SurveyFish Frequently Asked Questions

  1. What are the advantages of online surveys?
  2. What are the disadvantages of online surveys?
  3. Is a free hosting service available?
  4. Is my data secure while it is online?
  5. Can I conduct more than one online survey at a time?
  6. How do online surveys work?
  7. Are there any limits relating to questions and responses?
  8. Do you provide any guidance on survey design and management?
  9. Do you supply any questionnaires to get me started?
  10. Can I Use the Questionnaire Exchange if I don’t Use SurveyFish.
  11. Can I control how my questionnaires will look?
  12. Are there any hidden costs?
  13. Do I have to pay more for extra “pro” features?
  14. How do I purchase SurveyFish?

Question 1: What are the advantages of online surveys?

Answer: Online surveys have a number of advantages:
  • They save you time and money.
  • You can reach large numbers of people easily.
  • There are no geographical restrictions.
  • You will typically get higher response rates than other survey methods.
  • It is quicker to achieve your required sample size.
  • The quality of your data quality will be improved through questionnaire controls and elimination of manual data entry
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Question 2: What are the disadvantages of online surveys?

Answer: Online surveys can only reach people who use the internet. It may, therefore, be difficult to obtain a representative sample for some surveys.

Fortunately SurveyFish enables you to combine paper and online survey techniques in the same survey – ensuring you can reach your intended audience.

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Question 3: Is a free hosting service available?

Answer: Yes. Your online surveys are hosted by us. There is nothing for you to set up. All you have to do is follow the steps in our Online Survey Wizard to launch your survey.

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Question 4: Is my data secure while it is online?

Answer: Yes, your data is very secure. Communication with the SurveyFish server is securely encrypted using SSL (the Secure Socket Layer protocol).

It is also backed up every ten minutes to a separate server.

Finally, when your survey is finished all your data is held on your computer. None of your survey data is held by us.

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Question 5: Can I conduct more than one online survey at a time?

Answer: Yes. You can conduct up to ten online surveys at the same time.

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Question 6: How do online surveys work?

Answer: When using SurveyFish you don’t need any technical knowledge to undertake your online surveys. After you have prepared your questionnaire our online survey wizard enables you to create and use all the special files that are needed.

The online survey wizard takes you through all the other steps required: from composing your invitation email and thank you response, automatically uploading all your survey files to your hosting server - right through to launching your survey.

The survey responses are then sent to the SurveyFish server from which they are automatically retrieved at preset intervals and imported directly to your database (you can watch your graphs developing in real-time).

SurveyFish even tells you who hasn’t responded to your survey and enables you to send them reminders – ensuring you get as many responses to your survey as possible.

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Question 7: Are there any limits relating to questions and responses?

Answer: There are no limits. You can create questionnaires with as many sections and sub-sections as you wish. Each section can contain as many questions as you wish and each question can be as long as you wish and have any number of answer options.

There is also no limit to the number of responses you can receive.

The real limit is common sense and the number of questions that are acceptable to your target audience.

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Question 8: Do you provide any guidance on survey design and management?

Answer: Yes. This is included in our help files under the section “Survey Management”. We also provide some tips in the Questionnaires zone on this website.

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Question 9: Do you supply any questionnaires to get me started?

Answer: Yes. We know that questionnaires can be difficult and time consuming to design from scratch. So we have created the SurveyFish Questionnaire Exchange, which contains dozens of pre-prepared questionnaires that will give you a great start.  

You can modify any of the questionnaires to meet your exact needs and you can add your own questionnaires to the Exchange, if you want.

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Question 10: Can I Use the Questionnaire Exchange if I don’t Use SurveyFish.

Answer: Yes. And it’s free. And if you want to modify any of the questionnaires all you need do is download the trial version of SurveyFish and use the tools in the Construct-Q and Present-Q work areas.
All we ask is that if you create any new questionnaires you send them to the Exchange, using the Upload feature. We will check them over and then post them to the appropriate area. This will help us provide a really good service to anyone looking for survey questionnaires.

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Question 11: Can I control how my questionnaires will look

Answer. Yes. Completely – for both online and printed questionnaires.

The SurveyFish Style Templates enable you to format your questionnaire in a few seconds. And you can create your own Style Templates in virtually any style you wish - using logos, preferred font styles etc.

The SurveyFish Formatting Options enable you to change the presentation of a part of your questionnaire. For example, you can insert page breaks and column breaks exactly where you need them.

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Question 12: Are there any hidden costs?

Answer: No. There are no hidden costs. Your licence fee is a one-off payment that entitles you to use SurveyFish as often as you like for as long as you like. This includes services such as online survey hosting, the Questionnaire Exchange and the Help Zone.

During the first 12 months of your licence you are also entitled to receive all product updates – both enhancements and fixes, and have access to email support.

After 12 months if you want to continue to receive these services it costs just 25% of the full licence cost.

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Question 13: Do I have to pay more for extra “Pro” features?

No. There is just one very well featured version of SurveyFish available. Unlike our competitors we don’t try to hook you in to an entry level product and then charge you more for a “pro” version that has features you should have had in the first place.

Compare our prices with the “pro” versions of other products. You will see what we mean.

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Question 14: How do I purchase SurveyFish?

Answer: SurveyFish is available exclusively on the internet. You can try it before you buy it.

Click SurveyFish to download the free 30-day trial

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