Comparison

Qualtrics vs
Survey Everywhere

Different tools for different jobs — here's how to tell which one is yours.

Get a demo → Same-day consultation available.

Qualtrics is powerful, but that power comes at a cost most higher-ed survey use doesn't need to pay — a steep learning curve, quote-based pricing that can run into five figures, and a Canvas integration some institutions (Yale among them) are already discontinuing. Survey Everywhere delivers the LMS-native, logic-driven survey experience institutions actually need, at a flat annual price with no procurement surprises.

 

Author Transparency Note: This comparison was written by Survey Everywhere. We've aimed to give an honest account of where Qualtrics performs better, and where it doesn't. For the full picture across all [eight] tools in this category, see the hub page.

  •  

The bottom line

 

Survey Everywhere is the better choice for campus-wide surveying, LMS-native distribution, course evaluations, and faculty who need to launch studies without training. Qualtrics is the better choice for advanced research programs that need specialized methods, statistical tooling, and the broadest set of compliance certifications. The LMS gap is significant: Survey Everywhere integrates natively with Canvas, Blackboard, Brightspace, and Moodle; Qualtrics connects to Canvas only through a paid third-party service and has no direct Blackboard, Brightspace, or Moodle integration.

Feature by feature

Everything below is included in every Survey Everywhere campus license. Qualtrics pricing and LMS availability vary by contract.

At a Glance

At a Glance comparison
Feature Survey Everywhere Qualtrics
Best for Campus-wide surveying: course evaluations, research, and institutional surveys from inside the LMS Advanced research programs and enterprise experience management
Cost Fixed annual campus pricing Free plan (1 user, 500 total responses, 3 active surveys); paid plans by quote
Setup and ease of use Built for first-time builders; no training required Deepest feature set in the category, with a steep learning curve
Advanced research methods AI data analysis and role-based dashboards Stats iQ, Text iQ, conjoint, and MaxDiff

Pricing & Licensing

Pricing & Licensing comparison
Feature Survey Everywhere Qualtrics
No response caps ✓ ✗
No survey caps ✓ ✗
Fixed Pricing ✓ ✗ - Not publicly documented
No overage fees ✓ ✗
Everything Included ✓ ✗

At a Glance

At a Glance comparison
Feature Survey Everywhere Qualtrics
Best for Campus-wide surveying: course evaluations, research, and institutional surveys from inside the LMS Advanced research programs and enterprise experience management
Cost Fixed annual campus pricing [CONFIRM: free plan or trial] Free plan (1 user, 500 total responses, 3 active surveys); paid plans by quote
Setup and ease of use Built for first-time builders; no training required Deepest feature set in the category, with a steep learning curve
Advanced research methods AI data analysis and role-based dashboards Stats iQ, Text iQ, conjoint, and MaxDiff

LMS Integration

LMS Integration comparison
Feature Survey Everywhere Qualtrics
Canvas certified ✓ ✗
Canvas embedded Included 3rd party fee
Blackboard, Brightspace & Moodle integration Included Not available
LMS survey creation Included Canvas only, 3rd party fee
LMS survey sharing Included Canvas only, 3rd party fee
LMS quizzing Included Canvas only, 3rd party fee
LMS participation / scoring Included Canvas only, 3rd party fee
LMS grading Included Canvas only, 3rd party fee
LMS distribution Included Canvas only, 3rd party fee
Assign surveys to courses and groups Included Canvas only, 3rd party fee

Survey Features

Survey Features comparison
Feature Survey Everywhere Qualtrics
Question settings ✓ ✓
Branding for surveys and pages ✓ ✓
Survey and organizational settings ✓ ✓
Survey invitation emails ✓ ✓
Reminder and confirmation emails ✓ ✓
Visibility, branching & skip logic ✓ ✓
Choice and question randomization ✓ ✓
Matrix questions (incl. multi-question Likert) ✓ ✓
Piped text ✓ ✓
Loop and merge ✓ ✓
Participant file upload ✓ ✓
Create survey from external document (AI) ✓ ✗

Reporting & Analysis

Reporting & Analysis comparison
Feature Survey Everywhere Qualtrics
Results sharing ✓ ✓
Export results ✓ ✓
AI data analysis ✓ ✓
Advanced reporting ✓ ✓
Admin reporting ✓ ✓
Anonymity details ✓ ✓

Security & Administration

Security & Administration comparison
Feature Survey Everywhere Qualtrics
SAML / SCIM ✓ ✓
User roles and management ✓ ✓
Custom and private domain ✓ ✓
Sharing / teams ✓ ✓
Public API ✓ ✓
GDPR compliance ✓ ✓
WCAG 2.2 AA compliance ✓ ✗
ISO 27001 + 27701 compliance ✓ ✓
SOC 2 Type II ✓ ✓

Which tool is right for you

The decision usually comes down to your use case, not the tools themselves. Here's a quick filter.

