Few companies in these interviews have completed a move off Qualtrics, and none moved to another standalone enterprise voice-of-customer platform such as Medallia. Two consolidated surveys into software they already used: a large retailer into the research platform it had run for many years, and a multinational services company into Dynamics 365 Customer Voice. Customer Voice is itself an enterprise feedback application, but this company took it up because it came with the Microsoft CRM it already ran. A healthcare services company went down to SurveyMonkey. The bigger names come up as plans: a large financial-services company looking at Medallia, another planning to pilot a survey feature inside its data platform, a global consumer-goods company eyeing the feedback tools in its website analytics, and several companies weighing their own build. One retailer that wanted Qualtrics gone put it back in the running. So this page reports where the leavers went, what kind of move each was, whether Qualtrics's AI changes the picture, and when staying makes sense. The triggers behind a move are in why companies switch feedback and survey tools, the costs in what feedback tool buyers actually pay, and the complaints in top complaints about feedback and survey tools.
The alternatives, by what they are
The products companies here name when replacing Qualtrics, moving one feedback job off it, or weighing a move, grouped by what each product is rather than by how often it comes up or how well it would fit. Some can run a substantial survey program; others collect feedback inside a customer-data, website or analytics workflow. Only Alida, Dynamics 365 Customer Voice and SurveyMonkey drew a completed move.
Among the alternatives with a published rating, SurveyMonkey at 8.0/10 sits above Qualtrics's 7.5/10 and Medallia at 7.3/10 just below it. These come from different groups of buyers, not from before-and-after scores at companies that switched, so the figures cannot show whether any one move improved satisfaction.
What lower-rating Qualtrics buyers complain about
Cost above all, then set-up that needs specialists, and reporting and AI that fall short of the pitch, and few of them leave over it. Buyers rating it 6 or below are a minority, and few of them had left when we spoke to them; the rest were staying, searching or planning. A complaint beside a move did not necessarily cause it. The full list, and how it compares with other feedback tools, is on the complaints page.
Some low scores are about paying for the whole menu. A large insurer rates it a five and wants to pay for less: “in an ideal situation, you'd be able to strip them down, only pay for the survey creation and distribution, and then tag on smaller partner organizations for the analysis and the dashboards and the AI.” A large European retail group says “It's really expensive for what we are doing with them, which is basically just sending surveys.”
Some are about who can run it. A global beauty group says no one inside the company can configure its surveys, so it relies on outside agencies “that are expensive.” A consumer-subscription company rating it a six finds the capabilities powerful but says it “requires too high of a skill and a high bar to learn the platform.” These describe those companies' deployments on the date of the interview, and how much set-up help comes with a contract varies.
Some stay anyway. The insurer is not looking: “We're stuck with Qualtrics because it's too complicated to set up a new system and attempt the data integrations again.” The beauty group has not searched because Qualtrics is “our global tool used by many subsidiaries,” the consumer-subscription company is not considering alternatives, and an accessories brand that finds it slow and expensive keeps it for “the data consistency that we get with our survey being run by the same organization.”
Where buyers go
The cards are grouped by what kind of move each destination represents, and each one says whether a company completed a move, is piloting one, or only named an option. The evidence is thin throughout: no product has drawn more than one completed move off Qualtrics here, so read these as directions rather than a ranking.
A tool the company already had
A large retailer ran Qualtrics beside Alida, a research partner of many years, and stopped using Qualtrics in the past year, after using it in 2025. Its research leader says “As Alida had continued to advance their survey programming, there wasn't a need for the more advanced methods of survey programming that Qualtrics was previously providing,” and adds “I also wasn't super impressed with their AI advancements.” It rated Qualtrics a six. This is a completed move, but a consolidation onto a long-held tool for research surveys, not the purchase of a new platform. Its buyer sample is too small to publish a number.
A multinational services company replaced Qualtrics a bit more than a year before its November 2026 interview. It already ran Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which “happened to have the Customer Voice element to it that we could use for less money than Qualtrics,” and “we didn't need anything complicated.” It rates Customer Voice an eight and is not looking elsewhere, though it cannot see who was surveyed or when without help: “I need to log IT tickets for that.” Microsoft describes Customer Voice as an enterprise feedback management application built on Microsoft Forms that feeds survey data into Dynamics 365 customer records. Too few buyers rate it to publish a number.
