Qualtrics

Qualtrics sells employee surveys, and your admins set most of the rules. The smallest group shown defaults to five, and admins can set no company-wide minimum. Some AI features follow user permissions, not a company-wide switch. Qualtrics quotes its price on request. It also owns Forsta, whose employee surveys come under separate terms.

By Ashish Manchanda Published 28 Oct 2026 Last updated 28 Oct 2026

Qualtrics hands admins the controls and quotes the price on request

In one line

Qualtrics sells employee surveys with detailed privacy and AI settings that your admins control. It quotes the price on request.

Buy it if

You want one platform for engagement, pulse and onboarding surveys. You have admins who will set group size and AI switches on purpose.

Do not buy it if

Nobody on your side will own the privacy and AI settings. Your legal team needs to cancel an order mid-term. Qualtrics’ terms make orders non-cancellable, except as stated in the agreement.

Price

Qualtrics quotes the price on request, based on the number of employees. Help from Qualtrics costs extra, in separate packages.

One suite runs every survey type and reads your HR system

One Qualtrics subscription can cover engagement, pulse, ad hoc, onboarding and exit surveys. Each is sold as its own product under the product terms. Each product covers unlimited surveys of its kind. Engagement covers surveys of the customer’s employees.

Your own people data comes next. Qualtrics asks you to prepare it early. For an Engagement project, the customer prepares the survey questions, a participant list and email messages. Qualtrics suggests finishing the questions 4 weeks before launch. That typically takes 2 to 5 hours. Importing the participant list and setting up the hierarchy comes 2 weeks before launch. It can take up to 5 to 8 hours. Qualtrics recommends taking demographic data from the HR system, not from the survey.

The link to your HR system is a sync task. It offers about 50 HR systems to connect to. They include BambooHR, Dayforce, HiBob, UKG Pro, Workday and SAP SuccessFactors. The task updates the employee directory on a regular basis. Merge runs the HR link inside that task. Merge retains the extracted data and credentials while the Merge integration account exists. SAP customers have a second route. Since January 2025, SuccessFactors customers can sign for Qualtrics XM for Employee Experience. The deal is an SAP Endorsed Apps agreement. Qualtrics’ January 2025 release lists Employee Technology Experience among those offers.

The same owner may now offer you Forsta Employee Experience. It comes on Forsta’s own terms. Qualtrics completed its $6.75 billion purchase of Press Ganey Forsta on 18 May 2026. Forsta Employee Experience is part of Forsta’s HX platform. It runs workforce census surveys, pulse surveys and lifecycle surveys. It also runs 360 and 180 assessments and an idea box. Forsta sets up the census survey with the customer. This includes custom demographics, reporting groups and hierarchy. Every manager gets a view of their team’s results on one page. Permissions are role-based.

Group protection, reach and follow-up tracking are strong

Qualtrics is strongest where a programme needs detailed controls and wide reach. Five features stand out.

Two levels of group protection

Qualtrics documents two levels of protection for results. Basic is on by default. Enhanced is optional. Enhanced protection groups small subgroups in fields marked sensitive. Viewers then cannot calculate hidden scores. Qualtrics recommends a minimum threshold so editors cannot filter down to one participant’s results.

Named and anonymous answers in one project

Some people get an individual link that identifies them. Others get an anonymous link. Qualtrics gives a partly unionised workforce as an example. There, results must be anonymous for part of the staff.

Reach beyond the work inbox

Staff without a work inbox can still be reached. Qualtrics can send a survey through Teams. Pulse messages go by email, Slack and Teams. Text messages carry a link that opens in the phone browser. A WhatsApp extension sends a link or a two-way survey. Pulse programmes have a QR code. Qualtrics recommends the anonymous link for a kiosk.

Follow-up you can track

Managers set a status label and a percentage complete on each action plan. A usage report counts the people in each unit who have access to action planning. It also counts how many use it. A summary report tracks plan progress for each item.

Security reports and access rules

Qualtrics has a SOC 2 Type II report. It covers Security, Availability and Confidentiality. It holds ISO 27001, 27017, 27018 and 27701 certifications. Its availability promise is 99.93%. Its UK public-sector listing adds that staff cannot access customer accounts by default. Access needs explicit permission from the Brand Administrator, the top admin role. The permission is time-limited.

Its customer stories come from programmes with many people

Qualtrics’ customer stories are about employers. Each runs one programme across many people or sites.

A state runs two surveys a year

Iowa runs a full engagement survey every July. It runs a pulse each January. The pulse covers the lowest scoring areas from the full survey. Qualtrics reports a 20% rise in trust in leadership. That came within six months of launching Iowa’s central EX programme. It also reports a 14% rise in satisfaction with manager communication. Pulse participation rose 7 points year on year.

