The 9 best survey apps

In an age where data rules all, surveys are powerful tools for businesses, researchers, and enthusiasts of all stripes looking to make data-driven decisions and understand how their audiences think. Whether you're a small startup seeking to know your customers better, an HR team interested in learning more about your employees' experiences, or just a curious lone wolf aiming to collect opinions on a topic close to your heart, having the right survey app in your digital toolbox is key.

There are so many survey tools out there, and it can be overwhelming figuring out which one does what. Especially given the overlap with form builder apps, which often do similar—but not quite the same—things. The good news is that whether you're doing product research, trying to improve your business, or finally settling the question of whether a hot dog is a sandwich, there's an ideal tool out there for you.

To help you figure out where to start, I tested dozens of online survey apps. The result is a list of the top nine apps, based on which tasks they're best suited for.

The 9 best survey apps

• SurveyPlanet for pre-written questions and templates

• Typeform for beginners

• SurveyMonkey for creating surveys on a phone or tablet

• QuestionPro for advanced survey logic and scripting

• Jotform for survey add-ons and widgets

• Fillout for AI-generated surveys

• Responsly for advanced or corporate surveys

• Surveybot for surveys in Facebook Messenger

• SurveySparrow for chatbot-style surveys

What makes a great survey tool?

Here are the criteria I used when considering survey software for this list:

• In order to get the answers you need, you have to ask the right questions. The best survey tools will allow you to pick from a variety of question types—like multiple choice, short answer, or rating scales, for example. We were also looking for apps that allow users to customize questions in ways that would make sense to their audience. Customizing questions also allows you to collect the exact type of information you're looking for, even when you're not looking for a binary yes-no or either-or answer. Generative AI capabilities were also a huge plus.

• A solid online survey tool will allow you to build a survey that uses logic like branching, so that you can direct respondents to answer further questions based on their previous answers. For example, if your first question is "Have you seen The Princess Bride?" you only want people who answer "Yes" to see the next question: "Who is your favorite character from The Princess Bride?" We also looked at services that allowed advanced scripting features, if you want to put your coding skills to use on making your survey just right.

• Collecting data is useless without having a good way to learn from it, so we looked at how well survey platforms let you analyze and export data. A good survey tool will let you take your data out in common formats like CSV, Excel, and PowerPoint. For some advanced uses, you might even want a survey app to support SPSS export. Apps that came with built-in integrations or could be used with Zapier also make the process of analyzing more versatile.

• Customization is important for your surveys. We were on the lookout for what options we had as far as design, branding, and template variety. Every individual or brand that creates a survey has their own reasons for doing so, and they should be able to showcase their own unique flare within their surveys.

• Finally, we considered how easy each app was to use. Creating surveys can be fun, but if you have to wrangle with a confusing interface, you'd likely change your tune fairly quickly.

While these are the absolute basic criteria for good survey tools, this list includes many apps that go above and beyond in terms of features. These tools help you tackle advanced techniques, like scripting complex survey logic, automating your workflow, and ensuring your survey is accessible.

It's also worth noting that there are plenty of form apps that offer similar features. Some, like Google Forms, may be included in a suite of software you already use. But most form apps are designed to help you collect specific information, like the names and email addresses of people who'd like to subscribe to your email newsletter. The best survey software, on the other hand, is aimed at large-scale data collection and analysis that uncovers broad trends.

The best online survey apps at a glance

Best survey app for pre-written questions and templates

SurveyPlanet (Web)

SurveyPlanet pros:

• Tons of pre-made questions

• Creative design themes

• Visual logic branching

SurveyPlanet cons:

• No Zapier integration

Know you need to create a survey, but not sure how to get started? SurveyPlanet is an excellent place to start. It offers over 90 survey templates with pre-written questions that you can use as-is or tweak to better fit your needs. The sample questions were a huge help in making the survey creation process go faster, since I could just pluck what I needed.

