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Qualtrics alternatives

Last reviewed . Reviewed every quarter.

Common ground across the tools

  • Every tool on this page lets a team query its results: Qualtrics Assist and Medallia's Insights Assistant answer plain-language questions, QuestionPro's AskIH surfaces insights from its repository, SurveyMonkey's Analyze with AI works by chat from the Advantage tier, Conveo searches across transcripts, quotes and themes, and Pulse takes questions of its results.
  • Qualtrics, QuestionPro, Conveo and Pulse build highlight reels, Conveo's from tagged quotes, and Medallia Video cuts showreels.
  • Qualtrics stores data in the region a customer chooses, QuestionPro in its regional data centers, Medallia's Agile Research in data regions from the US to Singapore and Frankfurt, and SurveyMonkey in the US, Canada or EU on Enterprise. Conveo offers EU hosting for GDPR-driven residency needs, and Pulse has data residency options on its enterprise plan.

Why teams look for an alternative to Qualtrics

Steep learning curve: Setting up advanced projects can be overwhelming for beginners.

Capterra reviewer, administratorCapterra reviewer, administrator,

There are not enough customization options for some of our projects, and when using personalized links, the survey expires a week or so after being opened with no ability to change the duration before it expires

Capterra reviewer, data analystCapterra reviewer, data analyst,

Due to its capacity for high-level performance, many of the tools, options, and settings are not intuitive.

Capterra reviewer, graduate student academic advisorCapterra reviewer, graduate student academic advisor,

Qualtrics alternatives side by side

Qualtrics alternatives side by side
PulseQuestionProSurveyMonkeyMedalliaConveo
AI-moderated interviewsYesYesNot checkedNot checkedYes
Dynamic follow-up / probingYesYesPartlyNot checkedYes
Languages (count/list)240+ languages, enabled on request50+ languages in CommunitiesNot checked80+ survey languages (Agile Research)Not checked
Own panel (size)YesYesYesPartlyVia integrated providers Respondent.io and User Interviews
Theme / insight synthesisYesYesYesYesYes
Free trial / free tierYesYesYesNot checkedNo

The alternatives, one by one

Pulse

Best for Insights teams running customer interviews at scale

Customer interviews on Pulse, the AI-moderated research platform, need no app to install, since participants take them in the browser on a phone or a laptop. The analysis sorts what they said into themes, each backed by the quotes it came from.

Strengths

  • Participant incentives handled by Pulse
  • Interviews by text chat, voice or video

Verdict Qualtrics says its qualitative panels tend to suit studies of 1 to 50 participants. Pulse is built to run AI-moderated interviews at scale. So is Conveo, whose programs run 1,000s of conversations a year.

Where another tool fits Pulse is built for enterprise research, insights, product and CX teams. Conveo names the panels behind its recruitment, from Respondent and User Interviews to Rakuten, for a team that wants its sample sources known before fieldwork.

QuestionPro

Best for Research Suite buyers who want conjoint and MaxDiff

QuestionPro covers market research, CX and employee experience. ListenAI, its AI-moderated interview product, puts adaptive follow-ups to participants, Text AI sorts open answers into topics, themes and sentiment, and results export as PDF and PowerPoint reports.

Strengths

  • Custom user roles with selectable permissions
  • QuestionPro Audience, with 22+ million respondents

Keep in mind

  • The Research Suite is sold to teams of 10 or more users

Verdict QuestionPro's ListenAI analyzes response latency in its AI-moderated interviews. Qualtrics grades the sentiment of each sentence, from Very Positive to Very Negative.

SurveyMonkey

Best for Teams splitting access across Primary Admin, Full User and Analyst roles

SurveyMonkey's core product is its online survey platform. Shareable dashboards update as responses arrive, Thematic Analysis (beta) sorts open answers into themes, and Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack and Teams are among its 200+ integrations.

