How to Create a Free Online Survey with Mailchimp

Online surveys are a powerful tool that give you the knowledge you need to improve your customer experience—by asking your customers directly how they feel and what they want. Surveys can help you understand your customers’ values and whether you’re meeting their expectations. Many companies offer free survey tools but limit the functionality you need to gain meaningful insights.

Mailchimp’s free online survey maker gives you unlimited surveys, questions, and responses. Surveys are customizable, and our support articles and videos make them easy to create. With Mailchimp’s full-featured, brand-building Free marketing plan, you can collect and analyze survey data in one place, eliminating the need for time-consuming data migration.

Mailchimp vs. top free survey builders

You’ll find many options for creating free online surveys offered by various providers. Five popular choices include Mailchimp, SurveyMonkey, Zoho, Google Forms, and Typeform. Each option comes with unique benefits—but also limitations—so it’s essential to do some research before making your choice.

If you plan to use a simple, free survey to gather customer responses, think about how you might want to use the information after the survey. In some cases, you will only be able to view details for a restricted number of responses.

Do you plan to use your survey results to shape marketing and business decisions? Pay close attention to features like survey auto-tagging (where survey responses can be automatically tagged to your audience), reporting capabilities, and integration with the software you use for data analysis and other important marketing functions.

Here’s an overview of a few of the most popular free online survey tools.

Not only are Mailchimp’s survey-building options free on the free marketing plan, but they’re also incorporated into Mailchimp’s all-in-one Marketing Platform, integrating surveying features with marketing and customer management. Best of all, you get unlimited survey respondents—a component that isn’t offered by many other survey tools.

Mailchimp vs. Zoho Survey

Zoho offers an extensive suite of business tools, including Zoho Survey, which provides a wide variety of attractive features. Zoho Survey offers drag-and-drop functionality for survey elements, Mailchimp contact list integration, and an extensive survey question library.

Zoho’s free Unlimited survey option allows you to send out as many surveys as you want, provided they contain no more than 10 questions. This option also limits you to a maximum of 100 collected responses.

Mailchimp allows you to survey your audience whenever you want, and ask as many questions as you want. Not only can you collect unlimited responses, but you can also immediately put those responses to work across Mailchimp’s marketing and customer management platform.

Mailchimp vs. Google Forms

Google Forms offers basic, user-friendly survey building functions. If you’re already an avid Google user, you can work within Google Forms to create surveys that integrate seamlessly with other Google products.

One of the main limitations of Google Forms is that your survey responses are not linked or attached to your CRM or contact management system. This lack of integration makes it harder to take action on the data. With Mailchimp, your survey responses can be automatically added as tags to your contact profiles, and you can even add subscribers via Mailchimp's survey tool.

Mailchimp offers robust design features, including easy-to-use, attractive templates, and the ability to gather responses via social media. Mailchimp surveys integrate with the marketing platform seamlessly, whereas you’ll need to convert your Google Forms data to use it within your marketing platform or CRM.

Mailchimp vs. Typeform

Typeform is well suited for design-minded operations. Surveys integrate with all the big players: Mailchimp for contact lists, Salesforce for personalization, and Google Sheets for analytics. Typeform works well on mobile devices, too.

Typeform users, however, get only 3 surveys, with 10 questions per survey, and 100 responses. While Typeform is a popular survey-building tool, it’s also a stand-alone option. You’ll need to gather responses and then move them to your Mailchimp account or another platform to benefit from the data you collect. Typeform offers integrations with other platforms, including Mailchimp, but of course, that’s an extra step.

With Mailchimp, surveys are an essential marketing tool, not a feature you’ll have to pay extra to access. Mailchimp also allows you to collect and analyze survey data and put it into action with marketing campaigns, all on the same platform.

The power of an all-in-one Marketing Platform

By using a survey tool that’s connected to your primary marketing platform, you’ll be able to keep track of the valuable data you collect and use it to inspire your marketing efforts.

With Mailchimp, you can handle multiple aspects of your marketing campaigns in one comprehensive solution. Mailchimp’s survey tool integrates into its Marketing CRM, Customer Journey Builder, and social media management tools. With Mailchimp’s website builder, email marketing software, and more, surveys are part of a cohesive platform—all its features work together to help you market smarter. You can use surveys to grow your audience and develop more effective targeted marketing messages.

Tag-based segmentation

Mailchimp lets you tag survey responses directly in your marketing CRM. That means you can segment your customers based on their answers in several meaningful ways.

For example, you can group your happy vs. unsatisfied customers, flag customers who express interest in upcoming products, and store critical demographics to tailor future marketing campaigns.

Automated surveys

Mailchimp’s all-in-one Marketing Platform allows you to send surveys through its Customer Journey Builder automatically with one of our paid plans.

That means you can set up automations to send a survey after someone purchases a product from your online store or subscribes to your newsletter. Ask them for more information about themselves so you can start building customer segments or gauge their post-purchase satisfaction.

Setting up automated surveys through Mailchimp will take feedback management tasks off your plate while keeping you close to your customers.