As you build your survey, you can view a live copy as you edit—right in the same window. The editing panel is a thin column on the left side of the screen and, as you add your survey title, choose from nine question types (e.g., from multiple choice to an image-based question), and input questions, the right side of the screen will display and populate your survey in real time.

SurveyPlanet makes editing fast in other ways, too. By default, for each question you enter, you'll see one text field below it to type in a response. But if you choose Multiple choice, Rating, or Form as your question type, you'll automatically see additional text fields appear as you begin typing the first response option. This lets you quickly add responses to each question without having to click the + button or press Enter on your keyboard.

One of my favorite features to use was the logic branching. Most survey apps will lay out logic in a sentence format—for example, "if Q1 is THIS, then go to THAT." While you still have to configure the logic this way, you can view the question branching as a map of sorts, so you can see the threads between various questions. As a visual person, this was a huge help.

SurveyPlanet price: Free for unlimited surveys, questions, and responses; from $20/month for a Pro plan with question branching and result exports.

Best survey app for beginners

Typeform (Web)

Typeform pros:

• Generative AI feature

• Visual logic branching

• Built-in marketing capabilities

Typeform cons:

• Limited analytics customization options within the app

Typeform does a lot of things very well, including having a wide library of some of the best-looking themes I've found, as well as the ability to send emails to survey respondents or embed surveys on a website. Similar to SurveyPlanet, Typeform also does a good job of visualizing question branches, making it much easier to spot all your logic. I found this feature to work best with simple question branching, but when I made the logic a little more complex, I had to click on each question to understand the connections.

Whenever you add logic branches that affect how the user flows from one question to another, a flow chart is automatically updated to reflect the various paths available. You can easily drag flows from one questions to another, zoom in and out of the chart to view questions and answers, and quickly make sure users aren't hitting dead ends or getting stuck in loops.

On top of this, Typeform lets users easily search Unsplash—a repository of royalty-free images—or a library of icons for the perfect visuals without ever leaving Typeform. It also lets you preview how these visual elements will look as you build your survey, in the same window, so you can play with the placement of each image in relation to each question. You can even preview how they'll render on a mobile device.

Last but certainly not least, Typeform has integrated AI into the survey-building process. Now, before you even browse through their templates, you can give Typeform a summary of what your survey is about and any specific questions you want to ask. From there, it creates the survey with those questions and some generic answers.

Overall, I found Typeform to be a great all-around, intuitive platform. It's easy enough to get started with for beginners, but its additional capabilities as far as customization, building embeddable chatbots, or crafting complex logic paths make it a worthy option for more experienced survey builders. And when you create automated Typeform workflows with Zapier, you can take your surveys a step further. You can use survey responses to create new email subscribers, add items to your to-do list, and more—no code required.

Typeform price: Free for up to three surveys with ten questions each; from $29/month for an Essentials plan with up to 100 responses and unlimited typeforms.

Best survey app for creating surveys on a phone or tablet

SurveyMonkey (Web, Android, iOS)

SurveyMonkey pros:

• Pre-written questions

• Variety of sharing options

• Ability to get responses from outside of your existing audience

SurveyMonkey cons:

• No visual logic map

One of the biggest names in survey apps, SurveyMonkey also offers one of the easiest ways to create surveys, even when you're on mobile. While most survey apps just let you collect responses on mobile, SurveyMonkey allows you to create, edit, gather responses, and analyze results on your smartphone or tablet. And anything you do on mobile will sync with your desktop account and vice versa.

Another unique feature of SurveyMonkey: you can buy responses. For example, my four-question customer feedback survey would've cost $1 per response for 200 responses.

This wizard is especially powerful when combined with SurveyMonkey's mobile app. While most survey apps just let you collect responses on mobile, SurveyMonkey allows you to create, edit, gather responses, and analyze results on your smartphone or tablet. And anything you do on mobile will sync with your desktop account and vice versa.