Strengths

  • An Anonymous Responses setting
  • White-label branding on Premier plans
  • Exports to PDF, PPT, XLS, CSV and SPSS

Keep in mind

  • Team plans start at three users

Verdict SurveyMonkey's Team plans pool 50,000 or 100,000 responses a year across all surveys and users. Qualtrics' Strategic Research plan includes 1,000 responses, and Enterprise is quoted from 5,000.

Pulse vs SurveyMonkey

Medallia

Best for Teams reading facial emotion in Medallia Video recordings

Medallia's Agile Research product runs surveys in 80+ languages, along with MaxDiff, conjoint and concept testing. Medallia Video records on web browsers and mobile devices and reads topics, themes and sentiment from transcripts.

Strengths

  • Known customers invited by email or SMS
  • Research Services, full service or DIY

Verdict Medallia's pricing unit is the Experience Data Record, sold in annual tiers; Qualtrics quotes its Enterprise plans on the survey responses and video minutes they include.

Pulse vs Medallia

Conveo

Best for Concept, packaging and creative tests

Conveo attaches AI-driven qualitative probes to surveys. Its study types take in concepts, pricing, UX research and trackers, patterns and themes are clustered automatically, and its charts link back to the verbatims behind them.

Strengths

  • Research experts who guide methodology and adoption
  • API and MCP access for other tools

Keep in mind

  • No free trial, per Capterra

Verdict Conveo runs task-based usability sessions with an AI moderator, as ListenAI takes on UX studies and Pulse runs usability tests. Qualtrics tests usability live with a moderator in Moderated User Testing, or unmoderated, and Medallia's Video Research Edition adds user testing too.

Pulse vs Conveo

How we evaluated

We compared what each tool's own product, pricing and security pages state against the criteria below. Every fact in the table above links to the page it came from, with the date it was read.

  • Setup effort. How much building a study takes before the first participant answers, which the first and third reviews above raise.
  • Question methods. The question types and trade-off methods, such as conjoint and MaxDiff, a team can call on when a study needs them.
  • Follow-up in conversation. Whether follow-up comes from fixed logic, from an AI question written on the spot, or from a moderator holding a spoken conversation.
  • Sample source. A vendor panel, named partners or the customers already on your lists, and how each is screened.
  • Enterprise controls. Single sign-on, role design, where data is stored and the certifications a vendor publishes.
  • Help with the work. Researchers or analysts from the vendor who can take on parts of a study, as Qualtrics Research Services do.

Which one to choose

  • If your interviews are already recorded in Zoom, choose Medallia, whose Zoom connector brings those recordings into Medallia Video; Qualtrics also transcribes interview recordings uploaded to it.
  • If a survey should reach SurveyMonkey Audience's 335M+ people in 130+ countries, choose SurveyMonkey, which fields Audience for surveys built in SurveyMonkey. Qualtrics gives access to 90M+ panel respondents through its sample providers, and its traditional panels reach 200+ markets.
  • If respondents must be promised anonymity in writing, choose QuestionPro, whose Respondent Anonymity Assurance puts a guarantee in the survey footer that stays once enabled; Qualtrics' anonymization policy removes name, email and IP after a set time.

Questions about Qualtrics alternatives

Is there a free version of Qualtrics?

Yes. Qualtrics lists a free Qualtrics Surveys plan that includes 500 responses, and a 30-day trial. Its paid plans include unlimited users, surveys and questions per survey.

Why Qualtrics teams bring in Pulse

Interviews without a booked Zoom call

Qualtrics' Moderated User Testing books each participant into a moderator's availability for a live session on Zoom. Pulse's AI-moderated interviews run without a call to schedule. Conveo and QuestionPro's ListenAI also run AI-moderated interviews.

The whole interview, moderated by AI

Qualtrics' Adaptive Follow-Ups add AI follow-up questions inside a survey, and a Video Response records one answer of up to 600 seconds. Pulse's AI moderator holds the whole interview, listening to each answer before the next question, as Conveo's and ListenAI's moderators do.

Sample without a study

Qualtrics supplies 50 to 10,000 panel responses for a published Qualtrics survey. Pulse sells sample on its own, without a study, as QuestionPro's standalone sample service also does.

Pulse and Qualtrics

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