Qualtrics has long been a go-to platform for survey-based research to gather customer insights. The platform is robust, no doubt, but does robust translate to relevant when retention goals are on the line? 

CSAT, NPS, and CES scores are just what they are: scores. They don't give you the why behind churn; they merely identify the problem. 

So, when you’re under pressure to retain customers, drowning in fragmented unstructured feedback, and constantly being asked by CMOs for insights to make immediate strategic decisions for retention goals, does Qualtrics really stack up? If it doesn’t, are there alternatives that offer more relevant features? 

Let’s find out. 

What we’ll be covering in this guide:

1. Why look for a Qualtrics alternative? 

2. Must have the capabilities of a modern CXM tool 

3. Top 10 Qualtrics alternatives to consider in 2025

4. Why is SentiSum a top alternative for support-led teams? 

5. Choosing the right platform based on your goals

Before we explore the alternatives to Qualtrics, let’s take a quick look at why you should consider looking for an alternative in the first place.

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Why Look For Alternatives to Qualtrics?

Here are the reasons why many CX leaders are looking for Qualtrics alternatives:

Complexity That Slows Down Insights

Like most legacy VoC tools, Qualtrics can be quite complicated due to the array of features that flood its interface. Features that are not always entirely relevant to customer retention goals. They do offer certified partners to help with setup, yet customers are still complaining about their poor customer service when it comes to implementation. 

This review summarizes the complexity of the platform in a nutshell:

So if your team is new to CX platforms or just needs help tackling IT issues, the steep learning curve or poor customer service can make it hard to use. This can lead to wasted spend on the software and churn due to the inability to utilize it properly. 

Cost Structure vs. Actual ROI 

Qualtrics is expensive, and its pricing is not based on ROI, but rather on add-on features and usage. Based on real user reviews, there’s no guarantee you’d get your money’s worth out of the platform because their customer service team is not always available to help you make the most out of the platform.

Why buy when there's the possibility of an alternative offering more relevant features and a justifiable ROI at a more affordable rate? 

Survey Bias

The platform offers VoC programs that are heavily reliant on surveys. The problem with surveys is that they can be biased because customers will only answer questions that are asked of them. And that alone doesn't give a 360° view of customer sentiment towards your brand. 

Also, depending on how these questions are asked, whether open-ended or closed,  it may lead to distorted or skewed insights, leading to bad decision-making. 

Slow Time to Actionable Insights

The actionable insights needed to take action are usually delayed due to the high turnaround time for Qualtrics surveys.

If your goal is to turn support data into real-time insights that drive decisions for customer retention, Qualtrics may not be the best choice. 

You need a tool that can give you insights in real time and recommend ways to address customer issues as they are happening.

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Must Have Capabilities of a Modern VoC Tool

Here are the features you should go for when choosing your next VoC tool:

AI-Native Analytics

The speed and volume with which customers give feedback have changed over the years, due to the rise of multiple channels of collection.

Now, feedback pours in from everywhere, be it social media, review sites, AI chatbots, and support centers. With that speed and volume come higher expectations from customers: “If you can hear me across all these channels, why can’t you fix my problem just as fast?”

But you can’t manually sift through thousands of comments, reviews, and emails while your competitors are already using AI to instantly analyze that feedback and act on it, while the customers are still paying attention.

To keep up with the pace of feedback, you need something just as fast: AI. It’s not even an option anymore; it’s a must-have for every modern VoC tool that offers advanced analytics.

Omnichannel VoC Integration

Feedback lives in chats, emails, reviews, phone calls, social media, surveys, etc. A robust customer experience tool doesn't treat each channel separately; it moves through every channel, combines and analyzes all that data into one unified view. 

This way, brand sentiment is not an isolated snippet but a 360° view of the customer experience.

Intelligent Tagging Automation

Manual feedback categorization is slow and prone to human bias, especially during periods of high feedback volume. 

Modern customer experience platforms use advanced NLP that understands nuances in customer language, ensuring every signal is captured even when terminology shifts, helping teams uncover emerging issues before they compound.

