Opinio 5 is a well-designed, easy to use and highly customizable internet survey system published by Oslo, Norway based ObjectPlanet. The software, which is available both as a hosted service and as an application you can install on your own web server, offers all of the major features you would expect to find in a moderately advanced packaged with a few very powerful and interesting extras (and a couple of notable deficits). It is perfect for a corporate research department or organization with users at several levels — novice will find it fairly easy to create smart looking surveys very quickly, while more advanced users will be able to control precisely how the surveys look and feel. Opinio also offers a highly configurable reporting engine that for some applications may completely replace the need to examine the results in an outside data analysis package. The software is well priced, extensible, and is definitely worthy of consideration for any midsized research department looking for a flexible, easy to manage internet survey package.

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Beeliner Surveys is a simple, easy-to-use and extremely inexpensive online survey service operated by Cambridge, Massachusetts based @Spinfish Web/ROG. Although its survey capabilities and design flexibility are very limited, the system is very easy to use and it includes some very unique and useful features, such as the ability to include full surveys within e-mail messages and create custom reports that can be saved and reused. While the program does have some security issues and while it does very much limit your options in terms of the types of questions you can ask, organizations looking to conduct a quick and easy survey may find the program does what they need at a price they can afford.

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Grapevine 3.0 is a moderately priced, relatively full-featured online self-service survey solution published by Toronto-based Business.ca. It offers most of the basic features, a few of the advanced features, and a collection of well designed, pre-written surveys and design templates that are sure to appeal to small companies and organizations who aren’t looking to spend a lot of time reinventing the marketing research wheel. The survey design/management interface is fairly easy to master, although the non-Web 2.0 driven survey development environment can sometimes be a little slow and frustrating. The system includes a lovely reporting engine, the ability to add multiple users to one account, the ability to upload lists of respondents (and send out invitations) and a fairly strong help system. While I am not so sure that I would recommend this package for advanced users or firms that intend to do a lot of research, it may be a very appropriate choice for a firm that finds the pre-written, pre-designed surveys worth the cost. 

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In the July, 2006 issue of the Market Research Society’s Research Magazine, Tim Macer reviewed Perseus SurveySolutions 2.0, a multi-user online survey solution with integrated sampling, invitation management, report preparation and publishing, which is aimed at large enterprises wishing to consolidate and co-ordinate all their research and feedback activities.

Tim liked the Word-like interface for designing surveys, the centrally controlled ‘profiles’ that allow direct links to enterprise databases to provide "real-time and moment-of-truth sampling" and the simple results portal; he didn’t like the fact that there was no intelligent support for coding or consolidating open-ended data, the limited range of statistics, and the fact that it was labourious working with open-ends.

Read Tim Macer’s full review of Perseus Survey Solutions EFM 2.0

In the June, 2006 issue of issue of the Market Research Society’s Research Magazine, Tim Macer reviewed Monitor Group’s MarketSight, a web based survey analytic tool for researchers and end-users, with an emphasis on interactive hypothesis testing.

Tim liked the expert-system approach which automatically applies appropriate statistical tests, the highly intuitive interface which makes analysis quick and easy, and the simple import and setup from SPSS or SAS formats. He didn’t like the fact that it doesn’t support multiple response questions, that it works only in IE6, and that there is no local support in Europe.

Read Tim Macer’s full review of Monitor Group’s MarketSight.