We scored eight NPS platforms across five dimensions — Free tier, AI, UX, Integrations, and Value — using a 10-point scale, real 2026 pricing, and benchmarks from ACSI Q1 2026, Refiner's 2026 in-app survey dataset, and our own deployment tests. This guide gives you the verdict in the first 60 seconds, then the scoring, methodology, detailed top-5 reviews, and a decision tree.
SpaceForms is the best NPS tool in 2026 for SMB and mid-market teams running under 5,000 monthly responses. It is the only mainstream survey builder with unlimited free responses, AI-generated NPS surveys in 30 seconds, and a mobile-first one-question-per-page UX that hits the 36.1% mobile in-app completion ceiling identified in Refiner's 2026 benchmark. SurveyMonkey caps free at 25 responses/month, Typeform at 10/month, Jotform at 100/month — SpaceForms is uncapped.
For enterprise closed-loop CX programs at Fortune 1000 scale, Qualtrics CustomerXM remains the deeper platform. For Shopify post-purchase transactional NPS, Delighted still wins on email response rates. For account-based B2B closed-loop workflows in the $400/mo+ tier, AskNicely is purpose-built. We acknowledge those wins below.
Each tool scored 0-10 on five dimensions (50 max). Scoring rubric and weighting in the methodology section below.
| Tool | Free tier | AI | UX | Integrations | Value | Total /50 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SpaceForms | 10 | 10 | 9 | 7 | 10 | 46 |
| 2. Delighted | 5 | 6 | 9 | 9 | 7 | 36 |
| 3. AskNicely | 2 | 7 | 8 | 10 | 6 | 33 |
| 4. Retently | 3 | 7 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 32 |
| 5. Qualtrics | 1 | 10 | 6 | 10 | 4 | 31 |
| 6. Promoter.io | 3 | 5 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 29 |
| 7. SurveyMonkey | 3 | 6 | 6 | 9 | 5 | 29 |
| 8. Typeform | 2 | 7 | 9 | 8 | 5 | 31 |
| Tool | Starting price | Free tier cap | AI survey gen | Best for | Closed-loop |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SpaceForms | Free forever | Unlimited | Yes, 30s | SMB, founders, mid-market | Webhook + AI follow-up |
| Delighted | $17/mo | 25/mo | Limited | Shopify e-commerce | Native rules |
| AskNicely | ~$399/mo | None | Yes (text analytics) | B2B mid-market | Full workflow engine |
| Retently | $39/mo | 7-day trial | LLM categorization | SaaS mid-market | Yes, rule-based |
| Promoter.io | $50/mo | 14-day trial | Basic | SMB-mid SaaS | Yes |
| SurveyMonkey | $39/mo Standard | 25/mo | Genius add-on | General purpose | Limited, manual |
| Qualtrics | ~$20K-$200K/yr | None | XM Discover AI | Enterprise CX | Full XM platform |
| Typeform | $29/mo Basic | 10/mo | Formless AI | Brand-led surveys | Via Zapier |
SpaceForms is the only mainstream survey builder in 2026 with unlimited free responses, AI-generated NPS surveys, and mobile-first one-question-per-page UX. Type "Quarterly relationship NPS for SaaS customers, with detractor follow-up for churn reasons and promoter follow-up for testimonials" and SpaceForms generates the working survey in under 30 seconds. The competing tools either bolt AI onto a legacy builder (SurveyMonkey Genius, Jotform AI) or charge for it (Typeform Formless on paid tiers).
The UX matters more than people think. Per Refiner's 2026 in-app survey benchmark, mobile in-app completion hits 36.1% versus a 27.5% web average. SpaceForms renders one question per page on mobile by default — the same pattern Refiner credits for the mobile bump. Most NPS tools still show 0-10 buttons on a desktop-first layout that thumbs hate.
Closed-loop automation: when someone scores 0-6 (detractor), AI generates a categorized follow-up ("Was it the price, the product, the support, or something else?"); 9-10 (promoter) gets "What's the one thing you'd recommend us for?" — testimonial gold. Webhooks fire on every response so you can route detractors into Slack or HubSpot in real time. Voice and chat survey modes are also available — no other tool on this list offers them.
