison Point 1: Number of Questions and Responses
Smore: Unlimited Responses
With Smore, there are no limits on the number of responses you can receive, even with our free plan. You can also create an unlimited number of questions. This aligns with our core value of adding more value to the world by encouraging greater communication between businesses and customers.
Additionally, to ensure the collected data is used effectively, Smore offers built-in analytics that allow you to manage your data easily, without needing to export to separate Excel or spreadsheet files.
Creating an unlimited number of questions and collecting an unlimited number of responses means you can engage with more customers in a variety of ways. Analyzing data based on a substantial number of responses helps businesses gain valuable insights from multiple perspectives. Smore is dedicated to providing these unlimited opportunities well into the future.
Survey Sparrow: Only 50 responses per month, with only 10 questions
Survey Sparrow's free plan limits you to 10 questions per survey. If you want to conduct more in-depth satisfaction surveys or identify and collect hot leads, you'll need a variety of question types. With a limit of 10 questions, you can’t gather enough personal information and opinions from respondents, making it hard to create effective surveys.
Additionally, with the free plan, you can't receive more than 50 responses per month. For a monthly quota of 1,250 responses, it will cost you $59 per month on their Business Plan. However, if you plan to create multiple surveys, this limit can be nowhere near enough. This significantly restricts a company's ability to actively listen to its customers.
When the goal of your survey is lead generation, having a substantial amount of high-quality data is crucial. Without it, not only is it challenging to secure enough leads, but identifying hot leads becomes difficult as well. If you're conducting surveys to gather Voice of the Customer (VOC) feedback for customer experience (CX) management, a low number of responses means you won't gain clear insights. Insufficient data leads to significant limitations in obtaining meaningful analytics, making it hard to draw valuable conclusions from your survey results.
✔️Comparison Point 2: Number of Forms You Can Create
Smore: Unlimited Number of Forms and Surveys
With Smore, you can create unlimited surveys even on the free plan.
Surveys allow companies to gather valuable feedback from their customers. By actively listening to what customers have to say, businesses can strengthen their relationships. That's why Smore places no restrictions on creating surveys, enabling communication and rapport building.
Survey Sparrow: Only 3
On the Survey Sparrow's free plan, you can’t create more than three surveys.
One of the key benefits of surveys is that they allow businesses to quickly and easily reach out to customers and hear their stories. Surveys are a crucial tool for regularly listening to the customer's voice. When there are limits on how many surveys you can create, it reduces the opportunities to engage with customers on various topics.
Brands and companies have all sorts of questions they need to ask their customers. Whether it's for user research, satisfaction assessments, lead generation, or feedback collection, surveys are essential for gathering diverse customer insights.
Businesses need to understand their customers' thoughts and feelings across various stages, like during rebranding efforts, pivots, new product launches, or service developments. This continuous feedback helps companies test their ideas and gather valuable insights for future growth. That’s why having the ability to create unlimited surveys is so important.
✔️Comparison Point 3: Inserting Your Logo
Smore: Insert Your Logo and Customize the Design Freely
With Smore, you can insert your logo and customize the survey UI extensively, even on the free plan. You’ll find all the options unlocked under the style tab. Insert your logo and it will be embedded in the header section of your survey interface on all pages.
You have the freedom to customize the survey UI to match your brand’s tone and style. You can change colors and embed various images and videos. By using the free logo insertion feature and decorating the form with your company’s signature colors, you can make the survey feel more personalized and custom-made. This can positively impact respondent engagement.
Additionally, adding images and videos to the cover and ending pages, and enhancing them with the embed feature, allows you to incorporate personality and storytelling elements. This way, you can create a more polished survey that truly reflects your company’s identity.
Survey Sparrow: Can’t Insert Your Logo
With Survey Sparrow's free plan, you cannot insert your brand logo into the survey. This makes it difficult to showcase your company's unique identity or give the impression that the survey is custom-made by your business. To add your brand logo to the survey, you need to upgrade to the Business Plan, which costs almost $1K per year.
Even when using survey tools, being able to insert a logo into the form gives respondents the perception that the survey was created directly by the company, thereby adding credibility to the survey itself. Moreover, it allows the company's identity and personality to be maintained throughout. In other words, features like logo insertion and white labeling can have a positive impact on survey participation and completion rates.
Smore offers an excellent free plan that unlocks unlimited possibilities for customer conversations. If you're looking for a survey tool for your customer surveys, why not start with Smore right now?😀
