Google Forms is an app for creating forms and surveys, and is part of Google Apps for Work. The product focuses on ease of use; the interface is similar to a document editor, with drop down lists of options and drag and drop question re-ordering. Users can embed images and video into surveys. Users can also program the question flow with custom logic. Google sends users basic summaries of the survey results automatically, or users can export the raw survey results data and analyze it via…
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SurveyMonkey
Score 8.2 out of 10
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SurveyMonkey provides free, customizable surveys, and a suite of paid, back-end programs that include data analysis, sample selection, bias elimination, and data representation tools. SurveyMonkey also offers large-scale, enterprise options for companies interested in data analysis, brand management, and consumer focused marketing.
$25
per month (billed annually) per user (starting at 3 users)
Pricing
Google Forms
SurveyMonkey
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Team Advantage
$25
per month (billed annually) per user (starting at 3 users)
Team Premier
$75
per month (billed annually) per user (starting at 3 users)
Standard Monthly
$99
per month
Individual Plan - Advantage Annual
$468
per year
Individual Plan - Premier Annual
$1,428
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google Forms
SurveyMonkey
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google Forms
SurveyMonkey
TrustRadius Insights
Google Forms
SurveyMonkey
Highlights
Research Team Insight
Published
Google Forms and SurveyMonkey are both entry level survey tools. They offer a mix of free functionality and paid capabilities, and are used across company sizes.
Google Forms is applicable to a broader range of uses, while SurveyMonkey is more specialized. Google Forms can be used for building registration forms, quizzes, and assessments in addition to surveys. In contrast, SurveyMonkey is tailored to more in-depth survey design, distribution, and analysis.
Features
Google Forms and SurveyMonkey both have strong features tailored for their use cases.
Google Forms’s free version is very accessible for casual or entry-level users at small volumes. For instance, it is well suited for educational or student-driven academic uses. For businesses, Forms is bundled with the rest of the G Suite. This packaging makes Forms an easy default tool for organizations that have adopted the Google environment. It also includes prebuilt templates for common use cases, which makes the tool more accessible for casual users.
In contrast, SurveyMonkey stands out for its more in-depth survey capabilities. In particular, users point to its excellent branding and personalization options. These features enable a more professional survey experience. It also offers a wide range of prebuilt question options and the ability to deeply customize questions and logic flows. The greater level of customization allows more intensive users to tailor each survey to their exact needs.
Limitations
While each product have certain strengths, Google Forms and SurveyMonkey also have some tradeoffs.
Google Form’s focus on accessibility across user backgrounds places a ceiling on the depth of functionality and complexity. In particular, reviewers have been limited by Google Forms’s question branching simplicity, and basic dynamic capabilities. The user interface and graphic design is also relatively basic and simplistic. The tool lacks the visual and branding customization found in more complex tools.
In contrast, SurveyMonkey provides a more intensive survey administration experience, which can be more difficult for less experienced users. For instance, the survey design process is a much more complex process, with less in-process guidance for unfamiliar designers. The UI is also not as user-friendly or intuitive as some other survey tools.
Pricing
Google Forms is free to use for personal use. It is also included in all Google Suite packages, which are priced at $6/user/month for the Basic plan, $12/user/month for additional cross-suite functionality and security features, and $25/user/month for the Enterpise package that includes additional management and security features.
SurveyMonkey has two pricing systems, one for personal plans and one for business plans. Personal plans are either $32/month or $99/month for additional functions like A/B testing, custom variables, and payments. The Business Plans system has three tiers. The Team Advantage, at $25/user/month, includes all of the Personal Plans features for 3+ users. Team Premier, at $79.95/user/month, includes additional analysis, white labelling, and logic functions. The Enterprise tier, which is priced by quote from the vendor, includes more customization, security features, and management capabilities.
Features
Google Forms
SurveyMonkey
Survey Format & Appearance
Comparison of Survey Format & Appearance features of Product A and Product B
Google Forms
7.9
Ratings
1% below category average
SurveyMonkey
8.6
Ratings
8% above category average
Survey templates
8.70 Ratings
9.10 Ratings
Themes
7.00 Ratings
6.70 Ratings
Custom logo/branding
8.00 Ratings
10.00 Ratings
Survey Content
Comparison of Survey Content features of Product A and Product B
Google Forms
9.4
Ratings
10% above category average
SurveyMonkey
8.6
Ratings
1% above category average
Changes to live survey
10.00 Ratings
7.40 Ratings
Question design help
9.00 Ratings
9.10 Ratings
Multiple question types
9.20 Ratings
9.10 Ratings
Survey Logic
Comparison of Survey Logic features of Product A and Product B
Google Forms
8.5
Ratings
3% above category average
SurveyMonkey
8.4
Ratings
2% above category average
Survey logic flexibility
8.50 Ratings
8.40 Ratings
Survey Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Survey Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Google Forms
9.1
Ratings
11% above category average
SurveyMonkey
10.0
Ratings
20% above category average
Response tracking
8.90 Ratings
10.00 Ratings
Data export
9.00 Ratings
10.00 Ratings
Standard reports
8.80 Ratings
10.00 Ratings
Custom reports
9.50 Ratings
10.00 Ratings
Analytics
9.30 Ratings
9.90 Ratings
Survey Administration & Security
Comparison of Survey Administration & Security features of Product A and Product B
Google Forms
9.9
Ratings
13% above category average
SurveyMonkey
10.0
Ratings
14% above category average
Access controls
9.80 Ratings
10.00 Ratings
Compliance
10.00 Ratings
10.00 Ratings
Survey Distribution
Comparison of Survey Distribution features of Product A and Product B
SurveyMonkey really excels in the survey design aspect of the surveying process. They have so many different question types that you can use to create your questions. The analytics and reporting are basic but ok for those wanting simple insights into their survey answers. Their free plan should suffice for any business that needs the fundamentals of surveying - i.e. survey builder, sharing, and viewing answers.
