The Competition

Survey Said is one of a (now dwindling) number of survey software packages for administering  marketing research and general purpose surveys. When Survey Said made it's debut back in early 1991, there was literally a handful of survey software programs of which Survey Said was the only product with a Graphical User Interface (i.e. windows based). Our last count shows there are now more than 20 such packages (many more that have come and gone). This makes selecting a survey package much more time consuming and  difficult, but the diversity provides a wide range of options.   It has been, and continues to be our company policy to promote the benefits of our Survey Said survey software product, rather than talk down specific competing products. Our intent here is to help you decide if Survey Said survey software is right for your needs, or if some other product would be a better choice. With that said...   There are a number of good survey software products on the market today. Some are very good in  specialized areas. For example, one of our competitor's products is very good at administering paper surveys. It can be used to publish a professional looking paper survey. If you are considering paper surveys only, their product would be a good choice. This product is quite lacking however, in the electronic and Internet environments.   Another such product started life as an e-mail product. It was well publicized and promoted. It's parent company was well connected to a major publisher of PC magazines. Many articles appeared about this product. It brought significant awareness to online surveys. Unfortunately, this product  was very limited (supported only 3 question types) and was very expensive. The web survey capability which was added later, was not very complete and difficult to implement. Outside of it's  parent company's publications, it did not receive such good reviews.   There are a couple of new web based products that have a polished user interface but are shallow  in terms of overall functionality. On the other hand there are some very capable products that offer almost every feature you could want for doing HTML based surveys. These packages range from  $15,000 to $30,000 per YEAR! "Ease of use" typically suffers at the expense of all this functionality, and its high price, well.... its high. However, if you need the high end features these products offer such as  "piping" and "quota control", it's nice to know they are available.

Where does Survey Said fit into this mix of products?

Survey Said fits into the higher end of the survey software product spectrum. While it does not have a few of the high end features, nor does it have the exceptionally high price of the competing products that do offer them. Survey Said is a robust software package in several respects. These include:   Completeness from survey Creation, Administration, Analysis Many environments supported, Paper to Standalone to Network Very robust data analysis with Charts, Previews and Tables Exceptionally easy to use for novices and professional alike Rock solid performance with a proven 16+ year track record Versatile and flexible, especially the new Survey Said release Over 16 years of implementing excellent customer suggestions Leading Edge products, like our Internet Respondent applet based on the defacto standard, Java 2 from Sun Microsystems. Even at $30,000, our competitors do not have anything like it!

Just some things to keep in mind!

The products in this market space are of varying quality, functionality, versatility and of course price points. We are not the first to say it but: Sometimes you get what you pay for! You may want to very carefully evaluate the "very low cost solutions"   Of course, on the other hand: Sometimes you can pay way too much for it! Before you fork out the big money, make sure you are getting what you think you are getting and that you really need that $25,000 feature. As well, you may be overlooking the finer points of one package to get a "nit" feature in another.   Survey Said has seniority, it now celebrates it's 16th year as a product. We've learned alot over the last 16 years and thank our customers for the excellent suggestions and recommendations for helping to make Survey Said what it is today.   Ease of use is our number 1 goal. If you need the manual to operate it (for anything other than logistical support), we would be surprised. That's why we can afford to offer free unlimited technical support to our customers! We've seen what some competitors call ease of use and are quite surprised by their interpretation of the phrases meaning.

And finally, we strongly recommend

that once you put together the list of packages that meet your requirements, you try out a working version of the products. We believe the main reason our customers are satisfied with the Survey  Said survey software product, is because they took the time to evaluate it along side of our competitor's survey software products. If you have suggestions for this section or would like to see the inclusion of additional information  that would help you make an informed decision, send your comments to Jesse at : <Sales@SurveySaid.com>