Survey platforms are business-critical for research agencies and fieldwork companies.
Surveys are scripted there. Data is processed there. Reporting workflows are built around them. Integrations are developed. Employees are trained. In some cases, years of internal processes and know-how become tied to one specific platform.
What happens if that platform is no longer available?
The market research technology industry has seen considerable consolidation over the years. Platforms are acquired, product portfolios are merged and strategic priorities change.
When that happens, customers don’t necessarily control what comes next.
A platform that is important to your business today might receive less development in the future. Pricing or commercial models can change. Products can be merged into other platforms. And eventually, a system can be discontinued altogether.
For a company that has built important parts of its operations around that system, changing platform is rarely a small project.
A different way to think about software licensing
Most software platforms today are subscription services.
You pay a monthly or annual license fee and, in return, the supplier hosts, maintains and develops the platform.
We will continue to offer Survey Automator in exactly that way.
But we also think there should be another option.
We are therefore introducing:
Perpetual Platform License
Instead of paying an ongoing license fee, your organisation can pay a one-time license fee and receive the right to use Survey Automator indefinitely.
Depending on your requirements, you can also:
- Run the platform on your own infrastructure
- Get access to the source code
- Continue developing the platform internally
- Reduce your long-term dependency on Research Automators as a supplier
In other words, you can continue using Survey Automator even if your organisation’s requirements – or our industry – change in the future.
This is not about us going anywhere
Research Automators will continue to develop Survey Automator, host the platform and support our customers.
For most organisations, we expect our normal subscription model to remain the simplest option. You get hosting, updates, development and support without having to manage the technology yourself.
The Perpetual Platform License is about something else: choice and long-term control.
Some organisations are comfortable relying completely on a software supplier. Others operate infrastructure that they expect to use for ten or twenty years and want greater control over what happens to it.
We think both approaches should be possible.
How dependent is your organisation on its survey platform?
When evaluating survey technology, functionality and price naturally get most of the attention.
But there is another question worth asking:
What happens if we still depend on this platform ten years from now, but the supplier has changed direction?
For organisations where survey technology is a central part of their production process, continuity may be just as important as today’s feature list.
With our Perpetual Platform License, we want to give customers one more way to protect that continuity.
Interested in discussing what a perpetual license could look like for your organisation? Get in touch with us.