5 alternatives to Respondent.io for market research

Respondent.io is one of the better-known platforms for finding market research participants. The New York-based company launched in 2016 and now states that it has more than 3 million participants in 150 countries worldwide. 

While Respondent.io is used by many market researchers, it does have several drawbacks. It’s perceived as a relatively expensive method for finding market research participants. And many people find the platform confusing and hard to use.

If Respondent.io isn’t meeting your needs, the good news is that there are numerous Respondent.io alternatives available. In this article, you’ll learn about:

• What Respondent.io offers
• Advantages and drawbacks of Respondent.io
• Five of the best alternatives to Respondent.io

What is Respondent.io?

Respondent.io is a market research panel recruitment platform. As mentioned above, the company says it has some 3 million participants in 150 countries. It enables most kinds of online market research, including large-scale quantitative surveys and in-depth qualitative interviews. 

When you want to recruit participants to a panel, you simply log into your Respondent.io account and ‘tell’ the software which kinds of people you want to include in your study. The platform has a proprietary matching algorithm, which identifies candidates based on your requirements. 

There are a variety of Respondent.io plans, letting you recruit both B2C and B2B participants (pay-as-you-go prices begin at $39 per B2C participant or $65 per B2B participant). Each plan includes Zoom integrations, bulk messaging services, NDAs with document signing, and other handy features. 

Advantages of Respondent.io

Respondent.io is popular among market researchers for a number of reasons:

• Its large, global participant pool and robust anti-fraud measures.
• Fast recruitment - the company states a median time of 30 minutes for first participant match.
• High response rates - Respondent.io says 95% of participants show up.
• A central place to find, schedule, and pay participants.

Drawbacks of Respondent.io

Market researchers often start investigating Respondent.io competitors after coming up against some of the following limitations:

• Expense: Finding participants can quickly become expensive, especially if you need a large panel.
• Design and UX: Some market researchers find the platform’s design confusing.
• Participant quality control: Some users report issues with participants either not fitting the brief or not being who they claim.

5 of the best alternatives to Respondent.io

There are numerous Respondent.io alternatives out there. If you’re looking for a different way to collect data about your market, consider the following suppliers. 

1. Prolific

Prolific is a market research panel recruitment platform that is used by over 10,000 companies to find participants from around the world. A member of ESOMAR, the global market research association, the company meets the highest standards for participant recruitment. 

Prolific gives you access to over 200,000 people in 38 countries. Each of these respondents undergoes a thorough vetting process with 35+ checks, which includes bank-grade ID verification. That means you know you’re getting real responses. 

Using Prolific, you can find research participants using 300+ filters (and define your own filters using simple screener surveys). It then takes as little as 15 minutes to begin recruiting participants from Prolific’s highly engaged pool. The platform lets you easily switch between qualitative and quantitative research methods and carry out UX research. It also lets you connect to dozens of third-party research tools. 

Advice: Navigating market research for startups

Why is Prolific one of the best alternatives to Respondent.io?

Prolific offers a number of specific advantages over Respondent.io:

• High-quality participants: Prolific’s rigorous approach to vetting participants gives you the most reliable data. Participants are also paid fairly, which results in higher engagement levels.
• Highly specific targeting: With over 300 filters, you can quickly find an enormous range of people with very specific characteristics.
• Speed and ease of use: It takes just minutes to launch a study on Prolific, and the platform’s user-friendly design makes managing projects easy. Many of Prolific’s customers receive complete datasets within as little as two hours.
• Affordable: Prolific requires market researchers to pay participants a minimum fee of $8 per hour. While it somewhat depends on the length of your study (try the Prolific calculator here), this typically works out much less expensive than Respondent.io. 

What is Prolific best for? 

High-quality data from engaged participants. Prolific is a strong all-rounder for market researchers, providing plenty of detail and insights while also being flexible and affordable. 

• Use Prolific for deeper insights into what your market really feels about products, brands, and messaging. 

Case study: How ACN delivered performance analytics for brand marketing campaigns with Prolific and Gorilla

2. UserTesting

If you’re building apps or websites, then UserTesting is an excellent resource for market research. The platform allows designers to invite participants to engage with prototypes of their apps. You can then gather large amounts of telemetric data to learn how people navigate the design. UserTesting also allows you to capture video and audio to better understand what people think. 

The UserTesting network includes participants from over 30 countries. And while the number of active participants is not published on the firm’s website, they report that over 200,000 people visit their contributor network sign-up page per month, suggesting they have a large pool. Response rates are typically fast on UserTesting, with 80% of sessions reportedly completed in just a few hours. 

Why is UserTesting one of the best alternatives to Respondent.io?

UserTesting is a strong Respondent.io competitor for a few key reasons:

• Niche focus: If your market research is focused specifically on UX, user journey and design of apps and websites, then UserTesting offers numerous tools and features that help you gather valuable insights.
• Participant quality program: UserTesting uses a purpose-built quality program that detects and bars professional testers. This helps ensure your data and the insights you gather are authentic. 

What is UserTesting best for? 

Website design and app UX testing. It’s ideal when you want to understand how a wide range of people might interact with your solution. 

• Use UserTesting to capture insights that will influence how you design products and services. 

3. Pollfish

Pollfish is a leading ‘DIY’ market research solution that says its network includes over 250 million respondents in over 160 countries. The company takes a unique approach to creating panels by delivering surveys via native integration in over 120k mobile apps. Using Pollfish allows market researchers to deliver snap polls and short surveys to participants in place of in-app ads.

