FreeOnlineSurveys.com Survey Software Review

free-online-surveys-logoSearching on Google for free online surveys will invariable display FreeOnlineSurveys.com as the first result. We will try to have a look at this survey software platform to see how good and how free it is. The site is not too informative, so we will need to create an account to find out more details related to the features they offer.

Registration appears to be done right on the front page, just by entering you name, password and email. That was too easy.

freeonlinesurveys-signup

Right after signup, a welcome page is displayed that answers some of our questions. The free account gives you:

  • Reporting on up to 50 responses per survey
  • 10 days per survey (if you exceed this you will need to upgrade to view the results)
  • An unlimited number of surveys
  • Use up to 20 questions in each survey
  • Choose from several major languages, or add another at no extra cost

So, the main limitations are 50 responses per survey and 10 days per survey. No so much a “free online surveys” site.

We will start creating a new survey now.

freeonlinesurveys-create-survey

The user interface seems rather old and rudimentary. However, there are several predefined styles that you can choose from and you also have the possibility to choose the language of your survey. That’s a nice feature.

Let’s add a few questions to our survey now. Clicking on “Add a question below” button sends us to some sort of wizard to begin adding the question.

 freeonlinesurveys-question-editor1

In this first screen, you can choose the question type and enter the question text.

There are 10 types of questions:

  • Multiple choice (choose one of the following)
  • Multiple choice (choose all that apply)
  • Simple: true or false
  • Simple: yes or no
  • Open-Ended: Single text box
  • Open-Ended: Multiple text boxes (used for contact details, etc)
  • Matrix: Rating Scale for single or multiple items
  • Ranking: order a list of items
  • Presentation: Descriptive text and images (no answer required)
  • Presentation: Insert YouTube video, Google video or other HTML code

At the first look, seems like very few choices here, especially if you take into consideration that “Simple (true or false)” and “Simple (yes or no)” are also single choice questions like “Multiple choice (choose one of the following)”.

A nice thing is the presence of the rich text editor for the question text.

The second screen of the add question wizard finally allows us to add the answer options for the question and also setup some other things.

freeonlinesurveys-question-editor2

The extra settings are:

  • Possibility to allow a free answer (other – please specify)
  • Question style: list answers vertical or use a drop down
  • Display answers over multiple columns
  • Make question mandatory

We will add more questions now. Interesting thing related to the matrix question. Although it seems that it only supports single choices per row, there are some really nice features:

  • Possibility to treat the last column of the matrix as “Not applicable”
  • Possibility to add an other or comments box to the matrix question.

freeonlinesurveys-question-editor3

The survey editor looks like this:

freeonlinesurveys-survey-editor

For each question, you can edit it, delete it or copy it. Questions can also be moved, but only 1 position up or down. That could be kind of hard if you would like to move your question 3 pages down for example.

We will move on now to try to publish our survey. Clicking on “Go to Step 2” button at the top, it sends us to a “Survey Settings” page where for the free account we cannot do anything. Paid accounts will allow you to:

  • Create a custom thank you page / message
  • Replace the FreeOnlineSurveys.com logo with your own logo
  • Receive completed surveys by e-mail instantly
  • Password protect your survey
  • Prevent duplicate responses using ‘cookies’

These are not available for the free account, so we will continue to the next page: “Launching your survey”. The only option available for the free account is to generate a link to the survey, and here it is:

http://FreeOnlineSurveys.com/rendersurvey.asp?sid=p636miwl7kk96ys624805

Here is a screen shot of the live survey page:

freeonlinesurveys-live-survey

We will add a few responses now to be able to take a look at the reporting section. Here is a screenshot of it:

freeonlinesurveys-reporting

Again, very few options for the free account. You can only see a summary report. You cannot view individual responses, filter or download results. The only nice thing for the free account seems to be the possibility to generate custom charts for multiple choice and matrix questions.

 Things we liked about FreeOnlineSurveys.com:

  • Easy registration process
  • Possibility to choose the language of your survey
  • Possibility to add comments to the matrix questions

Things we did not like about FreeOnlineSurveys.com:

  •  This is the MOST RESTRICTIVE “free” survey platform available on the internet. It really should not be called “free” because there is not much you can do with the “free account” that they give.

For more details about online surveys and survey software reviews visit http://www.survey-reviews.net.

6 thoughts on “FreeOnlineSurveys.com Survey Software Review

  1. Alex says:

    Thanks for your reviews. They were very helpful. After skimming through all of them I think I will go for QuestionPro, because it aparently offers the best instruments for analyzing the answers.

  2. Hollie Gaze says:

    I used this site for my university survey. I paid the monthly amount for more options – you can’t really use this as a free survey for a degree. Oh and I say ‘monthly’ because once you pay, they will continue to take the fee out monthly until you cancel.

    Although the questions look good and are flexible, I had a major technical problem when I tried to change the wording of one of my questions. They do warn you not to change the type of question, but I just change the wording. This made it so I could no longer view the completed surveys individually. And the ‘tech’ support was useless.

    Not worth the hassle.

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  4. stephen says:

    Freeonlinesurvey review:

    I used this tool for a work effort with our executive team, and I will say this was a horrible experience. Here is what happened.

    1. Multiple users that filled out and completed the survey did not have their answers recorded. I physically watched as two collegues finished the survey successfully, and then went to find their answers in the results of the survey, they were not recorded. Our CEO was also unable to get his answers logged, after asking him to complete it again!!! Which looked bad on my part.

    2. Emailed customer service for help, and was given the answer that it’s not “us” it must be “you”. Not only was that the response, but the customer service rep filled out the survey and destroyed my results by entering 1’s on all my matrix questions which mean’t I could not use any of the graph tools to at least show the data I collected.

    3. After sending a longer email detailing my issue and sending a more thorough report of the issue, I was never sent an email back. So in other words they ignored me!

    4. The 10 day trial is done, and I can no longer access the data which is due because of the products inability to deliver results, not because I was unprepared to get all of my data out in the 10 days given.

    Conclusion: We are looking for a tool to help us with assessment and strategy planning surveys with our customers. There is absolutely “ZERO” chance that I would use this tool.

  5. Nathalie says:

    Their reporting tool is an absolute nightmare
    You can’t analyse the data
    The graphs, charts etc do not work!
    They claim to have PDF export options: not true
    Their knowledge base is in fact their wish list of things they will do some day.
    They display 1 pager reports and their text box doesn’t display more than 38 questions.. I have 68
    Their technical support is a joke I emailed them screen shots and detailed questions I got a one liner response: our report works
    I can’t afford to invest the same amount of time in a new tool, I am stuck having to use their tool and the comments above are really scaring me now
    and I am paying to extra upgrade by the way..

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