A financial-services company that runs Qualtrics for what it calls “small-scale usage” plans to pilot the survey feature in the Tealium platform it already licenses, because “we don't have to pay anything extra to use Moments IQ.” If the pilot matches Qualtrics on setting up a survey and sending the data to its data lake, it says it may drop Qualtrics. That is a planned pilot, not a move, and it tests that small-scale collection and hand-off, not research, dashboards or program management. Tealium describes Moments iQ as a way to collect declared data by asking visitors direct questions, with the answers used to build richer profiles and audiences and to drive activation.
A global consumer-goods company runs Qualtrics for one simple website feedback job and is satisfied, but sees “opportunity to migrate their solution to other solutions like the Voice of Customer from Glassbox or VWO”; it already runs Glassbox, and other departments use Qualtrics for other purposes. That would move one website-feedback use, not the company's whole program. Glassbox describes a native survey tool linked to session replays, and VWO sells on-page surveys within its Insights product; on-page prompts do a different job from broader research or employee feedback, and the interview does not show whether they would meet other requirements.
A global consumer-electronics brand rates Qualtrics a three or four and already sends its Qualtrics responses through Unwrap for analysis. Asked about consolidating, it notes that Unwrap now sells surveys and says “I don't know if we'll go that direction, but it's such an easy thing to build. It's like, why would you spend so much money on Qualtrics?” That is a question, not a decision. Unwrap's release notes introduced AI-powered conversational surveys in October 2025.
A simpler survey tool
A healthcare services company interviewed in 2025 had left Qualtrics for SurveyMonkey because it did not need the sophistication: “we stood to realize a cost savings just by leaving them,” and “We went to SurveyMonkey and it's been fine.” That move is also told on the switching page. A distributor interviewed in November 2026 runs SurveyMonkey for NPS and says “In the past, I think we've used Qualtrics,” which is too uncertain to count as a move. SurveyMonkey users complain that it is basic for complex logic, so this is a smaller tool for a smaller job.
Another enterprise platform
No company here has completed a move from Qualtrics to Medallia. A large financial-services company with nearly nine years on Qualtrics names “the complexity and integration efforts around Qualtrics, and also the cost,” and says “We are looking into Medallia as an alternative.” A telecommunications company running Qualtrics for consumers and Medallia for business customers expects to consolidate: “Our business will be forced to pick one. I don't know if we'll go Qualtrics or whether we go Medallia.” The completed moves between the two run the other way, from Medallia to Qualtrics.
A B2B distributor rating Qualtrics a six says its team “would not be opposed to exploring other options,” and names CustomerGauge as a Qualtrics alternative it has been investigating. Asked how far that has gone: “Very, not very far at all.” CustomerGauge's own site says it is built only for companies that sell to other companies. No company here has used it as a replacement.
Their own build, or nothing
The same distributor's team leans toward “building something internally that could take care of our own needs,” and a large online retailer reviewing Qualtrics for speech analytics and surveys says “It's an ongoing evaluation,” with building internally among the options. A consumer-finance company is searching for a replacement that “does use AI to the fullest” and has named no vendor. None of these has built or bought anything yet; they are plans and evaluations, not moves.
An industrial manufacturer used Qualtrics for customer-loyalty work and says “we used to use Qualtrics, but I don't think there's anything active right now,” adding that the program sits outside marketing and is in transition. The buyer has little visibility, so this is no known replacement, not evidence that the company stopped collecting feedback.
Read together, the three completed departures do not show a shift toward a standalone enterprise voice-of-customer rival. One company consolidated research surveys into Alida, another moved customer surveys into Dynamics 365 Customer Voice, which came with its Microsoft CRM, and a third chose SurveyMonkey for a simpler survey program. All three describe needing less than Qualtrics offered, and none is an equivalent replacement for every Qualtrics capability. The larger alternatives, Medallia, a data platform's survey feature and an in-house build, are still plans or evaluations, and a European retail group expects to look at alternatives only “starting next year” after redefining its voice-of-customer strategy. Some reconsider before they leave. A retailer that called Qualtrics “a tool that I was absolutely adamant had to go” found, once it could use AI on some reports and get more information out of it, that this had “put them back in the running.” That is an incumbent reconsidered, not a completed departure followed by a return.
Does Qualtrics's AI change the picture?
