In-depth Review: SurveyMonkey vs. Alchemer vs. Paperform

Picking the right form builder for your business is like picking what movie to watch with your partner: overwhelming, time-sensitive, and nearly impossible. With so many options out there, it's easy to get lost.

That's why we've taken the time to compare three main players in the survey software world—SurveyMonkey, Alchemer, and Paperform—so you can free up some time to go pick that movie.

SurveyMonkey is a basic, fairly user-friendly form builder, whereas Alchemer provides more complex function and design options. Paperform is a digital Swiss Army knife: an intuitive form builder backed with all the advanced tools and supported integrations you need to create unique solutions for your business, your way.

Read on to find out more about what each tool has to offer, so you can make an informed decision about which form builder is right for your business.

What is SurveyMonkey?

(Image Source: SurveyMonkey)

SurveyMonkey is one of the most popular form builders around. A classic option, it’s good for businesses looking to create standard customer satisfaction surveys, feedback forms, or other basic intake forms.

SurveyMonkey offers 17 field types, and a handful of colors and design options to choose from. The basic plan is free, but if you’re looking for unlimited questions and responses, built-in analytics or more advanced features, you’ll need to pay for an individual or team advantage plan.

SurveyMonkey is popular for a reason. The unlimited free basic plan makes it desirable for folks who just need a few super simple, standard looking surveys. And if you pay up, you’ll have access to most features you need from a form builder, like question logic or further customisation options.

What is Alchemer?

(Image Source: Alchemer)

Alchemer (formerly Surveygizmo) is a more complex form builder geared towards marketers and customer experience professionals in larger businesses. Alchemer is great for companies with a bigger budget looking to create more intricate forms.

Alchemer positions itself as a solution for those who have outgrown SurveyMonkey, but don’t want to deal with the hassle of Qualtrics. As more of an enterprise solution, all plans are paid, and the internal features (design, field types, analytics) are more robust.

The UI takes a little while to master, but once you do, you’ll be able to design and customise your forms to your liking.

What is Paperform?

(Image Source: Paperform)

Paperform is a scalable, easy to use online form builder that helps businesses of all sizes create unique solutions and automate everyday processes.

Unlike SurveyMonkey and Alchemer, Paperform has a balance of beauty and brains. It’s perfect for individuals and small businesses who want a sleek, all-in-one platform for creating powerful and customisable surveys, forms, one-page websites and quizzes of any kind.

Paperform offers a solution for those frustrated by both SurveyMonkey and Alchemer.

The intuitive UI makes it easy for anyone to make use of our limitless customisation options, 25+ unique field types, and thousands of direct and Zapier integrations.

1. Feature Overview

Let's jump into how SurveyMonkey, Alchemer and Paperform differ from each other.

Design and customisation

Paperform gives you the most design and customisation options of the three.

SurveyMonkey is great for cranking out customer satisfaction surveys, but it falls short when it comes to customisation.

Most templates look about the same, and you can only change background image and font—and that’s only if you’re on a paid plan. The basic plan offers close to no customization options.

Alchemer will give you a little more room to play when it comes to customization. You can choose from different themes and styles, change the font, background image, and buttons in your survey, and alter how respondents interact with your survey.

Paperform offers limitless customization options. With 25+ field types and our native integration with Unsplash and Giphy, you can add and alter anything you can think of, all without leaving the editor.

Question logic

We have a tie: Alchemer and Paperform both offer question logic for all members, using easy to understand if, then statements.

Question logic is available on all three tools, though you’ll have to pay up to use it on SurveyMonkey. Their basic plan doesn’t allow users to use skip logic.

Alchemer’s paid plans support question logic. To set it up, you create two questions, and follow the logic prompts to set conditions for when one of the questions will appear.

As with other customisation options in Alchemer, the service is there, but because the UI is a little complex, it takes some getting used to.

Paperform supports question logic, conditional logic, and answer piping for all our members. You can set up your conditions using if/then statements, right from the editor. You can even change which success page your respondents land on based on their form responses, or thank them by name at the end of the survey.

Integrations

With over 3,000 direct and Zapier integrations to choose from, Paperform offers more automation power than Alchemer and SurveyMonkey combined.

SurveyMonkey offers around 100 integrations for its paid users. These cover a good amount of use cases, but they don’t include many popular apps like Gmail or Excel.

Alchemer does not offer an integrations library, though it does support integrations with a handful of CRM and marketing tools, including Mailchimp and LeadConnector.