Capture of information from clients and/or consultants for real-time analysis.
Knowledge evaluation for our work team, the predefined templates allow the creation of tests and knowledge tests that are very didactic and easy to grade.
The acquired data is cleanly integrated with google spreadsheets allowing for fast and accurate analysis.
The form completion notifications are customizable and do their job well.
SurveyMonkey's survey programming features are extremely intuitive. Someone who has never used it before can, with little direction or training, easily set up a simple - or comprehensive - survey in a matter of minutes.
Real-time reporting and analytics tools are extremely helpful to keep everyone involved informed on an ongoing basis.
Virtually any kind of question or answer format can be programmed into your SurveyMonkey survey.
Edit view limits the questions as seen by viewers. The view function is nice to toggle between to see what the question will look like, but the edit view of some questions (like checkboxes) is confusing for the editor.
It would be wonderful to be able to assign responses to go to specific users. The user needs to go into the responses section and select the option to receive notifications, versus the owner of the form being able to do that.
Having a dependency feature for questions (in addition to sections) would be very helpful, so that if a question is answered a certain way, another question appears.
I think it's becoming pushed to the back-burner as more survey sites come out - it needs to come up with something to keep it more relevant as other survey sites are being more widely used.
Give more options to customize the look of your survey.
I will definitely renew my use of Google Forms because I really like the ease of use and the number of tools that Google forms provide. I also love that I can administer a test in real-time and get results in a timely manner
Compared to other competitors in the market (including a few I've used internally), if you're looking for a survey application, this one does the job and it's quite inexpensive too. Considering the fact that it comes with a handy mobile application too (on iOS and Android), you also get flexibility thrown in the deal too.
The interface is simple and intuitive. The first time you use Google Forms, it has a built in tutorial that goes through all the basics. Most people can pick up how to use it with minimal support. There are some advanced features that require a bit more work but there are plenty of videos and directions online. Google has a great support section that is easy to follow
SurveyMonkey should suffice for most simple use cases to collect responses or feedback from clients. The templates that they offer are helpful as well as the guidance on question formulation. If you just need a stand alone software to distribute and collect surveys, then SurveyMonkey will meet your needs.
In the years I've used GoogleForms I've never ran into any issues with the reliability or availability. Google is a gigantic company with essentially limitless resources which makes it very easy to trust that I will continue to be able to enjoy the same reliability I've come to know and expect from GoogleForms
One of the things that comes as a benefit of the lack to create complex logic branching and truly custom design is that there isn't lot of room to bog down the software. GoogleForms has always loaded just as fast as my internet service and device would allow it. I'm not sure about front end integrations or integrations into the form itself, as I've never explored it, but on the backend, I've never had any issues with integrations channeling from GoogleForms from the GoogleForms's end of things.
I have not had to use Google Forms support - it's always worked as expected. However, with other Google products, I've always been able to find a plethora of resources for answering questions or dealing with issues. The benefit of Google is how widely adopted its products are and how robust its support is.
I haven’t used the support function yet, but I have had colleagues that have and the issues they’ve faced have been resolved super quickly. They also have said the support people they have come in contact with have been extremely friendly. Those two things are what made me choose my rating
Google Forms is easy to use and affordable. The biggest benefit, however, is that our organization already uses other Google products heavily. Because of this Google Forms was our top choice. Some smaller departments in our organization still use other solutions, such as SurveyMonkey, but as a whole it has been helpful to standardize on a single product.
Outside of creating our own surveys, no other tools have been used outside of SurveyMonkey. I have heard of a few others but would not be able to provide an honest opinion due to my lack of experience working with them.
GoogleForms lacks the ability for complex logic branching and the ability to truly design it in a custom manner. It's pretty obvious when you land on a GoogleForm that it is in fact a GoogleForm. This rating solely reflects the lack of flexibility which in turn makes it something that wouldn't usually be scaled. That being said, if needing to scale a simple solution, GoogleForms would be up for the job.
Google Forms provides us a vehicle to gauge faculty and student response to our online courses and their features in real time so that we can keep our courses updated for students and faculty who facilitate them.
Since Google is free, provides storage space, and provides Shared Drives (at least in our institutional account), using Google Forms helps us manage our data. We support over 400 courses with thousands of sections so Google Forms helps us manage the data coming out of these courses, mostly student and faculty feedback about what is working and what is not.
We encourage our faculty to use Google Forms to survey their students for prior knowledge, for interest inventories, and the like. It's incredibly nimble and useful for collecting data quickly and presenting results in easy-to-understand charts and graphs.