Real-time dashboards

Insights are what matter in today's world to take action. Actions can't be taken if reports are not available in real-time. A modern CXM platform should be able to provide customizable report dashboards to display metrics that are personalized and cater to different teams, such as support, product, and marketing, enabling them with the insights they need to tackle daily customer challenges. 

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10 Best Qualtrics Alternatives for 2025 

Here's a comprehensive comparison at a glance:

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1. SentiSum

While Qualtrics is survey-based and caters to research teams, SentiSum is built for operational feedback loops that directly impact retention, churn, and support insights, making it a compelling modern alternative.

It is built for Customer experience and Support Leaders, Customer Insights or VoC Leaders, and Strategic Decision Makers who need to drive actions that increase customer retention and ROI.

SentiSum’s AI-native VoC platform excels in real-time analysis of unstructured feedback, which is where the “why” behind churn lives.

It does so using the features below:

Key Features 

Kyo, your intelligent AI assistant

SentiSum's AI-native platform comes with Kyo, your intelligent AI assistant that acts as your "Customer Second Brain." Modeled after a golden retriever, Kyo is inquisitive, intelligent, and dependable, interpreting customer conversations in real time to help teams uncover what is happening, why it matters, and what to do next. 

Unlike manual dashboard exploration, Kyo learns your role, questions, and focus areas, becoming smarter the more you use it. No filters or digging required. Just ask, and Kyo responds with personalized insights that turn feedback into clear, actionable direction.

AI-powered ticket tagging for root cause detection

SentiSum uses the latest natural language processing to analyze support tickets from social media, reviews, emails, chats, etc, in real time, surfacing the why behind churn,   complaints, and customer friction.

Contextual topic and sentiment clustering

This means they are not just tagged based on an already predefined category; they are tagged based on nuances of real customer language, ensuring every signal is captured even when the language shifts, making sure insights and product teams uncover blind spots and emerging issues, and no negative sentiment slips through the cracks and compounds over time.

Omnichannel VoC dashboards 

It allows you to view your feedback metrics from every channel in one unified dashboard, breaking silos and giving your team a single source of truth.

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Real-time alerts and escalating trend detection

SentiSum is always on standby, actively monitoring incoming feedback for spikes, anomalies, and new issues, thereby alerting your teams when something breaks, trends shift, or a crisis is emerging.

SentiSum Pros

• AI-native platform built specifically for customer retention analytics: Purpose-built architecture delivers measurable churn reduction and revenue protection. Customers report 30% drops in escalations and demonstrable increases in customer retention within months of implementation.
• Specializes in unstructured feedback analysis: Surfaces root causes from support tickets, reviews, and conversations that traditional survey tools miss entirely, enabling proactive interventions that prevent costly product recalls and reputation damage before issues escalate.
• Rapid speed to value through streamlined onboarding and real-time insight delivery: Replaces months of manual VoC analysis with instant, always-on detection. This transforms customer insights from a periodic reporting function into a daily operational decision tool that drives immediate action and cost savings.
• Cross-functional intelligence that unifies teams: Breaks down silos between support, product, and marketing teams with shared insights.
• Proven ROI with enterprise-grade reliability: Customers avoid significant financial losses while gaining a competitive advantage through faster problem detection and resolution than legacy survey-dependent competitors.

SentiSum Cons

There are no publicly available negative or dissatisfied user reviews on platforms like G2, Trustpilot, etc., suggesting any cons about SentiSum. 

See reviews on G2.

SentiSum Pricing

SentiSum pricing starts with a pro plan at $3,000 per month and a customizable plan for enterprise plans.

‍Book a demo to learn more.

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2. Medallia

Medallia is a legacy dedicated experience-management platform that specializes in capturing feedback from both structured and unstructured feedback teams.

Medallia offers both employee experience and customer experience management as a solution, so it's the best fit for teams that want to monitor both employee and customer experience. 

Key Features 

• Experience orchestration & real-time action, Omnichannel feedback capture
• Speech & conversation intelligence
• Digital experience & journey analytics

Medallia Pros

• Great partnerships and customer support

• Multiple feedback source analytics

Medallia Cons

• Difficulty using the layout and reporting data.