Because there isn’t a robust selection of direct integrations, Alchemer allows you to create your own app connections—which, needless to say, is not in the cards for anyone without a coding background.

Paperform offers over 3,000 direct and Zapier integrations with tools like Slack, Mailchimp, Asana, Google Sheets, Notion, and a whole lot more. We make it easy to sync data from your forms with all of your favourite apps, so you can automate more of your daily tasks, like sending emails, accepting payments, or updating your CRM or CMS of choice.

2. Pricing comparison

Pricing is one of the key factors when it comes to picking a new tool for your business. SurveyMonkey, Alchemer and Paperform all have a range of payment options for individual and professional plans.

Alchemer is the priciest option, starting at $49 a month for the entry-level plan. SurveyMonkey's basic subscription comes in at $16 per month, billed annually at $192 a year.

At that price, you're limited to 10 questions and 40 responses per survey. If you want unlimited survey questions or advanced logic, you'll need to pay up.

A. SurveyMonkey

Unlike Paperform and Alchemer, SurveyMonkey doesn’t offer a free trial. Instead, they have an extremely limited free version known as the basic plan.

Because this plan lacks so many features (and restricts you to less than a dozen submissions a month) it’s best to think of it as an extended free trial rather than a long term solution.

If you are looking to make longer surveys, or use question logic, you’ll need to pay for a step above the Standard Annual plan, like the Advantage or Team Advantage option.

Standard Annual ($192/year)

• Individual membership
• 10 questions per survey
• 40 responses per survey

Standard Monthly ($99/month)

• Unlimited questions
• Unlimited number of surveys
• 1,000 responses per month

Advantage Annual ($384/year)

• Individual membership
• Unlimited questions per survey
• Unlimited number of surveys
• 15,000 responses a year

Premier Annual ($1,428/year)

• Unlimited questions
• Unlimited number of surveys
• 40,000 responses a year

Team Advantage ($25/user/month)

• Team membership
• 50,000 responses a year
• Accepts payments
• Supports integrations

Team Premier ($75/user/month)

• Survey sharing and editing
• 100,000 responses a year

B. Alchemer

Each Alchemer plan has a free trial so you can give it a go before you commit. The Collaborator plan is intended for individuals, while the Professional and Full Access plans are geared towards small teams.

Collaborator ($49/month)

• Individual plan
• Best for making simple surveys and polls

Professional ($149/month)

• Data collection and analysis for teams of 1-3
• Access to more features than Collaborator

Full Access ($249/month)

• Most robust data collection option
• Team plan

There are also Enterprise options available for larger businesses.

C. Paperform

Paperform's prices are competitive and flexible, so you can pay for what you need without breaking the bank.

Plus, unlike SurveyMonkey, all members get access to unlimited questions, advanced logic, and the ability to create all the surveys you want without strict limitations.

For just $24 a month, you also get full access to 3,000+ integrations,  as well as advanced customisation and ecommerce features.‌

Essentials ($24/month)

• Unlimited forms
• 10,000 form views per month
• 1,000 submissions per month
• Connects with 1 payment account

Pro ($49/month)

• Unlimited forms and form views
• 10,000 submissions per month
• Supports 3 payment accounts
• Advanced calculations

Agency ($159/month)

• Unlimited forms, views, and submissions
• First priority customer support
• Custom domain support
• Up to 5 users
• Custom HTML and CSS

→ Learn more about Paperform's pricing

3. Usability

A. SurveyMonkey

(Image Source: SurveyMonkey)

Using SurveyMonkey is a bit like cooking in someone else's kitchen: all the tools and ingredients are there, but they're not always where you want them to be.

The interface is fairly straightforward, though it feels dated in terms of design and usability. If you ever used a Microsoft product in the early 2000s, it might ring a few bells.

If you're working in the free or standard version, you'll be extremely limited in your ability to make forms. Most features you expect from an online survey software (like survey logic or skip logic, randomization, multiple question types, themes and templates) are reserved for higher-paying users.

SurveyMonkey has a unique feature that allows you to edit offline, which can be helpful for making changes on the fly. The rest of the features are standard, but you'll have to hunt through many dropdown menus to find them.

B. Alchemer

(Image Source: Alchemer)

Alchemer has a more modern-looking interface with features comparable to SurveyMonkey. You can choose to design your own survey or start with one of their survey templates, though you'll need to upgrade from the trial in order to try any of the themes.

To create a new question or section, you'll need to scroll to the bottom of your survey and click add. From there, you can move questions around using the drag-and-drop interface. The design process is split into sections, which you can view via tabs at the top of the screen.

If you're someone who likes to focus on one thing at a time, great news. But if you like to rearrange fields and play with formats or themes as you're designing your survey, you might find the layout to be limiting.

C. Paperform

(Image Source: Paperform)

Paperform has a unique doc-style editor that is easy to use for beginners and experienced designers alike. Whether you design your own form or choose from one of our 650+ templates, creating a form that's functional and stylish is a breeze.

Rather than bumbling through a confusing interface or scrolling indefinitely, you can click anywhere on your form to add any of our 25+ field types. You can also use our nifty slash commands to edit, add questions, embed images (and edit them), and whole lot more.

At Paperform, we know how important it is to have your forms and surveys look exactly as you imagined, whether you're making a questionnaire for your social media pages or a checkout page for your online store. That's why we offer comprehensive customisation features for all subscribers.

You can edit colours and fonts, embed media of any kind, integrate with over 3,000 apps, customise success pages, and change any element of your form, any time you like.

Paperform makes form-building easy, but we get that using any new online survey tool can be confusing. That's why we have a YouTube channel packed full of tutorials, a Help Center full of helpful guides, and a 24/7 live chat to support you every step of the way.

4. Customisable Templates

A. SurveyMonkey

(Image Source: SurveyMonkey)

SurveyMonkey has a variety of templates to choose from, each nested under a category like health, education, or market research.

While there are lots of templates to choose from, they tend to have a cookie-cutter, generic feel, with stock cover images and uniform question sets. In order to customise them to your liking, you'll run into the same challenges as you would starting from scratch: a confusing, dated interface and tricky survey tools.

Most of the templates are targeted toward larger businesses, like employee engagement forms and HR surveys, which makes sense for SurveyMonkey's target demographic. There are fewer options for personal use, startups, or small business owners.

To access most of the templates, you'll have to upgrade to a paid plan. It's a shame there aren't more free options, but once you do break through the paywall, there is a good amount to choose from.

B. Alchemer

(Image Source: Alchemer)

Alchemer has around 40 total templates to choose from. Like SurveyMonkey, these templates are broken down into categories, most of which are business-focused.

When you're looking through the library, you'll notice that there is not a picture or sample for each option in the library. This means there's no way to know what a template looks like before you select it. We all know it's not great to judge a book by its cover, but it is helpful to select a template from its cover image.

You'll run into the same issue when selecting a template from the editing page–you can't scroll through the options. Instead, you'll need to pick one from a dropdown list and preview each option individually.

This process gets old quickly and turns what's meant to be a helpful shortcut into a bit of a chore.

C. Paperform

(Image Source: Paperform)

Paperform has over 650 unique templates to choose from in our easy-to-navigate template library. All of our templates are organized into helpful categories, so you can find the form you need without falling into the scroll-hole.

Paperform has more templates than SurveyMonkey and Alchemer combined, with forms and surveys for everything from feedback forms like Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Customer Satisfaction Forms (CSAT) to client feedback or art commission forms.

Whether you're running an SME, need an easy bookings solution, or just want a beautiful contact form for your website, Paperform has a template for you.

The best part? All Paperform templates are 100% customizable, meaning you can pick one just because you like the style, and change the content completely to fit your use case. You can also create your own from scratch, and then share it as a template—so you and your team can start from the same square one.

5. Accepting Payments

A. SurveyMonkey

(Image Source: SurveyMonkey)

SurveyMonkey only allows users to accept payments through Stripe. It doesn't accept payments with Google Pay, Braintree, or any other leading providers.

You can add a payment field to your form the same way you'd add a question: by selecting the field from the "Builder" section of the form editor. Keep in mind, though, that only customers with Premier, Enterprise or Advantage plans are able to create surveys that accept payments.

SurveyMonkey also does not support automated tax or coupon fields. If you're looking to accept payments through Stripe only, SurveyMonkey will do the trick. If you're looking for a more nuanced option, it may not be the best fit.

B. Alchemer

(Image Source: Alchemer)

Alchemer, like SurveyMonkey, only accepts payments through Stripe. Alchemer does not support payment integration with any other third-party payment options, nor does it offer automated tax or coupon fields.

Adding a payment field to a preexisting survey is a little tricky. You'll need to scroll to the bottom of your form, select “Action,” and then choose “Payment.”

The process of adding a payment field is really complicated, especially if you’re trying to add a payment field to a pre-existing form. Alchemer knows this—they’ve outlined a tutorial with a whopping 13 steps just to get it up and running.

