If you wish to collect a tonne of valuable insights or feedback, surveys are one of your best options.
But from development to marketing and data analysis, how much does it cost to conduct a survey?
Several factors can affect that final sum (if you need to spend any money at all).
So, let’s look at them to help you make the right choice for both your budget and goals.
Why should you create a survey?
You should create a survey if you need to collect data and insights that you can then use to inform your decisions. For example:
- Survey for market research – Get to know your target audience (and their problems, goals, preferences, and needs) to create the right products and marketing strategy for them
- Survey for customer feedback – Always improve your products and overall customer experience by asking for honest feedback after a purchase or interaction with your brand
- Survey to validate a new product or service idea – Attach a survey to your waitlist to get feedback on your initial concept before developing it
- Survey for employee engagement – Evaluate and improve your workforce’s experience and perception of your company regularly
- Survey for original research – Stand out as a thought-leading expert in your field by creating new content based on original data and findings, such as whitepapers
So, to get the most out of your time or money, make sure you’re clear on your goals first. That way, you can work your way backwards when planning the right survey.
How much does it cost to create a survey?
Creating and conducting a survey can cost you anything from £0 to thousands of pounds.
We get it: that’s not very helpful, is it? But it’s simply because there are too many factors that influence that final number. Overall, we could say that:
- Simple DIY surveys will cost you between £0 and a few hundred pounds
- Those requiring some incentives or professional help will be around the £1000 mark
- Huge or particularly complicated surveys will cost you +£1k
However, that’s an approximation. So, let’s look at what factors affect the cost of your survey (so that you know what to expect and don’t end up wasting money on something you don’t actually need).
6 main factors that affect your survey costs
Not all surveys are created equal… and neither are their virtual price tags!
1. Survey design and development
Will you build the entire survey yourself or partner with a professional?
- DIY survey builders – In most cases, you should be able to build it yourself, especially if it’s simple, straightforward, and only requires basic conditional logic. So, the only thing that’ll affect the cost of your survey is the platform you choose. Most quiz and survey builders offer free plans and paid ones ranging between £15 and £75/month depending on their features. Some can cost +£100/month, but that only tends to be the case for custom enterprise plans. With ScoreApp, on the other hand, you can create your full survey for FREE and only upgrade to a paid plan (starting from £24/month) when you need more submissions or functionalities. Easy!
- Custom survey development – Realistically, this is only relevant if you just don’t want to spend any time on this or if you’re after a particularly complex survey (for example, one that involves plenty of conditional logic or that integrates with an app). In that case, you’ll need to hire a survey designer (with fees ranging from around £20/hour to +£300 per project on platforms like Fiverr) or, potentially, a software developer (whose average day rate is £525)
2. Creating the survey content
What about your survey questions and all their potential answers?
- DIY survey content – Time aside, we bet you can plan and write your survey questions for an investment of… £0! With ScoreApp, in particular, it’s a breeze. You can start from our templates or intuitive drag-and-drop builder, using them for both the actual questions and your survey landing page (if needed). Even better? With our AI feature, you can write your entire survey content in as little as 3 minutes
- Professional survey content creation – This might be a wiser choice if you just haven’t got time to look into it properly, if writing isn’t your forte, or if you’re creating a more complex survey. So, you could hire a copywriter for certain tasks or someone specialising in survey planning and creation (the latter might include survey design in the same package). Overall, keep in mind that freelancers charge £379/day on average but it’ll really depend on their experience as well as what exactly you need help with
3. Survey platform hosting fees
That’s an easy one: in most cases, you can use the same platform to build and host your survey. So, once you’ve picked one to create it, the only thing affecting your platform hosting fee is… how long you use it for!
- One-off surveys – If you just need to conduct one, you’ll probably only need to pay for a month or two
- Ongoing or regular surveys – If you run them consistently, most platforms will offer you a more convenient price if you opt for an annual subscription
4. Incentivising people to take your survey
You might want to run a gifted survey if you need to ask a lot of questions, if they’re very in-depth and complex, or if they involve several open-text boxes that require time and effort.
So, the final cost will depend on what you choose to offer to your audience as an incentive:
- Digital products – This can easily cost you NOTHING. To be a valuable incentive, though, it must be a particularly useful and attractive resource for your specific audience (for example, a toolkit to help solopreneurs streamline their business in 5 weeks, an exclusive webinar recording to start creating video content, and so on)
- Gift cards – Set your overall survey budget, figure out how many submissions you need, and calculate the right gift card amount for each of them
- Discounts – This incentive could even help you make more money (or, at the very least, break even). Sure, you’ll be offering your products or services at a lower price, but you might get extra sales from people who weren’t planning on buying anything right now
- Physical products and merch – Their cost will obviously depend on what you offer and what your delivery arrangements are. So, consider picking something that’s valuable for your target audience but has high margins
5. Marketing your survey to the right people
This is less relevant if you’re creating an employee survey because, of course, you can just email it to them.
What about trying to reach a specific target market, though?
- Organic channels – Promoting your surveys through channels you’re already using (like social media, email marketing, or pop-ups on your website) is unlikely to incur additional costs. With ScoreApp, you can easily link to or integrate your survey with other third-party apps
- Paid ads – To reach more people faster, consider boosting your survey’s reach through paid ads on social media or search engines. It’s hard to give you an estimate because their cost depends on more factors, like how many submissions you’re aiming for and your audience targeting (for example, reaching people in big cities like London will usually cost you more than targeting residents from small villages in Africa). The good thing, though? You set your own budget!
- Professional help – If marketing isn’t your strongest skill or you don’t know how to run paid ads, it might make more sense to invest in a professional, especially if your survey is part of a bigger campaign. So, as seen before, freelancers charge around £379/day, and that number can go up for agencies. However, if you’re already partnering with someone, this might be included in your package
6. Evaluating your survey data
It’s easy to forget that the costs of conducting a survey aren’t just to do with creating it and getting people to take it. You’ll need to spend time (and potentially get help) analysing those results.
This will also be influenced by the number of submissions and type of survey (for example, if it involves many text-based answers that must be read one by one, it’ll take longer than with yes/no and multiple-choice questions).
- DIY survey data analysis – If you do it yourself, you’ll “only” need to invest your time. With ScoreApp, analysing your survey answers is a piece of cake! You get built-in analytics that are both robust and easy to understand
- Professional help – If you’re running a complex survey, you might want to hire someone who can help you make sense of those results, like a data analyst. To give you an idea, you can expect to pay them £450/day
Create and distribute your survey for FREE with ScoreApp
While the cost of your survey can range from £0 to thousands of pounds, why pay for features or help you don’t personally need?
With ScoreApp, you can minimise the cost of conducting your survey while smashing your goals:
- Build your survey for free and only upgrade to a paid plan if you need more features or responses
- Create your survey design and content using our templates, drag-and-drop builder, and AI
- No need to pay for separate hosting fees either (just however long you wish to use our platform for)
- Reach more people by sharing your survey on other channels and integrating ScoreApp with your email marketing platform
- Use our reporting features to analyse your submissions without needing external help
So, start by creating your survey today and for FREE with ScoreApp!
