We provide an overview of the online survey software market in 2013 in relation to our findings in the WebSM 2012 report “Survey software features overview”  (Vehovar et al. 2012). We discover that 27 survey software solutions – of the 377 solutions identified in our 2012 report – are no longer available on the market in 2013, while 4 of them were renamed or replaced by another product. We may recall that in the fall of 2011 (when we checked the initial list that is the basis for the 2012 report) we also identified 20 non-active tools. We further examine these to determine the year of their creation and to identify the prevalent reasons for their departure from the survey software market in 2013.

For 2013, we discovered 4 new software solutions that were available after 2012. Regardless, our focus for 2013 is a further refined research procedure that includes a more in-depth search for online survey software solutions via search engines. This way we were able to distinguish 25 additional software tools that meet our criteria and were available before 2012 but were not included in 2012 report. There are different possible reasons why they were only discovered after we implemented our new in-depth approach, e.g. niche software difficult to discover, etc. In total, we included 29 additional entries into the WebSM.org survey software database .

In February 2013, evaluated and tested all of the newly discovered candidates for the WebSM survey software database using the methodology that was established in our 2012 report. One of the first steps is to eliminate too basic, immature and undeveloped solutions – to check if the software meets the criteria that define it as an appropriate survey software solution. We determine that 29 of the newly tested software solutions are appropriate and classify them into 4 groups according to the offered features and how complex they are. We also analyse web traffic information pertaining to these solutions and present our findings in an expanded table that was originally included in our 2012 report. Perhaps the most noticeable changes can be observed in the case of survey tools that were acquired by another company or integrated into another solution.