Choose...

Choose... comparison
Survey Everywhere if... Qualtrics if...
Surveys need to launch from inside Canvas, Blackboard, Brightspace, or Moodle without a third-party fee Your research requires conjoint, MaxDiff, or advanced statistical tooling built into the platform
Faculty and graduate researchers need to launch studies without a week of training You have dedicated survey staff who already know Qualtrics well
You want unlimited surveys and responses on one fixed-price campus contract FedRAMP or other certifications beyond SOC 2 and ISO 27001 + 27701 are required
You need course evaluations tied to rosters without a separate licence You're running enterprise experience management beyond higher ed (e.g., a health system)
WCAG 2.2 AA is a procurement requirement Budget isn't the deciding factor

How each tool performs by scenario

Both tools can handle a research survey. The differences show up in specific conditions. Below is a direct comparison across six common campus use cases.

comparison
Scenario Survey Everywhere Qualtrics
Course evaluations Yes — roster-aware delivery via LTI 1.3, anonymous aggregation by section, and department and college roll-ups, included in the campus license. Yes — a dedicated Course Evaluations solution is available, but it requires an additional license, and LMS automation runs through a paid Canvas integration.
Faculty research study Yes — visual branching, piped text, loop and merge, and SPSS export, with no response caps. Built to launch in a single sitting. Very well — one of Qualtrics' strongest use cases. The deepest feature set in the category; plan for training time.
Campus-wide deployment Yes — fixed-price campus license, role-based dashboards, SSO, and all four LMS integrations included. Yes — brand licenses scale campus-wide with strong admin controls. Pricing is quote-based and renewal increases are commonly reported.
New-student outreach Yes — welcome surveys and orientation check-ins delivered inside the LMS, with completion tracking by cohort. Yes — strong distribution options. Setup can feel heavy for quick check-ins.
Campus climate study Yes — multi-path logic, authenticated LMS or SAML responses, and anonymous aggregation where needed. Very well — advanced logic and text analytics suit large, complex instruments.
Alumni and advancement surveys Yes — branded surveys, RSVPs, and giving-interest segmentation from the same campus license. Yes — strong branding and distribution. Often licensed separately by advancement teams.

Watch our unedited first-time tests of both tools:

Our CEO tries Survey Everywhere — unedited, no prep. Note: our CEO is familiar with this product. 

Video transcript – Survey Everywhere

0:00 Hello and welcome back. Uh, so we're looking at the survey tool market. Uh, we're doing some comparisons. This is Survey Everywhere and as the CEO of Poll Everywhere, uh, I have in fact seen this.

0:13 We built this tool. Uh, so I can't do a fresh once through, uh, here. I just want to admit that off the top.

0:21 I can, however, uh, run you guys through a similar workflow and show you what it looks like. Uh, so, of course, if we wanted to make a survey here, I've already logged in.

0:31 Uh, that process I didn't do in any of the other tools. So, this is where we start. So, we have Surveys and we have Teams and we have Course Evals and Courses.

0:39 Courses, of course, are connected to the LMS and Participant Groups would be something that you uploaded if you didn't have an LMS connection.

0:45 Uh, so if if I wanted to make a new survey. Uh, I can, of course, create it with AI. I can do so manually.

0:53 Uh, I can import a Qualtrics file. Uh, I'm going to insert some text from the Berkeley, uh, Center for Teaching and Learning.

1:02 A course evaluation survey from this data site. And we're going to go ahead and use the AI, so the AI is going to show us, uh, the pieces that it's working through along the way.

1:36 Okay, so I'm going to move this out of our way and see where we are. Okay. So it looks like this, uhm, we have men 1 to max 5, so it looks like, uh, the scales came in here positively.

1:56 Of course, we could change these if we wanted to, to, you know, just for a kind. Uhm, it split this survey into some open-ended, uh, on the second page and the scale questions on one page.

2:09 I like that layout, and we can, of course, visualize our overall layout if we want to. Uh, these are the pages, and if we needed to, we could add some branching here so if we wanted to add some branching logic, so if we had, if we wanted to go to the end of the survey when, say, something on the first

2:33 survey, so if these are, uh, well-designed, so if this is five out of five, then maybe you just want to go ahead and say, uh, that's good enough.

2:43 Uh, so if this is a five out of five, then we're gonna go ahead and skip to the end of the survey.

2:49 Uh, and now we can see the branch takes us around to the end of the survey, and they wouldn't fill out the open-ended feedback.

2:56 You probably wouldn't want to do this specific change, but this just gives you an idea of, uh, how this can work.

3:05 So we go back to the editor, uh, that's still there. Um, and you see the branch logic over here. Uh, and it also shows up at the bottom here.

