Hi, Scary:
This product, Ultimate Survey ASP 4.0 comes in three versions:
http://www.ultimateapps.com/products/ultimatesurvey.asp
priced at $99/$199/$299. Simple "ratings" surveys seem within the
capabilities of their low-end ("Lite") version. Here's their contact
information:
17 Dunster Street, 3rd Floor
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
http://www.ultimateapps.com
tel: 617-715-3005
fax: 617-812-7740
They describe their product as "open source" but I cannot be sure what
(if anything) they mean by that. An on-line demo is provided here:
http://www.ultimateapps.com/products/ultimatesurvey.asp?page=demo
Four "reviews" of Ultimate Survey ASP are found beneath their product
listing here:
http://www.aspin.com/home/webapps/vote?cob=coveryourasp
which also lists several pages of competing offerings, most using
VBScript and ASP 3.0 or earlier.
I also looked here, which has some offerings in this category:
http://www.activewebsoftwares.com/
but the consensus seems to be they are comparatively overpriced.
Contact info is:
Activewebsoftwares
P.O. Box 808 Quezon City
Philippines
1 (650) 651-1644
Their Active Websurvey product has a pretty low rating here:
http://www.scriptsearch.com/ASP/Software/
The free or inexpensive polling/voting/survey softwares here:
http://www.big-boys.com/asp/download.asp?SValue=polls
confusingly lists Active WebSurvey as "free" (it's not, though they do
seem to have a price match policy if you email them at
prices@activewebsoftwares.com with the URL of a similar product), but
confirms a low rating.
For an ASP.Net implementation I did not find full blown survey
software, but I did find:
[Peter's Polling Package]
http://www.peterblum.com/Home.aspx
which at $50 (with free 30 day trial) is certainly worth a look if you
prefer to work with ASP.Net.
Finally let me point out this very succinct, slightly dated (Oct.
2000) but helpful online essay by Vincent Smyth:
[Online Survey Software and Solutions]
http://www.smallbusiness.com/91/sb/advice/display/15640/wosid=TC3Vypznc4ok2YCj0VKvQEz8ZdC
which considers three options, remote hosting, using a turnkey package
(which sounds like your question), and building from scratch (he has
links to some tutorials for doing this but points out this is probably
not a good option for complex surveys). For the middle option he
advises checking for reviews of packages here:
[ZDNet]
(I didn't have any luck searching here for product reviews)
http://www.zdnet.com
and here for various kinds of Web scripts (including some ASP):
[HotScripts]
(I searched here and didn't find anything new in your price range)
http://www.hotscripts.com
regards, mathtalk-ga
Search Strategy:
Keywords: "survey software" ASP
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22survey+software%22+ASP&btnG=Google+Search
Keywords: "survey software" "ASP.NET"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22survey+software%22+%22ASP.NET%22&btnG=Google+Search |
Clarification of Answer by
mathtalk-ga
on
07 Dec 2002 11:53 PST
Hi, Scary:
I didn't make this clear, but the four reviews of Ultimate Survey ASP
were all excellent (five stars out of five), and had fairly good
discussion of the product (for a "text box" sized comment).
I ran through the Ultimate Survey online demo (actually just the last
one, "Advanced Survey"). It produced online reports of the survey in
real time. It has some searching capabilities, but I'm not sure it
has any built-in sorting. This is certainly a case where using
ASP.Net controls could make things nice (for sorting tables across a
variety of browser clients).
regards, mathtalk-ga
|
Request for Answer Clarification by
scaryberry-ga
on
09 Dec 2002 09:40 PST
Mathtalk:
Hi... I'm afraid I may not have phrased the original question
accurately enough. If I were looking for a survey system, your answer
would be perfect. In fact my company currently uses Zoomerang for
that service. However, to clarify, we are looking for a rating web
part or system. Let me try to describe in detail.
Let's say we are a construction company. We use many different
products to build our houses. We want a website where our users can
"put up" an item, i.e., Acme Windows, and rate it on a scale of 1-5,
maybe add some comments.
Then other users visiting the site can browse "windows" and see that
Acme's offerings average 4 stars out of 5.
Maybe it's the terminology involved, but I would consider this more of
a rating system than a survey system. Does that help/clarify?
