Top 6 Online Survey Participant Recruitment Tools in 2024

Figure 1. The popularity of the keyword “survey participant” on Google in the US between 2016-2023.

Companies conduct online surveys to understand market trends, their target audience, or existing customers. However, finding the right participants is crucial in market research, as biased or unrepresentative data may lead to misleading results and misinformed business decisions. Companies get help from survey tools in recruiting participants for their research. However, considering the survey respondent size, segmentation possibilities, or free trial options, finding the right vendor can be both challenging and time-consuming.

We carried out a benchmarking study to help your vendor selection process​​. We’ve found several crucial metrics to consider while choosing the right vendor for your business for online participant recruitment.

Top 6 online survey participant recruitment tools

* Reviews are derived from B2B software review platforms, including G2, Capterra, and Trustradius.

Note: With resonio by Clickworker (sponsored) at the top, we’ve alphabetically listed the vendors.

Check out our survey participant recruitment service deep dive for top providers such as Pollfish, Qualtrics Core XM, Amazon Mechanical Turk Survey, and SurveyMonkey Audience.

Vendor selection criteria

We narrowed our survey panel company list based on some criteria. We used the number of B2B reviews and employees of a company to estimate its market presence, as these criteria are public and verifiable.

As a result, we set certain parameters to focus our efforts on the top 6 companies in terms of market presence. We selected firms with

• 60+ employees
• 25+ reviews on review platforms, including G2, Trustradius, Capterra

Top 6 metrics in choosing the best participant recruitment service

1- Diverse and large respondent pool

Ensure the service provides access to a broad and diverse group of respondents. This is especially important for B2B companies targeting decision-makers or B2C businesses focusing on affluent shoppers. A large respondent pool guarantees that the survey reaches a wide and representative audience, increasing the reliability of the results.

For those interested, here is our article on the best practices for conducting online surveys.

2- Multilingual respondents

Most recruitment participants’ services rely on English while collecting feedback from their audience. However, customers of global companies come from diverse parts of the world and speak various languages. Thus, conducting user research in different languages and obtaining feedback from non-English speaking customers can help businesses get deeper and more inclusive insights.

3- Segmentation possibilities

To obtain reliable data, researching the right audience is as crucial as the sample’s representativeness. Vendors can divide their crowd into segments based on certain demographic characteristics (e.g., age, language, country, disposable income). As a result, only participants who match the target audience’s profile can complete the survey.

4- Prescreening participants

Source: recollective

Figure 1. Examples of prescreening questions before the participants take the survey

The recruitment service should have robust screening processes to ensure that participants are genuine and fit the criteria you’re looking for. This helps in filtering out unqualified or fraudulent respondents, maintaining the integrity of your user research.

5- Multi-channel survey distribution

Companies can deploy participants through a variety of methods. Most businesses offer web-based panels where customers can register and complete activities. However, some also offer desktop or mobile implementations (Android or iOS).

6- Free trial options

Companies can sometimes get stuck between two options and may want to try both before investing in one of the tools. While some services let you try them out for free with some basic tools, others require payment in advance.

Transparency statement:

AIMultiple serves numerous emerging tech companies, including resonio by Clickworker.

Here is also our data-driven list of survey participant recruitment services and survey tools for those interested.

You can also check our data-driven list of market research tools.

Further Reading

• Zoho Survey Evaluation & Top 10 Survey Tool Alternatives
• 5 Best Google Survey Alternatives: Analysis of 30k+ Reviews
• Top 7 Customer Survey Software
• Top 8 Customer Feedback Tools

Reach us if you have any questions about conducting online surveys: