I’m involved in organizing a large meeting (about 300 participants) and collecting surveys on the meeting after the fact. In the past, this has been done using paper surveys, which is fine but time-consuming to collate the results.
Several people have suggested using web-based survey services. Names I’ve heard tossed out are Survey Monkey and Zoomerang. If anyone has used these – or any others – I’d like to hear some thoughts on the pros/cons of various services.
Thanks!
(At the start, I have to admit a bias… I was Zoomerang’s lead developer for a while. 
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It should be pointed out that, for free members, both Survey Monkey and Zoomerang have a limit of 100 responses per survey. So, since you’ll be working with ~300 recipients, you would only benefit from setting up a “premium” (i.e., paying) membership with either one.
A premium account for Zoomerang will run you about $350 to $600 per year, depending on your organization (e.g., non-profit). A premium account for Survey Monkey will run you about $20 per month, or $200 per year. I can’t vouch for Survey Monkey’s services, but am very familiar with the inner workings of Zoomerang. If you can afford it, I would highly recommend Zoomerang.
However, from what you’ve described in the OP, it sounds like you will only be creating a few surveys, perhaps on a month-by-month basis. If that’s the case, then you might be better off with Survey Monkey. (cringe)
Does that help at all…?
Yes, thank you. I’m looking at semi-annual meetings, so I’d only be doing 2 a year.
I’m not against paying for a service if it’s good. Any specifics on why Zoomerang is recommended over Survey Monkey (other than that you’re more familiar with it)?
Meltdown: I think you’ll get better response in a forum like IMHO, and I’m moving your post there.
As far as features go, they’re almost completely identical. The main differences between the two are mainly at a “higher level”. For example, Zoomerang is a site that is operated by a market research company (MarketTools), which is geared towards developing tools like this. So, it’s a market research company that has entered the software ring, whereas Survey Monkey is a software development company that has developed survey software. I acknowledge that for most people, this probably doesn’t make much difference - it does have an impact on how the company views its users, though.
Another example is reliability. The same market research firm actually operates an additional (separate) survey site, which is used by many big names in industry. They have the hardware and the staff to maintain and watch over these sites, in case something goes wrong (with the survey data, etc.). I’m sure Survey Monkey has similar failsafes in place, but I would bet that it’s on a much smaller scale.
So, looking at things from your perspective, I would actually be inclined to go with Survey Monkey, just because it would probably be the most cost-effective choice (i.e., basically same features, for a considerably cheaper price). If I was in a situation where the number of recipients could increase dramatically, or if I was interested in doing some advanced reporting (e.g., for data mining) then I would end up going with Zoomerang.
(I feel like I’ve taken up a lot of space to say fairly little, so… my apologies.)
Disclaimer: I don’t know anything about Zoomerang, so I have no opinions either way on that service. I chose SurveyMonkey after getting a glowing recommendation from someone I know at an HR consulting firm which conducts frequent surveys, both large-scale and small.
I’ve been happy with the service, especially at the price. I’m a university-based social science researcher, and I’ve used SurveyMonkey to conduct three large-scale projects with as many as 1,700 participants and with pretty extensive surveys (100+ items). However, it’s been about a year since I finished the last project, so I may be a little rusty on details.
PROS
*Cheap, cheap, cheap at $19.95 per month for a professional monthly membership, especially considering that with online surveys, there are also no data entry costs.
*For that price, you can collect up to 1,000 responses per month. Even if you go over 1,000, they just charge a nickel per response over that.
*It’s pretty easy to figure out how to set up your survey, there are a lot of question types, and it’s easy to set up skip patterns with conditional logic (e.g., if respondent answers “no” to this question, skip the next 3 items).
*The site’s Help Center has pretty extensive and detailed FAQs, and for anything that’s not covered, I found customer service to be quite responsive and helpful.
*If you need to conduct any complex analyses, you can download the data as an Excel or comma delimited file, which can be read by most statistical packages (e.g., SPSS, which is what I use).
*You can keep an eye on the data as it comes in, so if responses start to drop off, you can send out reminders and exhortations. You can even see the responses, which is nice for people like me who are antsy to see even preliminary results.
CONS
*This isn’t that big a deal, but there’s something about the name “SurveyMonkey” that just sounds risible and unprofessional to me, and the name will show in the address bar when respondents follow the link to your survey. At this point, though, SurveyMonkey is so commonly used that the name may not even faze people anymore.
*If respondents are using shared computers, they need to complete the survey in one sitting (not ideal for surveys as long as ours) or else anyone else who uses the same computer can see (and overwrite) their responses. This was a problem for us because we were collecting confidential data, and most respondents were using their work computers to fill out the survey (they were recruited through their workplaces). Some employees only had access to shared computers or kiosks. We had to create two versions of the survey, one for people using private computers (who were allowed to save partially completed surveys) and one for people using shared computers (who had to finish in one sitting). This may or may not be applicable to you depending on the length of your survey and on whether multiple respondents will use the same computer.
I will subscribe to this thread, so feel free to ask if you have any specific questions.