Disclosure and accuracy: this comparison is published by VoteGenerator, which appears in the list. Pricing and limits come from vendor pages and independent reviews published in 2026; where sources gave ranges we show the range rather than a single figure, and where a vendor does not publish something we mark it unverified rather than absent. Free tiers change — verify before committing.
What Does an Employee Survey Tool Actually Cost?
Almost every dedicated engagement platform prices per employee per month, which means the bill grows with headcount whether or not people respond. The category runs roughly $3 to $16 per employee per month.
Above roughly 200 employees, a dedicated platform starts earning its cost through HRIS segmentation, driver analytics and threshold-gated anonymity — things you cannot replicate with a survey tool and a spreadsheet. The flat-rate argument is strongest between about 10 and 150 people.
What Actually Matters in an Employee Survey Tool
Genuinely essential: how anonymity is implemented (not just claimed), what the free tier really allows, whether employees need to log in, and whether you can export the data.
Matters as your practice matures: threshold-gated anonymity, HRIS segmentation, driver analytics, validated question banks and automated pulse delivery. These separate a survey tool from an engagement platform, and they are the reason the platforms charge per seat.
Rarely decisive early on: skip logic, custom branding and integration breadth. Worth having, seldom the reason a programme succeeds or fails.
1. VoteGenerator
VoteGenerator is a general poll and survey maker rather than a dedicated engagement platform, and the reason HR teams use it is pricing shape. It is flat per account — $19 a month, or $16 a month billed annually — no matter whether you survey 8 people or 800. Every dedicated platform on this page charges per employee per month.
Employees answer through a link with no login of any kind. That matters beyond convenience: a questionnaire that requires signing in with a work account is harder for people to believe is anonymous, whatever the vendor says. Anonymous Mode is opt-in per questionnaire and enforced at the server, not hidden in the interface.
The HR template set covers engagement, satisfaction, job satisfaction, weekly pulse, exit interview, new hire 30-60-90 day, onboarding, diversity and inclusion, wellbeing, mental health, recognition, benefits, remote work, candidate experience, internship feedback and 360-degree feedback — part of a library of 120+ editable templates.
Question types include multiple choice, checkboxes, short and long text, dropdowns, and rating scales — 1 to 5 with star, heart, thumb, fire or smiley icons across several aspects at once, or a configurable numeric range including the 0 to 10 scale used for eNPS. Results appear on a real-time dashboard, share by link or QR code for frontline and deskless staff with no work email, and embed on an intranet page.
- Flat pricing — no per-seat cost as headcount grows
- No account required from you or from employees
- Anonymity enforced server-side: device, country, region and referrer never collected
- 120+ editable templates including the full HR set
- Slack app with timezone-aware recurring pulse questionnaires
- Automatic eNPS scoring with Promoter/Passive/Detractor split
- Single-use access codes give one response per employee without identifying anyone
- Rating scales across multiple aspects, plus QR codes and intranet embedding
- 100 responses per questionnaire on the free plan
- No threshold-gated anonymity for small teams
- No HRIS integration — you export CSV and segment yourself
- Templates are practical, not psychometrically validated
- No skip logic or branching
- No driver analytics or industry benchmarking
2. Workleap Officevibe
Officevibe is the closest thing to a free dedicated engagement tool. It delivers one short anonymous pulse question a week through Slack or Teams, tracks ten core engagement metrics over time, and surfaces team sentiment in a manager dashboard without routing through HR. Setup takes about an hour.
The free tier covers up to 10 users, which is a genuine offer rather than a trial, but it is a hard ceiling. Paid plans run roughly $3.50 to $5 per user per month with a 10-user minimum, so a 50-person team is around $2,100 a year at the entry price.
- Genuinely free up to 10 users, not a time-limited trial
- Automated weekly pulse — nobody has to remember to send it
- Anonymous messages to managers alongside pulse responses
- Fastest deployment of any dedicated tool, often within hours
- Built-in eNPS and ten tracked engagement metrics
- Manager coaching prompts built into the dashboard
- Hard 10-user cap on free, with a 10-user minimum on paid
- Per-employee pricing scales with headcount
- Requires Slack or Teams — no standalone link option
- Limited analytics depth against Culture Amp or Leapsome
- No performance review module
- Enterprise teams outgrow it quickly
3. Google Forms
Google Forms publishes no response cap. The practical ceiling is the linked Google Sheet's 10 million cells, and responses land in a spreadsheet you already know how to use. For a long questionnaire going to a large workforce at no cost, nothing here matches it.
The problem for employee surveys is structural. Turn off email collection and the form is anonymous, but anyone can submit repeatedly. Enable the one-response-per-person limit and Google Forms requires employees to sign in so it can identify them. You get anonymity or duplicate control, not both. A form with email collection off but sign-in required still logs which Google account submitted each response at the backend, where Workspace administrators can see it.