• Generative AI is only available in the English language

Medallia Pricing 

Pricing tiers are set by your expected EDR volume (e.g., 10,000 EDRs per year). Experience Data Record (EDR)- Medallia’s unit of pricing. Each customer action that generates data (feedback, conversation, survey, etc.) is counted as one EDR. For example, a support call, customer survey response, or chat can all be classified as EDR.

3. Chattermill

Chattermill is an AI-driven VoC platform that combines product experience analytics, support data analytics, customer feedback analytics, and social experience analytics into one platform. 

It’s best for product teams that are trying to improve their products based on customer insights. 

Key Features 

• Tagging and segmentation 
• Thematic analysis 
• Sentiment analysis
• NPS/CSAT scoring
• Custom reports and dashboards

Chattermill Pros 

• Easy to use
• Analysis feedback across multiple data sources.

Chattermill Cons

• Sandbox format is not available, so you don't get a personalized and private view.

• Customizable reports could be a hassle.

Chattermill Pricing 

Pricing is tiered according to the size of teams and data sources, and the volume of feedback they want to analyze.

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4. Sprinklr

Sprinklr is an enterprise-grade CXM that combines social listening, marketing, customer service, and user VoC insights into one workspace.

It excels in social software and sentiment, making it ideal for marketing and branding teams, as well as CX support and insights teams that need to manage high-volume, global conversations across social media. 

Key Features 

• Brand sentiment analysis through social  listening 
• Social reporting and dashboards
• Competitor sentiment analysis through social listening 

Sprinklr Pros 

• In-depth social media listening capabilities

• Customizable options for queries, dashboards and reports.

Sprinklr Cons

• It can be overwhelming for new users.

• Some users have noted its lack of robust omnichannel capabilities.

Sprinklr Pricing 

You need to contact their team for pricing details and a customized quote.

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5. AskNicely

AskNicely is a desktop-to-app dedicated survey-based and NPS-centric CX platform. It’s built for frontline CX, support, and VoC teams who want to automate mobile-first email surveys.

Key Features 

• Generative AI for text generation 
• Analytics for NPS, CSAT and CES
• Customization 

AskNicely Pros 

• Easy to use with In-app feedback response
• Users have commended its exceptional customer support

AskNicely Cons

• Not intuitive, so you constantly need to upgrade customer data.

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• Some have reported difficulty integrating with specific tools

AskNicely  Pricing 

AskNicely’s plans are based on how many users you want to give access to and which customer experience features you need. 

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6. InMoment

InMoment is a robust experience management platform. Its dedicated CX platform is the experience improvement platform (XI), which specializes in the analysis of both structured and unstructured feedback.

Key Features

• Analytics for NPS, CSAT and CES 
• Conversational intelligence
• Customization for reports, dashboards, stakeholder management, and multilingual 
• Tagging, segmentation, thematic analysis 

InMoment Pros 

• User-friendly with a simple UI
• Captures feedback across multiple platforms

InMoment Cons

• Expensive and requires technical expertise for customization

• Difficulty linking CSAT, NPS, and CES scores to specific comments, burying the “why" behind them.

InMoment Pricing 

Pricing is customized and quoted based on your organization's size, required features, and deployment level. Free trial available on request. 

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7. GetFeedback

GetFeedback is a dedicated survey-based CX platform known for its popular templates for customer satisfaction, employee engagement, event feedback, product testing, NPS, etc. 

The platform is built for teams who want fast, mobile-first surveys and insights without a heavy IT lift.

Key Features 

• Custom survey creation
• Survey scoring
• Sentiment analysis
• AI-powered insights

GetFeedback Pros

• Easy to use 

• Provides already-made survey templates 

GetFeedback Cons

• Not AI native
• Relies heavily on surveys 

GetFeedback Pricing

Offers tiered plans that are available via direct quote or contact with their sales team. A 14-day free trial is available.

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8. Thematic

Thematic is an AI-driven text-feedback platform that ingests open-ended customer comments, surveys, reviews, tickets, and calls, turning noisy verbatim into layered themes and clear summaries.

Key Features 

• Thematic answers
• Workflows
• Thematic generative AI
• Conversational analytics

Thematic Pros 

• Easy to use with a quick turnaround time
• Great customer service 

Thematic Cons

• Some users have reported erroneous NPS and sentiment scoring

• Most users complain that the machine learning capabilities of the software are slow.