Surveys can cover almost any subject, and Pollfish uses screening to enable market researchers to target a wide range of demographic groups. 

Unlike other platforms, participants in Pollfish surveys don’t receive cash or points payments. Instead, they may get access to in-app benefits (e.g., reading a free article in a news app, or winning bonuses in a video game app). The company argues that this avoids the tendency for survey platforms to encourage professional survey takers who are less likely to be representative of ‘normal’ people (although it also increases the risk of low engagement). 

Why is Pollfish one of the best alternatives to Respondent.io?

Using Pollfish can be a valuable market research tool for a number of reasons:

• ‘Organic sampling’: Pollfish describes its approach to finding respondents as ‘organic sampling’. The idea is that you receive survey responses from people who are more likely to be ‘naive’ respondents, since they may never have completed an online poll before. They are less likely to be professional survey respondents who might suffer from panel fatigue.
• Large samples: Pollfish allows you to create generally much larger samples, faster than with Responent.io.
• AI-powered surveys: Pollfish has integrated generative AI tools that can rapidly write surveys to answer specific questions - thereby saving you time.
• Low cost: Basic Pollfish plans reportedly begin at $0.95 for a survey of up to five questions per participant - which is much lower than Respondent.io. 

What is PollFish best for? 

Carrying out short snap polls to get the perspectives of large numbers of people. 

• Use Pollfish for short brand awareness surveys, product concept testing, logo testing, and to gather similar impressions. 

4. Using a market research agency

Market research agencies provide you with deep expertise in a wide range of research methods and can design and carry out comprehensive studies. They employ teams of highly educated researchers who will plan studies, find samples (including via online participant recruitment platforms), carry out research, and analyze the data for you. 

Each market research agency works a little differently. Some may specialize in certain types of research (e.g., focus groups, UX research) or particular markets (e.g., B2C, food and beverage, Switzerland). Others may be generalists, offering a complete range of research methods. They may take on clients from a wide range of industries and offer regional or global services. 

After briefing the agency on your needs, they will go away and conduct the research to an agreed time frame and provide you with the results. Market research agencies tend to be significantly more expensive than DIY solutions like Respondent.io. Prices vary depending on numerous factors, but you can expect to pay a minimum of $10,000 for basic projects in the US. 

Why use a market research agency over Respondent.io? 

While DIY market research participant recruitment platforms have many benefits, there are times when a traditional agency is still the best option:

• Offline research: If you need respondents to test a physical ‘thing’, taste a new food product, participate in an in-person focus group, answer a telephone survey, or talk to researchers on the doorstep, an agency is normally the best option.
• Expertise and guidance: Market researchers at agencies have years of experience running projects, and are therefore able to manage complex projects efficiently. They’re less likely to make research errors - be that in the design of questions or samples - which means your data is more likely to be reliable.
• Ready-made panels: A market research agency will have access to panels of respondents with certain characteristics or knowledge (most will also have experience of using online participant recruitment platforms too). Handing over the panel creation responsibility to an agency might be appealing if you don’t have the experience or time to do it yourself.
• May be less biased: An agency may be more objective in its questioning than a company conducting its own market research. That means you may get a more valid understanding of what your target market really thinks. 

What is using a market research agency best for? 

Expertise, complex projects, and offline research. Particularly helpful if you lack in-house skills, time, or expertise. 

• Use for large, complex or very in-depth projects. 

5. Appinio

Appinio is another Responedent.io alternative to consider when you’re trying to find market research participants. 

As the brand name suggests, Appinio is a mobile app that gets users to respond to surveys that are served up to them on their phones. People download the app to take part in studies for free (there’s a strong gamification element to encourage people to keep taking part). The company reports that it has received over half a billion survey responses and collects some 2.3m opinions per day. 

Appinio aims to maintain a representative sample of the population on its app. The company claims it generates high-quality data by using cleaning processes to filter out unrealistic responses. They also report that more than 90% of open-ended questions are completed, suggesting a reasonably high engagement level. 

Why is Appinio one of the best alternatives to Respondent.io?

Appinio can be a good Respondent.io alternative for a few different reasons:

• Low cost: Appinio users do not receive cash or prizes for participating in surveys, which reduces the cost of gathering data (evidently, this means it is less suitable for in-depth research and raises reliability and ethical questions).
• Fast: Appinio says it can produce survey results in minutes, with an average of 23 minutes for a 1,000-respondent survey.
• Ease of use: Appinio has a highly user-friendly design and easy-to-use survey-building tools. 

What is Appinio best for? 

Generating insights from large numbers of people, fast. There are some obvious caveats around the reliability and motivations of Appinio users. But if you just need to complete a quick poll to see what people might think of a topic, design, or even an ad, then it’s a valuable tool. 

• Use for short, simple surveys and snap polls - especially about ‘fun’ or topical subjects.

Time for alternatives to Respondent.io?

While Respondent.io can be an effective method for recruiting market research participants, many researchers are put off by the high prices and disappointing user experience. For an alternative that’s more comprehensive, easy to use, and affordable, try Prolific. 

Our platform allows you to gather insights from over 200,000 carefully vetted respondents worldwide. Whatever your project size, whatever kind of people you want to speak to, and whatever their location, Prolific can help. 

Learn more about our market research participant recruitment tool, or contact us today for a demo.