- No response cap — the ceiling is the linked Sheet
- Unlimited questions and unlimited forms, free
- Free CSV and Google Sheets export
- Familiar to almost every employee
- File uploads into Drive on Workspace accounts
- Quiz grading with automatic marking
- Cannot combine anonymity with one-response-per-person
- Sign-in requirement still logs the Google account at backend level
- Google account required to create
- No employee survey templates or question science
- No ranked choice, scheduling or automatic eNPS
- File upload questions always force respondents to authenticate
4. Microsoft Forms
Inside a Microsoft 365 organisation, Forms costs nothing extra, everyone is already signed in, results sync to Excel, and forms can be pinned as a Teams tab. Business and education accounts are documented at 50,000 responses per form, and each form supports up to 200 questions.
Without a subscription the picture changes sharply. A free personal Microsoft account caps at 200 responses per form and the cap cannot be raised — once reached, collection stops permanently and Microsoft's own guidance is to export to Excel, clear the responses and start again. Anonymous response links are supported natively, which is better than Google Forms, but tenant administrators can restrict them.
- Included with any Microsoft 365 subscription
- 50,000 responses per form on business accounts
- 200 questions per form
- Native anonymous response links, unlike Google Forms
- Teams integration — share in a channel or pin as a tab
- Free Excel export and basic branching logic
- 200-response permanent cap on free personal accounts
- Requires a Microsoft 365 subscription to be genuinely useful
- Anonymity can be restricted by tenant administrators
- Data stored on US infrastructure regardless of plan
- Only 21 templates and no custom branding at any tier
- No recurring scheduling without a Power Automate flow
5. Culture Amp
Culture Amp is what a formal engagement programme looks like. Question banks are written by organisational psychologists and benchmarked against a large dataset, driver analytics identify which factors actually move engagement, and results segment automatically by department and tenure through HRIS integration.
Its anonymity model is stronger than anything free here. Administrators set a minimum number of responses before manager dashboards display team results, so a manager of four people cannot reverse-engineer who said what. Pricing is roughly $5 to $8 per user per month with no free tier, so a 50-person company is around $4,800 a year.
- Question banks written by organisational psychologists
- Threshold-gated anonymity protects small teams
- Driver analytics show what actually moves engagement
- Industry benchmarking against a large dataset
- HRIS integration segments results automatically
- Slack and Teams delivery
- No free tier of any kind
- Per-employee pricing — roughly $4,800/year for 50 people
- Implementation typically takes weeks, not hours
- Overkill for a team of ten
- Enterprise sales process rather than self-serve
- Custom pricing at larger sizes
6. Tally
Tally offers unlimited forms and unlimited submissions on the free plan, subject to fair-use, which is genuinely uncommon. The editor works like a document — start typing, no drag-and-drop — and conditional logic, file uploads and Stripe payments are all included free.
It is a form builder rather than an employee survey tool: no engagement templates, no eNPS scoring, no pulse scheduling and no anonymity architecture beyond not asking for a name. Removing Tally branding requires the paid plan.
- Unlimited forms and responses on the free plan
- Conditional logic included free
- Notion-style editor that is genuinely pleasant to use
- File uploads and payment collection on free
- Duplicate submission prevention and password protection
- 100+ integrations including Slack, Sheets and Notion
- Requires an account to create
- Tally branding until the paid plan
- No employee survey templates or question bank
- No automatic eNPS calculation
- No pulse scheduling or recurring delivery
- Fewer question types than dedicated survey platforms
Full Comparison Table
Free tier figures unless stated. Verified August 2026.
| Feature | VoteGenerator | Officevibe | Google Forms | Microsoft Forms | Culture Amp | Tally |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 100 resp / questionnaire, 3 active | Up to 10 users | No response cap | 200 per form (personal) | None | Unlimited |
| Paid from | $19/mo flat | ~$3.50/user/mo | Free | With M365, ~$6/mo | ~$5–8/user/mo | ~$24–29/mo |
| Cost for 50 employees / yr | $190 | ~$2,100 | $0 | Bundled with M365 | ~$4,800 | ~$348 |
| Employee signup | Never | Slack or Teams | Only if 1-response limit | Not with anon link | HRIS-authenticated | Not required |
| Anonymous + no duplicates | Yes | Yes | Not possible | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Threshold-gated anonymity | No | Not published | No | No | Yes | No |
| HR templates | Full HR set of 120+ | Engagement built in | None | 21 general | Validated bank | None |
| Automatic eNPS | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | No |
| One response, no identity | Access codes (Business) | Not published | Not possible | Not published | Threshold-gated | Cookie-based |
| Rating scales | 1–5 icons, multi-aspect, 0–10 | Built into pulse | Linear scale | Likert | Validated scales | Yes |
| Recurring pulse | Slack, timezone-aware | Weekly, built in | No | Power Automate only | Yes | No |
| Data export (free) | Paid only | Not published | Free CSV/Sheets | Free Excel | Paid | Paid only |
| Skip logic | No | Not published | Basic | Basic | Yes | Yes, free |
| HRIS integration | No | Not published | No | Microsoft 365 | Yes | No |
* Microsoft's own documentation is inconsistent on the business limit, citing both 50,000 responses per form and 5,000,000 for Microsoft 365 for business. Also compared but not shown as cards: SurveyMonkey (25 viewable responses per survey on Basic), Lattice and 15Five (both roughly $8–15 per user per month, no free tier).