Kroger surveyed all staff days into the pandemic

Kroger Family of Companies has nearly half a million employees. Kroger launched an all-company survey days after the pandemic was declared in March 2020. In the first six months of the pandemic, Kroger reports more than 30 policy and process changes.

Allstate finds themes in hours

Allstate used Comment Summaries to find themes in employee feedback in hours, not weeks. An Allstate team lead reports a fast turnaround. Fresh data can be ready within 48 hours for executive board presentations. Qualtrics reports that adidas, Stripe and Owens Corning cut manual analysis by over 95% with its AI tools. It reports the same tools boost the number of managers creating personalised action plans by as much as 70%.

Zoetis piloted it with 120 practices

Zoetis convened a coalition for a pilot. The pilot gives 120 veterinary practices access. It focuses on small animal practices with at least two practice leaders, three veterinarians and 15 employees. Practices collect feedback through mobile surveys.

Group size, identity and AI depend on admin settings

Your admins choose settings. They decide who sees what, and what the AI reads. Each card covers a default, a setting or a limit.

The default group size is five

The default threshold is 5 for both data points and comments. A Brand Administrator, the top admin role, can set one threshold for the whole company. That threshold is a floor that every results view must meet or exceed. A Brand Administrator can also set none. Editors of each view then choose their own, including none. Comments have a separate setting from data points.

Breakouts can skip the rule

The rule does not apply to views split by fields marked Not sensitive. Under enhanced protection, all metadata fields start as extremely sensitive. When several filters or breakouts combine, enhanced protection cannot stop every indirect calculation.

Identity protection depends on your licence

Pseudonymization hides personal details in responses as they arrive. Only Brand Administrators can use it. Not every licence includes it. It covers Engagement, Lifecycle, Ad Hoc Research and Pulse projects, not 360. Qualtrics’ help page on response data includes participant full name, unique identifier and email. The same page adds that individual responses hold no information that identifies the participant.

Two kinds of AI

New generative AI features are off until a Brand Administrator turns them on. A company-wide switch-off applies to every user. Non-generative AI features follow user permissions. Company-wide settings do not control them. Text iQ is Qualtrics’ comment analysis tool. It gives each text response one of six sentiment labels when it loads.

Customer data and AI training

Qualtrics anonymizes and aggregates customer data before any AI training. Its position is that it does not use raw customer data to train its AI models. Its privacy policy, updated 23 April 2026, also covers AI. Under that policy, Qualtrics processes personal information with AI. It uses that information to train machine learning models, natural language processing and large language models. The policy does not cover personal information Qualtrics processes for customers. An example is information collected using the XM Platform. Ask which document covers your comments.

Who runs the AI

Some comment features send your data to outside providers. Qualtrics Assist runs on GPT-4o from OpenAI on Azure. Comment Summaries uses a mix of third-party and first-party models. Text iQ shares data with third-party software to translate comments and run multi-language sentiment analysis. Qualtrics’ own generative AI features process customer data only within Qualtrics.

Your region, with exceptions

Choosing a region may not keep all processing inside it. Qualtrics stores customer data in the region the customer chooses. It may transfer and process data outside that region for support, sub-processors or to provide the service. Its UK public-sector listing gives the United Kingdom as the storage and processing location. That listing adds that the buyer has control over it.

Summaries cover five languages and a sample

Comment summaries come in English, German, French, Spanish and Japanese. Qualtrics Assist works in the same five languages. For a topic with 300 comments or more, the summary uses a random sample of 300 comments.

Attrition scores come from another product

Under Qualtrics’ product terms, Employee Retention Analytics sits in People Lifecycle, not People Engage. On its retention page, Qualtrics’ AI finds at-risk employees. It spots early warning signs in engagement, performance and lifecycle data. The same page adds that managers see team-level attrition risk. It adds that individual privacy is protected.

The price is a quote, help is extra and exit terms differ

The price comes by quote. The quote is only part of the cost. These cards cover the price, the plan you need, the contract and leaving.

Price depends on employee count

Qualtrics prices on the number of employees at the customer’s organisation. Two documents count people differently. The product terms cover employees, contractors or other staff directly employed or engaged. The web definitions cover employees, contractors or other staff directly employed, unless agreed in writing. Qualtrics may change the definitions at any time by posting a new version.

UK public-sector price tiers

On UK G-Cloud 15, engagement and pulses are priced per employee in ten tiers. G-Cloud is the UK public sector’s buying framework. The reseller NTT DATA Business Solutions prices SAP Qualtrics at £25.32 per employee per month in Tier 1. Tier 10 costs £2.17. Those prices rise 3.3% a year on the contract anniversary and exclude VAT. Ask which tier applies to you.