Possibly for some buyers, but the interviews do not show it yet. AI is part of the case in several of the moves and doubts above: the large retailer left partly over AI it found unimpressive, the consumer-finance company is searching for a platform that does more with it, and the retailer that reconsidered replacing Qualtrics did so on AI reporting.
| Kind of move | What the interviews show | Platforms named | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| Completed move, a tool already held | Research surveys consolidated onto a long-held research platform | Alida | 2025 to 2026 |
| Completed move, a tool already held | Customer surveys moved to the feedback application in the company's Dynamics 365 CRM | Dynamics 365 Customer Voice | 2025 |
| Completed move, a simpler tool | Qualtrics dropped for a self-serve survey tool | SurveyMonkey | By 2025 |
| Past use, uncertain | Qualtrics recalled as past use; SurveyMonkey or nothing active today | SurveyMonkey, none | 2026 |
| Planned pilot, not yet a move | A survey feature in a data platform to be tested as a replacement | Tealium Moments iQ | 2026 |
| Looking at another platform | An enterprise rival under consideration over cost and integration effort | Medallia | 2026 |
| Consolidation expected, direction open | Both platforms run in different units; one expected to go | Medallia, Qualtrics | 2026 |
| Search or plan, no vendor chosen | Searches for a more AI-led platform, a possible own build, or a review next year | CustomerGauge named in passing | 2026 |
| Partial move considered | One website feedback job, or one enrollment workflow, could move to another tool | Glassbox, VWO | 2026 |
| Replacement reconsidered, incumbent retained | Wanted Qualtrics removed; AI reporting put it back under consideration | Qualtrics | 2026 |
| Kept, not looking | Low scorers staying for integrations, a global standard or data consistency | Medallia named as the only equivalent | 2026 |
| Move toward Qualtrics | Completed moves or consolidations from another enterprise platform, a product-analytics tool, and homegrown and regional tools | Medallia, Pendo | 2025 to 2026 |
What Qualtrics says. At its X4 event on March 18, 2026, it announced customer-experience capabilities it described as available now, including automated text analytics and connectors to contact-center and CRM platforms, and Experience Agents that act within post-service surveys to resolve concerns, which it said organizations were using in initial preview programs. It also closed Delighted, the lighter NPS tool it owned, on June 30, 2026, and its Delighted page now points former customers to Qualtrics. These are the company's descriptions, and an announced preview is not a shipped product: whether a feature is available, licensed and deployable on your account is a question for your own contract.
What buyers say. The retailer that reconsidered replacing Qualtrics says “We've been able to AI some reports and things, which has been much better than we've had before.” That describes its own reporting, not necessarily the features announced at X4. Others are less convinced: the consumer-finance company says “Qualtrics does not have that innate or AI intuitive ability in today's environment,” and the large retailer that left rated it a six partly on AI. The arrivals name other reasons. Two companies moved off Medallia to Qualtrics, and a software company “consolidated the agreements and removed Pendo from the equation” because it already had Qualtrics. Delighted users are a different case, because Qualtrics owned Delighted and closed it. One company was switching because “they are sunsetting Delighted next month”; another had moved in early 2025, well before the shutdown, to what it calls a “best-in-class product, which it seems expensive for what it is.” These arrivals show different motives, not one competitive trend.
The implication, ours and not a buyer's, is that a company weighing a move over analysis or AI should first test what its current Qualtrics plan includes: run the same open-text responses through Qualtrics and any alternative, check each one's themes and missed issues against a sample its team has reviewed by hand, and see whether the results reach the teams that act on them. A preview or newly announced feature is not a capability shown working in your deployment, and the interviews do not show that the newer features close the gap buyers describe.
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Get my review →When does staying on Qualtrics make sense?
The interviews do not settle that as a rule, but high scorers describe a recognizable situation.
A program across many uses. A hotel group chose it to consolidate digital, brand and employee feedback: “It works for digital, it works for brand, it works for employee engagement.” Several companies that arrived did so because Qualtrics was already licensed elsewhere in the business, which is the same advantage in reverse.
A team that builds its own surveys. A global financial-services team that uses it to track product adoption rates it eight or nine: “Very flexible, gets the results exactly in the format that you want.”
A price set by a wider relationship. A large health insurer says “It's cheap, probably because we're so big and we have many other contracts with them.” That is one company's contract, not a price list.