When you're done building the survey, you can send it via email, text, or WhatsApp, or share it on social media. As responses start coming in, you can see the total number of responses and completed responses and dig deeper into the data with a pie chart that shows the number of responses to each individual question. This level of analytics is rare on mobile, but SurveyMonkey has figured out a way to let you drill down into the details, even on a small screen.

When you connect SurveyMonkey to your other apps with Zapier, you can automate key parts of the survey process. You can send personalized thank-you notes to respondents, create to-do list items based on survey responses, and more—all with no extra manual work.

SurveyMonkey price: Free for 10 questions per survey, no logic, and other limited features; from $25/user/month for a Team Advantage plan or $39/month for individuals

Best survey app for advanced survey logic and scripting

QuestionPro (Web)

QuestionPro pros:

• A large range of question types

• Plenty of design customization, including an accessible theme

• Detailed analytics

QuestionPro cons:

• Very expensive

When it comes to question branching, QuestionPro goes above and beyond. On top of offering basic survey logic, it also supports custom scripting, which allows for even greater flexibility, if you have a bit of coding know-how.

For example, you could create a script that creates a pool of questions and then randomly selects a few of those questions to show to different people. This can be helpful if you want to do A/B testing or to reduce survey bias. Survey fatigue, for example, occurs when respondents get tired of answering questions the longer a survey goes on, and so the answers to later questions might be more rushed than earlier questions. Randomizing survey question order can help reduce this kind of bias from being focused on specific questions.

QuestionPro's custom scripting starts on the Team Edition paid tier, so it might be out of reach unless you're working for a decent-sized company, but even if you're an individual, there are basic logic tools on the free tier, and even more advanced branching logic on the $85/month Advanced tier.

Another great aspect of this app is the amount of question types available. They have your usual options, like multiple choice or 1-10 rating, but you can also take advantage of card sorting, which allows the survey taker to sort options in a question. There's even a stopwatch question (available on mobile) that allows you to start the watch, perform some kind of task, and stop it.

Lastly, even on the free plan, Question Pro offers a lot of design customization. You can pick background colors and fonts, and you can get even more nitty-gritty with the display settings and custom themes. There's also an accessible theme that makes the layout easier to understand and excludes certain questions that may be hard to understand or make out.

And by connecting QuestionPro to the other apps in your tech stack, you can automatically get notified about new responses or add respondents to your CRM.

QuestionPro price: Free for unlimited surveys with up to 1,000 responses per survey; from $129/month for an Advanced plan with unlimited responses per survey.

Best survey app for survey add-ons and widgets

Jotform (Web, Android, iOS)

Jotform pros:

• Lots of templates, widgets, and add-ons

• Ability to take payments through the form

Jotform cons:

• Technically the app specializes in forms

Although forms are what Jotform specializes in (it's literally in the name), this platform also provides plenty of survey templates to choose from—875 to be exact. But what I found most impressive was the sheer number of widgets and add-ons available. For example, you can add a section for surveyees to take a photo or connect to their social media as they go through the survey. You can even add a progress bar to the top of the survey to show your respondents where they are in the survey.

Jotform allows payments to be made with their forms, and this feature is also available with the survey templates—just add in a payment widget, and you're good to go.

One more small but much-appreciated feature—I was very happy to see that when I click to delete a question from a survey, I don't get asked one more time if I want to delete. Even though it may not happen often, if you need to delete multiple questions, it can take up a lot of time, and it's just plain annoying to have to assure an app that you truly meant to press delete. (You will get an additional prompt if you try to delete a question after publishing your survey, but that makes a ton of sense.)

When it comes to reporting, you have two options: extended reports, which hold a single chart per page, or compact reports, which combine multiple charts onto a single page. Both look good, but I personally preferred the more compact view for efficiency purposes.

When you use Jotform with Zapier, you can save your survey responses in other apps, add contacts based on survey submissions, and more. Plus, discover more popular ways to automate Jotform.