Help is extra

On its UK public-sector price list, Qualtrics sells three Success Packages called Core, Guided and Advanced. They cost £25,000, £50,000 and £65,000, or 10%, 20% and 25% of annual software spend. Its UK public-sector listing scopes and prices some items separately. They are implementation, bespoke training and premium features such as Data Isolation.

The plan decides your AI features

Comment summaries come only with the new simplified pricing and packaging plans. Qualtrics Assist needs those plans, or a place in its preview program. Conversational feedback follows the same rule. On Forsta, sending Employee Pulse surveys to a customer’s own employees needs the Studio Solution for Employee Pulse add-on.

Orders run for the term

Qualtrics’ General Terms set the Subscription Term in the Order Form. All Order Forms are non-cancellable and all fees non-refundable, except as stated in the Agreement. During the Subscription Term, the customer will not withhold, reduce or set off fees. It will not reduce Usage Metrics, such as the employee count. A customer that terminates under the terms gets a pro-rata refund. It covers unused prepaid fees for that subscription. Qualtrics cannot make bespoke changes to its platform or security standards.

Forsta has its own contract

Forsta’s Master SaaS Agreement renews for successive 12-month terms. It renews unless either party gives notice. The notice must come no later than 30 days before the term ends. Forsta reserves the right to raise prices at renewal. This is subject to terms agreed in the Sales Order.

Taking your data out

During the term, the customer can access and export Customer Data in a standard format. After the term, Qualtrics deletes remaining Customer Data on servers hosting the service, unless law requires retention. Its contracts FAQ adds a deadline of six months after expiration, backups included. Its UK public-sector listing sets a contractual maximum for backup purging. That maximum typically ranges from 90 to 180 days. Forsta deletes Client Materials within 60 business days after expiry or termination.

You could also run survey steps with agents built on your own systems. We have mapped what that looks like. The HR Agent Map

Eleven questions to put to Qualtrics before you sign

Who sets the smallest group shown, and can a view editor set it to none? Good answer: A named Brand Administrator sets a company-wide minimum, in writing, for data points and comments.
Is pseudonymization in our licence, and which survey types does it cover? Good answer: Yes, written into the order form, covering every survey type we plan to run.
Which AI features run on our data, from which supplier, and which have a company-wide switch? Good answer: A written list of each feature, its supplier and its switch.
Which document governs AI training on our comments, the privacy policy or the customer terms? Good answer: The customer terms, with a written promise that our raw comments train no model.
Where is our data stored and processed, including for support and sub-processors? Good answer: Named countries for storage and processing, written into the order form.
Which plan do we need for Comment Summaries, Qualtrics Assist and conversational follow-ups? Good answer: The quote gives the plan and each feature in it.
Which price tier applies to us, and are contractors counted? Good answer: A named tier and a headcount definition fixed for the whole term.
What does Merge keep from our HR system, and for how long? Good answer: A set retention period, and deletion when we end the connection.
Do we sign Qualtrics’ terms or Forsta’s terms, and what happens at the first renewal? Good answer: One contract, with the renewal price and the notice date written in.
Who sees attrition risk, and is it team-level only? Good answer: Managers see team-level risk only, in writing, and individual scores stay with named HR roles.
In what format does everything leave when we end the contract, and by which date is it deleted? Good answer: A file format and a deletion date written into the contract.

Alternatives to Qualtrics, including buying nothing

If Qualtrics does not fit, look at Nectar or buy nothing.

Look at Nectar if you want a promise that your data trains no AI. Qualtrics anonymizes and aggregates customer data before any AI training. In its security paper, Nectar never uses customer data to train AI models. Its contract adds a limit. Nectar does not use Client Data to train AI Tools for third-party products or public models.

Buying nothing avoids a price counted on employees and contractors. Qualtrics may change the definitions behind it by posting a new version. You would give up the starting survey built from the EX25 method. You would also give up the certified engagement questions in 35 languages. The ready-made onboarding and exit questions go too.

If you hold an HR system, our guide for HR system owners covers the survey that may come with it.

More in this guide

The Employee engagement guide
Compare the 40 researched products how each asks staff, who sees the answers, what it costs and the contract terms.
Mid-market companies which engagement products suit 200 to 2,000 people, what they cost and what to ask.
Enterprise companies which engagement products suit 2,000 people or more, what they cost, how contracts run and what to ask.
Companies whose HR or performance system already runs surveys what the survey part of an HR or performance system covers, what it costs and what else exists.