Where the limits show. The clearest misfits are companies that mainly send a handful of surveys, which is what the three completed moves describe, and teams without the in-house skill to configure the platform, who end up paying an agency on top.
The answer the evidence supports. Companies that left Qualtrics emphasize paying for more than they used and AI that did not impress them. Companies that stay emphasize breadth across customer, brand and employee research, surveys their own teams can build, and the cost of rebuilding integrations and survey history elsewhere. What the evidence does not show is that any alternative is better overall, that leaving improved results, or that a simpler tool does what Qualtrics does.
Our recommendation, not a practice buyers describe, is to check these before any move:
- What you actually use. List the Qualtrics capabilities your teams touch, such as survey building and logic, distribution, dashboards, text analytics, closed-loop alerts and employee or market research, and mark which are licensed but idle.
- What the replacement covers. Name exactly which job each alternative would take over, such as survey collection, complex research programming, feedback analysis, website prompts, closed-loop case management or an organization-wide program, and write down what it would not reproduce. Test survey logic, distribution, permissions, reporting, data retention and integrations on your own use.
- The people it takes. Who builds, tests and reads the surveys on each side, and whether that work sits with your team, an agency or the vendor.
- The data and its history. Test the connections to your CRM, data warehouse, contact-center and analytics tools, and decide how you will carry trend lines across the change, since a reworded or re-hosted survey can break comparisons with past results.
- Total cost at equal scope. Get current quotes covering response or interaction volume, modules such as text analytics, users, implementation and any agency work. A survey feature bundled with software you already pay for is not free if it needs IT time to run, and a past contract is not today's price.
What this page should not be read to say. A move to SurveyMonkey or Dynamics 365 Customer Voice does not mean those do the same job as Qualtrics, and a company that rated Qualtrics low and stayed is not evidence that it cannot leave. These are observed moves, not a churn rate.
Common questions
What are the alternatives to Qualtrics?
In these interviews, the companies that completed a move off Qualtrics went to software they already had or to something simpler: a large retailer kept the research platform Alida it had run for years, a multinational services company moved its surveys into Dynamics 365 Customer Voice, the feedback application in the Microsoft CRM it already ran, and a healthcare services company went down to SurveyMonkey. None moved to another standalone voice-of-customer platform: Medallia, Tealium's survey feature, website-feedback tools such as Glassbox and VWO, and in-house builds come up as plans or ideas, not completed moves. Qualtrics rates 7.5/10, Medallia 7.3 and SurveyMonkey 8.0, from different buyers.
Why do companies leave Qualtrics?
Those who left describe paying for more platform than they used: surveys that a simpler or already-owned tool could send, and AI they found unimpressive. Those weighing a move add the complexity of running it, integration work and analysis that falls short. A complaint beside a move did not necessarily cause it. Ratings of 8 or better outnumber those of 6 or below by more than two to one, and few of the low scorers here had left when interviewed.
Is Medallia a good alternative to Qualtrics?
No company here has completed a move from Qualtrics to Medallia. A large financial-services company is looking at Medallia over Qualtrics's cost and integration effort, and a telecommunications company running both expects to consolidate onto one without knowing which. The completed moves between the two run the other way, from Medallia to Qualtrics. Buyers describe the two as similar, with the same gap in turning feedback into action. Medallia rates 7.3/10 against Qualtrics's 7.5/10, from different buyers.
Can SurveyMonkey or Dynamics 365 Customer Voice replace Qualtrics?
For companies that mainly send surveys, some here say it did. A healthcare services company moved to SurveyMonkey and says it has been fine, and a multinational services company moved to Dynamics 365 Customer Voice, which came with the Microsoft CRM it already ran, and rates it an eight. Both describe light survey needs. That is a smaller tool for a smaller job, not a like-for-like replacement for analytics, text analysis or a multi-team program.
Should I stay on Qualtrics?
The interviews do not settle that as a rule. High scorers run large programs across customer, brand and employee research, build their own surveys, or buy it within a wider relationship that keeps the price down. The clearest misfits are companies that mainly send a few surveys and teams that need an agency to set them up. Our recommendation, not a practice buyers describe, is to list which Qualtrics capabilities you actually use, then price a replacement at that scope, including the integrations and survey history you would rebuild.
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