Thematic Pricing 

The foundation plan starts at $25,000 per year. The enterprise plan is customized and quoted based on needs.

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9. Survicate

Survicate is a customer feedback platform that excels in creating, distributing, and analyzing survey feedback for digital user experience, i.e., customer feedback from mobile apps, websites, in-product, and emails. 

The platform is built for product, CX, and support teams who rely on customizable survey feedback for insights, allowing them to choose from a range of question types, including closed-ended questions, open-ended questions, star ratings, and 1-10 ratings, among others. 

Key Features 

• Survey creation
• Survey Distribution
• Survey Analysis 
• AI feedback analysis 
• Dashboards 

Survicate Pros 

• Easy to use

• Flexible integrations

Survicate Cons

• No pooling customization for survey reports

• Some users complain of the price and poor customer service

Survicate Pricing 

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10. Wonderflow

Wonderflow is an AI-powered consumer intelligence platform that ingests reviews, surveys, support logs, and other feedback sources for e-commerce. 

It’s built for product, marketing, and insights teams at consumer brands and retailers that need fast, product-level answers from huge volumes of customer feedback to make strategic decisions. 

Key Features

• Discovery Analysis 
• Metadata analysis to derive demographics, usage patterns, and customer traits.
• AI summarization
• Metadata enrichment to incorporate proprietary metadata into customer feedback 
• Predictive AI to uncover factors surrounding customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction 

Wonderflow Pros 

• Easy to use and easy to understand outputs, even for broad audiences.
• Support for AI/NLP to surface patterns and summaries.

Wonderflow Cons

• Customizable charts, and you manually create reports

• AI is not up to date, so it also affects tagging and sentiment analysis.

Wonderflow Pricing 

Pricing is based on usage, starting at $30,000 per year.

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Why SentiSum Is a Top Qualtrics Alternative for Support-Led Teams

Your team is heavily reliant on support data to make changes that increase customer retention and maximize ROI, but you're also at risk of facing major consequences while waiting for insights from survey data to take action.

That doesn't have to happen with SentiSum, which provides a dedicated customer success manager, and the following features explain why.

Actionable Insights Through Kyo

Kyo transforms support teams from reactive responders into strategic advisors by providing executive-ready briefings and board-level confidence. When leadership asks "What should I be aware of before the next product launch?" or "Why are retention metrics declining?", Kyo delivers immediate, evidence-based answers that elevate support teams' organizational influence and credibility.

Fast onboarding

Unlike legacy VoC tools that usually take a lot of help to onboard and implement, SentiSum was built with simplicity in mind, making it easy for users to onboard easily and start receiving value instantly.

Zendesk integration

SentiSum integrates seamlessly with Zendesk, where your support team interacts at the forefront with customers, eliminating the need for third-party tools integration and making it easy for you to implement recommended actions from SentiSum's AI. 

So rather than requiring logins or new habits, SentiSum pushes relevant insight to where it is most actionable.

It also integrates with a variety of other survey collections, help desks and CRM tools, including Freshdesk, Dixa, Gorgias, Intercom, SurveyMonkey, Salesforce, etc. 

See all integrations.

Unstructured VoC

Unstructured VoC contains raw emotions, motivations, and detailed experiences of your customers. It holds the why behind root cause issues. This is where SentiSum excels. SentiSum’s AI analyzes and summarizes conversations from calls, chats, emails, and open-ended survey reports in real time, highlighting anomalies, summarizing themes, and learning from patterns over time.

It then surfaces the next action teams should take, making it easier to move from awareness to resolution without manual effort. This in turn:

• Frees up teams from manual reading and analysis by summarizing key patterns across large volumes of feedback.
• Delivers consistent, directional insight that keeps CX, Product, and Leadership aligned on what matters now.

Before we conclude, if your goal is simply to carry out research without acting on it, Qualtrics might still work for you. 

But if your priority is reducing churn, a platform like SentiSum that prioritizes retention analytics and customer support intelligence is what you need to achieve those goals. 

To learn more about how the platform can level up your CX game, schedule a demo.