C. Paperform

(Image Source: Paperform)

At Paperform, we get that making accepting payments quick, easy, and consistently functional is essential to running any successful business.

We also believe that only you know what's best for your business. That's why we let you choose from over 25 leading payment gateways, including Stripe, Paypal, Braintree, Google Pay, and Square.

You can add a payment field to any of your forms in just a few clicks. Simply use slash commands or select from the dropdown menu to set prices, integrate payment methods, calculate tax, add coupons, automatically generate receipts, and more.

Unlike SurveyMonkey, Paperform doesn't keep its payment integration locked up behind more expensive plans. You can accept payments on any Paperform plan, with loads more options, add-ons and flexibility than SurveyMonkey or Alchemer.

6. Form Analytics

A. SurveyMonkey

(Image Source: SurveyMonkey)

Form analysis is one of SurveyMonkey's strong suits. From your dashboard, you can see how many people answered your surveys, and view question summaries, individual responses, and insights into data trends.

It also has a word cloud feature, which can help you analyze the tone of an open text response. SurveyMonkey automatically configures your survey data into graphs, which is helpful for visual learners, giving reports, or understanding surveys with a ton of responses.

If you want to further analyze your data, you can connect with one of SurveyMonkey’s data analysis integrations, like OfficeReports or Dasheroo. You can also export your survey responses to a CSV file so you can analyze the data in Excel. Both of these options require you to upgrade to a paid version.

B. Alchemer

(Image Source: Alchemer)

Alchemer offers basic form analysis, as well as options for you to download your results to a CSV file so you can check it out in your preferred spreadsheet software. They also have a unique feature that allows you to analyze open text feedback.

It's not as thorough or intuitive as SurveyMonkey's or Paperform's form analysis, but if you just need the bare minimum (checking survey results and data exports), Alchemer will do. The form analysis section of the interface is a little clunky, so you’ll need to spend some time learning how to properly assess your data in from the UI.

Another pitfall of Alchemer's data analytics is that you can't access partial form submissions. So if a respondent's phone dies just before the last question of your survey, you won't be able to gather any data from their submission.

For more advanced data analytics, you'll need to opt for Alchemer's Enterprise plan for businesses, which is sort of like their version of Qualtrics. As an Enterprise option, it’s intended more for large businesses, so it’s not the most universal solution.

C. Paperform

Paperform makes gathering and understanding data from your forms easy and efficient. You can access our robust, built-in form analysis from any Paperform plan (although partial submission analysis is reserved for Pro and Agency members).

Form analysis is available for any of your creations in your Paperform dashboard. You can view your submissions individually, as PDFs or Word docs, or you can export them as a CSV file to analyze in Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.

Our built-in analysis allows you to view your form submission data as easy-to-understand graphs and visualizations. You can also segment data, filter specific periods, and delve deeper into the way people interact with your forms from the analysis hub of your dashboard.

The verdict: which is the best form builder for you?

Both SurveyMonkey and Alchemer are solid form builders. But they both have more than a few limitations when it comes to customisation, integrations, ease of use, and value for money.

• While SurveyMonkey’s data analysis and insights are industry-leading, the interface is difficult to use and dated, pricing tiers are expensive (and confusing), and it lacks robust customization and integration options.
• Alchemer is a robust option, complete with all the advanced features you want from your form builder. But with the cheapest option coming in at $49/month, it’s just too expensive for functionality you can find elsewhere.

Paperform addresses all the shortcomings of these tools. It’s more affordable and feature-rich than both SurveyMonkey and Alchemer, and the doc-style editor makes it easy for anyone to build beautiful, brand-specific forms in no time.

And when you sign up for Paperform, you’re getting much more than a form building tool. You are getting a hub for your business and a digital Swiss Army Knife that can help you automate tasks and put work on autopilot.

Here are just a few of Paperform’s great features:

• Guided Mode: You can turn any Paperform into a one question at a time experience with a single click.
• Appointments: Use the appointment field to take bookings and update your Google Calendar automatically when scheduling meetings or tasks.
• Automations: Automate repetitive tasks and set custom workflows without leaving the Paperform editor.
• Calculations: Use our Excel-style functions to calculate prices, and quiz scores.
• Smart embeds: Embed Paperform creations on your website or share them directly with your own custom link.
• Shareable templates: Build templates and share them with your colleagues or clients.
• Personalized emails: Send emails directly in Paperform and automate your outreach.
• PDF Generation: Generate custom PDFs with your unique branding and design.

We get it: we’re a little biased. But don’t take our word for it: give it a go yourself with our 14-day free trial and see what you can build today.