Jotform price: Free with 5 forms and 100 monthly submissions; $39.99/month with the Bronze plan, which includes 25 forms/surveys and 1,000 monthly submissions.

Best survey app for AI survey generation

Fillout (Web)

Fillout pros:

• Generative AI feature

• Intuitive interface

• Generous free plan

Fillout cons:

• Not as much design customization as other apps

While Fillout has a large bank of templates, you can also get started by simply using a prompt to generate your survey. Choose the blank form option to start, click the icon with the purple stars in the builder, and give it a short explanation of what you want.

Fillout isn't the only app on this list that has this AI capability, but I found it to be the most accurate. For example, I asked all the apps on the list to generate a survey with five questions that were all multiple choice, and Fillout was the only app to completely follow those instructions (other apps threw in different question types). But, of course, you won't be limited to just multiple choice—Fillout has plenty of question types, including checkbox, picture choice, and ranking.

Fillout also comes with a variety of integrations with notable apps like Google Sheets, Airtable, and Notion, and there are APIs for Mailchimp and Slack. Setting up the Google Sheets integration was easy, and when it was time to take a look at the results of my surveys, I had three pages of data to refer to. There's a Results page that lists each submission in a Google Sheet and is editable on the app. Then, you have a Summary page where you can see all the visual data, including customizable charts. Lastly, there's an Analytics page where you can see different metrics: things like finished submissions, starts, and completion rates.

As far as picking out a theme, you're given the option to do so before creating your survey. I saw six theme options which were all very minimalistic but still modern. You can also customize the layout of your questions to take up less space or be presented in one or two columns.

And when you use Fillout with Zapier, you get access to thousands of integrations. Here are some examples to get you started.

Fillout price: Free for unlimited forms and 1,000 responses/month; from $19/month (or $15/month billed annually) for more question types, more features, and 2,000 responses/month.

Best survey app for advanced or corporate surveys

Responsly (Web)

Responsly pros:

• A variety of templates

• Generative AI feature

• Multiple ways to share surveys via website or app

Responsly cons:

• Relatively expensive

While Responsly would be perfectly suitable for anyone needing to quickly sign up and whip up a survey, I think bigger businesses will find this app useful because of the industry-specific templates. For example, there's a hotel feedback survey, a restaurant satisfaction survey, and even a salon evaluation survey. But there are also plenty of more generalized templates for customer feedback, competitor research, event satisfaction—the list goes on.

If you'd rather not look through all the templates, you also have the option of using generative AI to create a survey. Similar to a few other apps on this list, you can simply provide a prompt and let the app do the rest.

When it comes to customizing the look of the surveys, you have nearly 20 simple but trendy themes to choose from, with the option of making your own or tweaking the colors with hex codes. You can also customize how you share your surveys. Instead of just being limited to sharing via link or email, you can embed your survey in your app or website in a number of ways: you can make it appear as a widget on the side of a webpage, in the corner, or even embed the full form. I tried out the last option—Responsly provides you with a code, so all you have to do is copy and paste, and the form generated perfectly for me.

Similar to Typeform, the branch logic is much more visual than most apps, which I think provides a more intuitive experience—especially helpful when dealing with multiple, complex conditions in a survey. This is part of what I loved most about this app—it's so simple to use, from signing up to creating, sharing, and analyzing the surveys. Responsly packs a lot of useful features, but it doesn't sacrifice the user experience.

You can make Responsly work even better for your business when you pair it with Zapier. Here are some pre-made workflows to get you started, but you can connect Responsly with any app in your tech stack.

Responsly price: Free for 3 forms, unlimited questions per form, and 10 responses/month; from $61/month (or $49/month billed annually) for more features and higher limits

Best survey app for Facebook Messenger chatbot surveys

Surveybot (Web)

Surveybot pros:

• Great for businesses with a lot of Facebook engagement

• Easy to get set up

Surveybot cons:

• Builder interface is a bit clunky

In order to get good responses to your surveys, you need to be able to reach the right audience. Surveybot lets you distribute your surveys to an already-established audience on Facebook by contacting them via Facebook Messenger or Facebook Workplace.