3:15 Um, there is, of course, you know, a variety of ways to, uh, to add things, uh, manually. Um, so if you wanted to do that, you could click here.

3:26 Uh, we could, say, add different types of questions. Um, you can also go back to the AI assistant and ask it to do things.

3:37 Um, the first three questions on page one, rating questions, rather than scale ones.

3:51 Uh, so this is just showing you that not only can you get a jump start in creating the content that you need, but, uh, you can also use the AI to make edits.

4:03 Uh, and it looks like we, uh, updated these. So, now we have rating questions. So these are rate out of five stars.

4:12 Uh, and if we liked that, we could, of course, change the whole thing. Uh, if we wanted to preview the difference, uh, then this is what this looks like.

4:22 So you go through one at a time and you rate. Uhm, and so I think this looks, you know, kind of like what I expected.

4:30 So we built a course evaluation survey pretty quickly here. And if we go ahead and publish this, uhm, we can make a public link for it as well.

4:39 Uh, we can name it Public CE1. Uh, we could limit it to the organization. And we could, uh, put it into a course if we wanted to, or limit it to a participation group.

4:55 We could limit the time period of course, that would make sense for most course evaluation surveys. But for this one, we're just making a quick link.

5:02 Uh, so then if we copy that link, and we wanted to go check that out, uh, now we can do our Reading?

5:13 And I'm not reading these questions, but I'm assuming that, uh, we just need to get some answers in here, so we can see some of the other pieces here, uhm, well, uh, Cheeseburger selection is really what did it for me.

5:37 Uh, and then as far as what one change would most improvement, uhm, Bacon, yeah, I think that's the answer in this case, so, it's important feedback for the instructor, and now we have completed this, and if we go ahead and close, uh, that window, uh, we can go back to our, Oh, well, that's editing.

6:00 I think we can go back to our. Our survey, uhm, and so that's in the distribute, if we go back to build, we can see it, but now we have some results.

6:09 So if we take a look at our results, uh, we got a couple of, uh, participants, only one completed it, looks like somebody else loaded the link, maybe when we clicked on it a second to go, and you can see how it how they replied, uhm, how the distribution looks, uh, you can see by color breakdown what

6:33 this looks like, we can see the, the feedback there, uhm, we can break this down by participants, of course, we can also look by question, uh, let's see, we want to look at these, you know, MediR, open response questions, we can do that, can of course, uh, execute export this, or put it into a PDF, uh

6:53 , and then you can use all sorts of different tools to, uh, report on that, how you want it to, SPSS, uh, you can put it into other packages, or like R as well, uh, and so that is, uh, putting together a course evaluation survey in Survey Everywhere, uh, we think that, uh, Atlassian, how it's connected

7:14 with the LMSs, built with those from the beginning, uh, some of the ease of use here, some of the design features, we really, we tried to find some of the best design ideas and surveys that we could, and combine those with some of the insights from higher education with our partners, uh, and we're really

7:32 excited about what we have for you guys, uh, and, yeah, that's gonna do it for today. Survey Everywhere, uhm, and hopefully you're as excited about this part of the platform as we are.

7:43 Thanks.

  •  

Our CEO tries Qualtrics for the first time — unedited, no prep, no retakes.

Video transcript – Qualtrics

0:01 Alright, uh, welcome back. Uh, to our little series here that we've been doing for, uh, surveys. And today we have Qualtrics.

0:11 Uh, you can find a way to get a Qualtrics account on a strategic trial for free in 2026. Uh, and so that is what I've done.

0:21 I have a 30-day trial. Uh, I don't have anything with Qualtrics now, so I'm, I'm just gonna try, okay. I'm gonna need to click continue.

0:30 that's a little sneaky on a big screen and here we are. We're in a survey builder, but I don't really want a tour.

0:38 Similar to the other ones of these that we've done, I'm kind of looking for if there's an opportunity to do this with an AI.

0:45 I don't really want to make this by hand. It is possible that they have that in here, and obviously see some option surveys, different field options.

1:04 Okay, it's very likely that this free version does not have what I'm hoping for here, and And that's reasonable, but I do want to give it a shot, so I'm looking around for it.

1:23 I don't see an opportunity to make anything that way, so I think what I'll try to do here is maybe just make a couple of questions and let's see what do we got.

1:39 not. This is, it looks like just a multiple choice. So if we go to the flow, okay.

1:57 Okay, if I go back to Builder, this is block behavior, so there's a question block.

2:13 Okay, so I can change this here so we can make a matrix, I could ask like, how well did the course achieve the objectives out.

2:28 This isn't a great question but let's say objective 1, 2, 3, OK.

2:43 So we have this and we can also import from the library What do we got? Hard education, course evil and then yeah, we could grab a few of these to fill this out.

3:01 And there's some good ones, I think. Okay, so it was satisfied. What's your major? Of course, if we had, you know, I had a more advanced version of the software, or I'm sure that what's your major question could get filled in by an integration of some kind.