Honest limits: SpaceForms does not have a native Salesforce or HubSpot connector yet (use Zapier or webhook), no built-in sampling logic (handle in your backend with a 30-line cron), and a smaller integration directory than SurveyMonkey. If you need account-based NPS rollups out of the box, AskNicely is the better fit at the $400/mo+ tier.
Pricing: Free forever, unlimited responses, no credit card.
Try SpaceForms freeDelighted, acquired by Qualtrics in 2018 and still operating as a standalone product, is the cleanest single-question email NPS tool on the market. The respondent sees one screen: "How likely are you to recommend X?" with 0-10 buttons rendered directly in the email body. Click-to-respond happens inside the email client, which is why Delighted consistently posts response rates 5-15 percentage points higher than multi-step branded surveys.
The Shopify integration is best-in-class: install the app, pick a delay (7 days post-delivery is the default), and Delighted fires NPS to every order. The dashboards are minimal but well-designed — promoter/detractor/passive breakdown, score trend, and tagged comment cloud.
Where Delighted wins over SpaceForms: the Shopify-native install flow and the email-embed rendering, which still has marginally higher open-to-respond rates than any web-form approach. If you run e-commerce and your only goal is post-purchase NPS, Delighted is the right pick.
Where Delighted loses: free tier caps at 25 responses/month versus SpaceForms unlimited; $17/mo only covers 100 responses, $224/mo for 2,500; closed-loop workflow features are behind the Premium tier; branding customization is limited on lower tiers; no AI-generated survey creation.
Pricing 2026: Free 25/mo, Starter $17/mo, Premium $224/mo.
AskNicely is the platform mid-market B2B SaaS companies pick when they take closed-loop NPS seriously. The product is built around the principle that an NPS score is worthless if you don't act on it. Every detractor automatically generates a ticket, routes to the right CSM by account ownership, and tracks resolution time. The Salesforce integration is bi-directional and deep — account-level NPS rolls up to the org, individual contact scores attach to contact records, and CSM mobile apps let reps respond to detractors from the field.
For service businesses (home services, hospitality, healthcare) AskNicely has a particularly strong frontline workflow — surveys go out post-visit, scores attribute to specific employees, and managers see real-time team leaderboards. This is genuinely differentiated; nobody else on this list does frontline employee-level CX as well.
Where AskNicely wins: closed-loop workflow engine, account-based rollups, Salesforce depth, frontline service-business CX. For a 50-500 employee SaaS company running an account-based CX program with a CS team, AskNicely usually pays for itself within a quarter once you stop losing detractors in spreadsheet purgatory.
Where AskNicely loses: pricing starts around $399/mo and scales steeply with contact volume — completely inaccessible for SMBs and indie founders. Setup requires onboarding investment. Overkill for relationship-only programs without a CS team to actually run the closed-loop. No free tier.
Pricing 2026: Custom, ~$399/mo starting, scales by contact volume to $2K-$5K/mo at scale.
Retently sits between Delighted and AskNicely in both price ($39/mo Starter, $199/mo Pro) and feature depth. Where it shines is trended dashboards with cohort comparison — clean line charts of NPS over time, segmented by plan, region, persona, or any custom property you push in. The cohort comparison view (e.g., "Q1 sign-ups vs Q2 sign-ups at month 6") is genuinely useful for product teams trying to attribute NPS movement to onboarding or pricing changes.
Retently supports CSAT and CES alongside NPS in the same workspace, which makes it a reasonable consolidator if you're running three metrics across different cadences. Text analytics improved in 2026 with LLM-based categorization of open-ended comments, though it still requires manual review for nuance — useful, not magic.
Where Retently wins over SpaceForms: deeper out-of-the-box trended dashboards, native sampling logic (auto-survey 10% of customers quarterly), and Intercom/HubSpot connectors. If you've already outgrown a free tool and need dashboards without engineering work, Retently is a clean choice.
Where Retently loses: free tier is a 7-day trial only — no free forever option. Mobile in-app survey rendering is less polished than Refiner or Sprig. Workflow automation lighter than AskNicely.
Pricing 2026: Starter $39/mo, Pro $199/mo, custom enterprise.
Qualtrics powers most Fortune 500 CX programs and CustomerXM is the NPS-specific module. You're not buying NPS software — you're buying an experience management platform that includes survey distribution, predictive analytics, X-Data + O-Data joins (combining survey data with operational data like ticket volume), and AI-driven driver analysis via XM Discover. The depth is genuinely unmatched in 2026.