When you sign up for Surveybot, you either sign up using Facebook Messenger or Facebook Workplace, or create an account manually and connect your Facebook account later. Building the survey itself is easy—you can customize welcome and thank-you messages, then drag and drop question types into the editor. You'll see a live preview of your survey appear as you type your questions, and Surveybot can send a test preview to your Facebook Messenger account, so you can get a feel for how your audience will interact with the survey. You can choose certain logic, like ending the survey if someone responds with an invalid answer, or set reminders if respondents haven't completed the survey after X number of days.

If you have a Facebook Page, you have a variety of options for distribution. When you're in the Campaign phase of Surveybot's editor, you can choose to automatically message users with your survey when they comment on a post or click on your ad. Once users begin answering your surveys with Surveybot, they'll automatically be added to a "panel," a segment inside Surveybot that shows all previous respondents.

When you have enough users in your panel, you could send a direct message over Messenger about your new survey. And lastly, you can trigger surveys to launch when someone completes another survey, when a respondent enters a panel segment, or by calling the Surveybot API. If you'd rather not use Facebook, you still have the option of using a standard link to share your survey via other means like email or your own website.

When you connect Surveybot to the thousands of other apps on Zapier, you can cut out a lot of the busywork surrounding surveys. You can create Zaps to push new Surveybot responses into Slack, for example, or create new leads in your marketing automation hub, without any code.

Surveybot price: Free for first 50 survey responses; then pay-as-you-go at a starting rate of $3 for 50 responses and scaling up with more responses.

Best survey app for chatbot-style surveys

SurveySparrow (Web)

SurveySparrow pros:

• Chatbot-style surveys included in the free plan

• Simulated chat

• Offline surveys

SurveySparrow cons:

• Need to distribute the survey yourself

SurveySparrow is one of the few services I found that not only offered chatbot-style surveys, but even included them on the free tier. When creating a survey, you can choose from a few templates and see how they would play out in a simulated chat. This approach lets you craft surveys that feel less formal and might be more likely to get answers from your audience.

Better yet, while the surveys are styled like a chatbot, they're more robust than, say, Facebook Messenger. You can create custom buttons, scales, or multiple choice answers, in addition to open-ended text responses. This gives it more flexibility than Surveybot, although you'll need to distribute the survey yourself through links, QR codes, or embeds on your own website. But you also have the option of making your surveys available offline, which could be useful if, for example, you want customers to complete a quick questionnaire on a kiosk as they're checking out.

Even if you don't want to use chatbot-style surveys, SurveySparrow offers a robust array of traditional surveys with attractive designs. I especially enjoyed how aesthetically pleasing and inviting the answer icons were—they use smiley faces and thunderbolts in place of text and numbers. Another small feature I appreciated was that I could always see a preview of my surveys as they would look once published, even as I was making changes—I didn't need to publish or save the survey first and click to go to another window.

By connecting SurveySparrow to Zapier, you can do things like get notifications for new responses, automatically add respondents to your email marketing app, or send event feedback surveys to all attendees.

SurveySparrow price: Free for 3 surveys with 10 questions and 50 responses a month each; then $19/month for Basic with 5,000 responses per month.

Other great online survey tools

Keep in mind: you might already have an app that includes a survey builder. Many form builder apps include survey templates, and all could be used to make a survey with a little extra work. Marketing automation tools—including email marketing apps—also often include online survey tools, so if you're already using one of them for your marketing, it might be best to use it for surveys, too.

Or, if you're working in a large enterprise that has more advanced needs from your survey, you might find tools like Qualtrics, Adobe Marketing Cloud, involve.me, Sogolytics, or Zoho Survey to have more features you need.

Originally published in June 2016 by Matthew Guay, this post has also had contributions from Emily Esposito, Hannah Herman, and Eric Ravenscraft. The most recent update was in August 2023.