How Anonymity Actually Works in Each Tool
This is the question that decides whether an employee questionnaire produces honest answers, and the implementations differ far more than the marketing does.
Turn off email collection and your form is anonymous, but anyone can submit repeatedly. Enable the one-response-per-person limit and Google Forms requires employees to sign in so it can identify them. You can have anonymity or duplicate control, not both.
There is a second layer: a form with email collection off but sign-in required still logs which Google account submitted each response at the backend, where Workspace administrators can see it. Employees are told the form is anonymous. It is not.
Threshold-gated anonymity is what enterprise platforms use. Culture Amp, Workday Peakon and CultureMonkey let administrators set a minimum number of responses before manager dashboards show team results, so a manager of four people cannot work out who said what. VoteGenerator does not have this — if you are surveying small teams and managers will see team-level breakdowns, that alone is a reason to choose a dedicated platform.
Server-side anonymity is VoteGenerator's approach. Anonymous Mode is opt-in per questionnaire — you do have to turn it on. When enabled, respondent names are discarded, device type, country, region and referrer are never collected rather than collected and hidden, and timestamps are stored as dates rather than exact times, so responses cannot be re-identified by the order they arrived. Employees answer through a link with no login of any kind, which matters beyond convenience: a questionnaire requiring a work account login is harder for people to believe is anonymous.
Solving the trap without identity. The reason Google Forms cannot combine anonymity with duplicate prevention is that it enforces the limit by identifying people. VoteGenerator's Business plan issues unique single-use access codes instead: you distribute one code per employee, each works exactly once, and the code is not tied to a name. That gives one response per person and genuine anonymity at the same time. Domain restriction can also confine an embedded questionnaire to your own intranet so the link cannot be shared outside. On the free plan, duplicate prevention is cookie-based, which stops casual double-submission but not a determined person with several browsers.
The question to ask any vendor is what is stored, not what is displayed. Most tools mean "we do not show the name" when they say anonymous.
20 Employee Survey Questions You Can Copy
Grouped by theme. Use three to five for a pulse, or the full set for a quarterly engagement questionnaire. Numeric items work on a 0–10 scale; the rest are agree-or-disagree or open text.
- How likely are you to still be working here in 12 months? (0–10)
- Would you recommend this company as a place to work? (0–10)
- Do you feel your work makes a meaningful contribution?
- In the last week, have you felt genuinely proud of something you did here?
- Does your manager give you the support you need to do your job well?
- When you raise a problem, does anything happen as a result?
- Have you had a useful conversation about your career in the last three months?
- Do you know what is expected of you at work?
- Is your current workload sustainable?
- How often do you work outside your contracted hours?
- Do you have the tools and information you need to do your job?
- Have you felt able to take time off when you needed it?
- Can you disagree with a decision here without it counting against you?
- Do you feel you can be yourself at work?
- Are good ideas heard regardless of who raises them?
- Is recognition given fairly across the team?
- What is the one thing you would change about working here?
- What is the main reason you would consider leaving?
- What has gone well in the last month that we should do more of?
- Is there anything you have wanted to say but have not felt able to?
"How likely are you to still be working here in 12 months?" on a 0–10 scale. Scores on this item tend to drift downward three to six months before someone resigns. Asked quarterly, you see the decline while you can still act on it. Asked annually, you are reading a resignation letter.
What VoteGenerator Cannot Do
Worth stating plainly, because for a formal engagement programme these are the things that matter.
- No threshold-gated anonymity. Results are not withheld until a minimum number respond, so surveying teams of three or four needs care about who sees the breakdown.
- No HRIS integration. Results do not segment automatically by department, tenure or manager — you export CSV and segment yourself.
- No validated question bank. Templates are practical rather than psychometrically validated or benchmarked.
- No driver analytics or benchmarking. You see the responses, not which factors are moving engagement.
- No skip logic. Every respondent sees every question, so a questionnaire that adapts by role is not possible.
If you need those, Culture Amp, Lattice or 15Five are the right category and the per-seat cost buys something real.
Which Tool Should You Choose?
- More than 10 employees and no budget for per-seat pricing
- Employees should not have to log in to anything
- You need exit interview, onboarding or one-off questionnaires
- Flat cost matters more than survey science
- Ten or fewer people and you want it free
- An automated weekly pulse with no effort each week
- Your team already lives in Slack or Teams
- You want eNPS tracked without setting it up
- You need unlimited free responses
- The questionnaire is long — 40 questions or more
- Anonymity is not required for this survey
- You will analyse results in a spreadsheet
- Your organisation already pays for Microsoft 365
- Employees work inside Teams every day
- You need 200 questions or 50,000 responses
- Results should land in Excel automatically
- You are running a formal engagement programme
- Managers see team-level results and you need threshold gating
- Validated questions and benchmarking justify the cost
- You have HRIS data to segment against
- You want unlimited responses and a nicer builder
- Conditional logic matters and you will not pay for it
- The form is going on a website or intranet
- You do not need HR templates or eNPS
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