Three tools for online surveys

Questioned

In terms of speed when creating surveys, Opina wins – just ahead of Polldaddy. Although the tidy administrative interface of the free program was a good thing, the overall performance is disappointing. The lack of configuration options, non-existent documentation, and poor display functions make managing the survey similar to flying blind. Additionally, the activation links are not complete in the mail sent by the system.

Polldaddy is the only candidate that does not protect surveys against subsequent modifications, which means that existing responses are lost if the admin changes an ongoing survey. Users who blog with WordPress and want to explore the opinion of their readers from time to time will probably see the cloud service as a handy and simple tool that works fine with the blog software out of the box. For scientific surveys and sensitive issues, however, you will want to use one of the other two candidates, because Polldaddy does not guarantee privacy.

The clear winner in this test is LimeSurvey. The program offers the biggest feature set and the best security and anonymity measures. Although beginners can get lost in the admin interface, LimeSurvey is easy to use. There is, however, room for improvement in the themes; the layouts provided are a little stale. Also, more complex surveys may require some training, but the extensive documentation helps. LimeSurvey is also the only software in this test that allows participants to cache a survey they have started and restart at a later time.

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