Thanks,
Mike
|
Clarification of Answer by
mathtalk-ga
on
09 Dec 2002 13:16 PST
Hi, Mike:
It clarifies things a bit. I appreciate that your focus is on
allowing users to create addition "ratings" questions (e.g. from 1 to
5) and one being able to immediately allow all users to see the
cumulative results of ratings classified in various ways, e.g. by
Windows (the part) or (if I understand your point) by company (Acme's
parts have an average rating of 4 out of 5).
Let me work with the Ultimate Survey ASP (and Peter's Polling Package)
to see if they can provide you with these specific features. In
working with the online demo of Ultimate Survey, it was clear to me
that 1) user's can add items to existing surveys and 2) these items
can take the form of ratings from 1 to 5 or of soliciting comments.
However your concern might be that the software also allows the user
to create other sorts of items that you don't wish to allow. In other
words, one problem might be not a lack of features but a surfeit of
them when it comes to allowing users to edit the items contained in
the ratings pages.
regards, mathtalk-ga
|
Clarification of Answer by
mathtalk-ga
on
09 Dec 2002 18:31 PST
Hi, Scary/Mike:
I went to the Ultimate Survey online demo (see link above) and created
a simple two-page rating survey titled "Places to visit" (you can
search for it by title on the search screen). I logged out and logged
back in and added a new item to the first page.
If you wish to try this yourself, the user account I created there is:
User: rankingsoft
Pswd: onlinedemo
I mention this because in the online demo/trial version, one is only
able to edit one's own surveys. By this I assume that in the full
version one is able to make more elaborate provisions for users to
edit surveys.
The first page linked to the online demo as above contains a link to
their Ultimate Survey ASP manual, and they note not all features are
available in the demo.
How about taking a look? Or, if you have seen enough and you are sure
that my answer is not up to your expectations, just let me know and
I'll ask to have it removed so that another expert may try to assist
you.
regards, mathtalk-ga
|
Clarification of Answer by
mathtalk-ga
on
10 Dec 2002 21:45 PST
Hi, Mike/Scary:
For the sake of completeness I went back to the "Peter's Polling
Package" site and experimented with the online demos there (without
downloading the trial version). It seems to have only a single type
("polling question") of question, in contrast to the variety of item
types allowed by Ulimate Survey, but the use of Web-based forms to
administer the content is fairly similar.
One way that Peter Blum (the "Peter" of "Peter's Polling Package")
supports his ASP.Net package is through an "unlisted" Yahoo group. I
followed the links from PeterBlum.com (see original answer above) to
this site, registered as a member, and found the following recent
discussion on the message board there:
From: "Will" <willt@I...>
Date: Mon Dec 2, 2002 5:42 pm
Subject: Add Poll Answer Dynamically
Hi Peter,
I'm trying to set up you poll control so that my users can add an item
to the poll on the fly and that the new item would show up in the poll
for subsequent visitors to that page. I could not find a public
interface that would allow me to add an answer programatically. Is
there some way to do this?
If not, I'm sure I can add a record as needed. Then I would need the
control to results side programatically. Is there a way to do that and
have the cookie be created for the current user?
Thanks,
\ ^ / i l l in Miami
willt@I...
Although this message is actually asking about adding a new "answer"
item to an existing poll "question", rather than adding a complete new
question, the reply by Peter raises some salient facts to your goals.
First, there is a "Poll Editor" within the Web-based Poll
Administration forms that allows a user/administrator to make such a
change online. Second, the same change can be accomplished
programmatically; Peter gives a routine he wrote in about 30 lines of
C# to do this (and invites the poster, Will, to convert it to VB if
that is his target language).
Suggestive though this might be (and as cheap as the $50 price may
be), I suspect this package would require a substantial commitment to
.Net programming in order to accomplish the specific goals you have
laid out. Peter's focus is on a "popularity contest" type of question
in which participants choose the best answer out of "non-numeric"
alternatives. Therefore it seems to me much work would have to be
done to "contort" this package's functionality into a semblance of the
ratings system you envision. It might be a very good starting point
for a "development" project along these lines in ASP.Net, but it is
definitely not close to being a turnkey system for your purposes.
regards, mathtalk-ga
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