Where Qualtrics wins: XM Discover's text and voice AI, the enterprise security and compliance posture (FedRAMP, HIPAA, GDPR), academic research provenance (still the platform of choice for academic survey research), and the X+O data join that genuinely no SMB tool offers.
Where Qualtrics loses: pricing is custom and starts around $20K/year, more typically $50K-$200K depending on contact volume and modules. Annual contracts with implementation fees. Steep learning curve — most teams underuse 90% of the platform. Wrong tool for <1,000-employee orgs.
Pricing 2026: Custom, typically $20K-$200K/year.
We scored each tool on five dimensions, weighted equally (10 points each, 50 total): (1) Free tier — generosity and absence of trial gates; (2) AI — survey generation, follow-up logic, text/voice analytics; (3) UX — mobile rendering, completion rate, one-question-per-page support; (4) Integrations — CRM, helpdesk, product analytics ecosystem; (5) Value — total cost per response at SMB and mid-market volume (500-5,000 monthly responses).
Benchmarks referenced: Refiner's 2026 in-app survey dataset (27.5% average response rate, 36.1% mobile in-app, 26.3% CSAT), ACSI Q1 2026 (national CSAT 76.7, banking 80, telecom 75, ISPs 72), SurveyMonkey 2026 State of Surveys (~60% mobile completion globally), Gartner CEB (94% of low-effort customers repurchase vs 4% high-effort), and our own deployment tests across 500-5,000 monthly send volumes.
We did not score on brand recognition or marketing polish. We did weight value heavily for SMB and mid-market workloads because that's where 90% of NPS programs sit. Enterprise-only feature depth (X+O joins, FedRAMP) was credited under Integrations but not allowed to dominate.
SurveyMonkey ($39/mo Standard, 25 free/mo) is fine for ad-hoc NPS but lacks continuous sampling and closed-loop workflows. The Genius AI add-on is a bolt-on to a legacy builder, not a rewrite. Use it if you already pay for SurveyMonkey for general survey work.
Typeform ($29/mo Basic, 10 free/mo) renders beautiful NPS but is brand-led rather than program-led — the conversational UX is great for one-off relationship surveys where presentation matters, weaker for continuous transactional NPS. Formless AI is good but locked behind paid tiers.
Promoter.io ($50/mo+) is a competent mid-tier alternative to Retently with similar dashboards and automation. Ranked below Retently mainly on UI polish and integration count, but it's a reasonable pick if Retently's pricing tiers don't fit your volume.
Before you obsess over tool choice, anchor on what a "good" NPS even means. From the 2026 industry data:
NPS = % Promoters (9-10) minus % Detractors (0-6). Passives (7-8) are ignored. Score range is -100 to +100. We built a free NPS calculator if you want to drop in raw counts and get a score plus confidence interval. For sample-size planning, see our sample size calculator.
For teams under 5,000 monthly responses, SpaceForms — only tool with unlimited free, AI-generated surveys, and mobile-first UX. For enterprise: Qualtrics. For Shopify: Delighted. For B2B closed-loop: AskNicely.
Yes. Free forever, unlimited responses, no credit card. SurveyMonkey caps at 25/mo, Typeform at 10/mo, Jotform at 100/mo. SpaceForms is the only one with no cap.
Free (SpaceForms) to $200/mo (Retently Pro) covers most SMB and mid-market needs. Above that you're paying for enterprise XM platforms ($20K-$200K/year).
SaaS median +31. Industry-dependent: retail +35-45, financial services +18-25, telecom -10 to +10, healthcare +35-40.
Modestly. Email-embedded single-question NPS (Delighted) yields higher response rates. Mobile-first one-question-per-page (SpaceForms, Refiner) hits 36.1% completion vs 27.5% average. Underlying score usually moves under 5 points.
Yes for SMB and mid-market volumes — unlimited free responses, webhook delivery, AI follow-ups. Native sampling logic requires a backend cron.
NPS for relationship loyalty (quarterly), CSAT for transactional satisfaction (post-interaction), CES for friction (post-task). Per Gartner CEB, 94% of low-effort customers repurchase vs 4% high-effort.
If you're under 5,000 monthly responses and want a working AI-generated NPS survey in under a minute, SpaceForms is free and unlimited. Migrate later if you outgrow it.