3:21 Would you like lease, would you like most? Interesting that it actually imports the question eight, which we go from Q1 to Q1 to Q4, but okay.

3:34 And so if we just go ahead and publish this, somebody's drink is great, does have three recommendations, some kind of curious.

3:45 A lot of text entry boxes right at the beginning to decline and compatible with synthetic panels. Okay, and then by detection we passed a lot of these things.

4:05 Okay. Well, I feel like it's not a bad review but it did reset us on the path to publishing so let's try to get back on that path and yeah we'll say user published okay copy this link and if I jump in here I should be able to fill this in my major was computer science while ago slightly very okay lunch

4:50 service and at least chocolate that's a really subpar, and obviously that just flows right into the next question.

5:04 So, and this gives us a feel, so I feel like this is a pretty modern, I like the contrast, I like the layout, I like that you can click on the label and not just the button, I like the highlighting.

5:20 There's some subtle things that they're doing really well here. it's very clear. I can tell that they've polished this quite a bit.

5:28 So response has been recorded and drop out of this window. Okay, and then if we got the distributions, I assume we can see the one that we just launched.

5:43 It says no response is however, so let's see about results to exclusive. So, well, maybe I made an error there in the end of the reports, I create a report.

6:18 Okay, okay, so the data set is not up to date yet, it still believes that I have zero responses. That's a bit disappointing.

6:41 So do we do yeah it does say that it was recorded well. Results again.

6:59 Okay so it took us again to populate but now we're seeing these responses of slightly well and very well these bars look odd because there's only the one response I think that's actually okay and in terms of a visual I think bars make a lot of sense I it's not maybe as nice as the Microsoft visualization

7:24 but I think it's a very good choice it breaks these out. I think this is a little confusing with the data that we have, but I like what they're doing here.

7:39 I like that you can sort these. It's very clear. Straight forward on these questions, the average and minimum maximum. Yeah, I think it's a little confusing giving that we have one result.

7:55 But with large surveys, I think this makes a lot of sense for each question. And so that's easy to follow.

8:03 Design wise, I might, especially with the format here, where we have a lot of unused space, I might choose to put these side by side in a view like this.

8:13 But I think they overall do a really nice job of the layout and design with these. So it's a minor thing, and it really wouldn't work if these pieces of text were much longer for the screen than I'm on and also I do have a fairly large screen here so I'm just thinking out loud about the things that I'm

8:32 noticing here so the reporting was maybe slightly delayed especially relative to the other platforms but it's a free strategic trial of an account and overall it works pretty well for the features that we have access to it's unable to use AI But it did have a library of questions, the way that they look

8:57 , I think, is pretty strong. I assume that you could customize that to a pretty large extent if you spend a significant amount of time in here.

9:07 And I noticed that there were some branching options and other things in here. So yeah, I think, you know, you spend a few minutes in here and created a quick survey and were able to answer it.

9:17 And I think that's going to do it for Qualtrics. Thanks.

 


Pricing and limits

 

Survey Everywhere:

Campus-wide deployments are priced better than other survey platforms, with greater savings when bundled with Poll Everywhere. Everything in the Pricing & Licensing table above is included in the campus license.

 

Qualtrics:

Qualtrics' free plan supports one user, 500 total responses, and three active surveys. Self-serve research plans start at [$420/month] with a shared response allowance; university brand licences are quote-based. The Canvas integration requires a third-party service and API access, and the Course Evaluations solution requires an additional license.

 

What usually triggers a procurement conversation:

Procurement typically enters at renewal, when departments want LMS integration, or when multiple teams are paying for separate licences. Qualtrics holds a broad set of certifications, so the conversation usually centers on total cost, response allowances, and add-on fees. Confirm what's included in your brand licence when comparing side by side.


Switching between Survey Everywhere and Qualtrics

 

Moving from Qualtrics to Survey Everywhere:

Survey Everywhere can import surveys from other tools and uses AI to keep logic and page breaks intact as you move. Qualtrics exports survey content as QSF files and response data as SPSS, Excel, or CSV; export both before your license ends. The main investment is reviewing each migrated survey, not complexity.

 

Moving from Survey Everywhere to Qualtrics:

Survey Everywhere content does not export to Qualtrics' QSF format, so surveys would be rebuilt. Results export cleanly to SPSS and Excel. If your use case is shifting toward specialized research methods, the tradeoff is losing native LMS integration and fixed pricing in exchange for Qualtrics' advanced analysis tools.

What changes when the
caps come off

∞
unlimited surveys and responses on campus licences
4
native LMS integrations included, not sold separately
0
overage fees, implementation fees, or training costs

Ready to replace
Qualtrics?

We'll map your current Qualtrics contract against a Survey Everywhere campus licence and show you the difference in writing.