What happened to CheckMarket?
For years, CheckMarket was a household name in the Benelux: solid survey software with Dutch-language support, widely used for customer research, member research and employee research. In 2020 the company was acquired by the American firm Medallia. The product is now called Medallia Agile Research, and anyone visiting the Dutch CheckMarket site today ends up on an English-language Medallia product page.
With that, the Dutch-language product pages, the knowledge base and the familiar name have effectively disappeared. For many Dutch and Belgian organisations that worked with CheckMarket for years, this feels like a good moment to review their options. We know that situation well: at our own research agency we worked with CheckMarket for years before we built BenchLab.
What to look for when choosing an alternative
Not every alternative suits every kind of research. Ask yourself three questions first. One: what kind of research do you mainly do? A one-off satisfaction survey has different requirements than an annual member study or a benchmark study in which participants compare themselves with each other. Two: what happens with the results? If only you need an overall report, almost any survey tool will do. If you want every participant to receive personal feedback, most of the market drops out. Three: how much help do you want? Some tools are purely do-it-yourself, others provide guidance on question design, recruitment and reporting.
Also pay attention to practical matters: a Dutch-language interface and support, where the data is stored in relation to the GDPR, and whether you can start without a large annual contract.
The alternatives at a glance
For one-off surveys and simple satisfaction research, SurveyMonkey and Survalyzer are logical candidates. Survalyzer is Swiss-Dutch and offers a Dutch-language environment, which comes closest to the feel of the old CheckMarket. For large organisations with their own research team and an ample budget, Qualtrics is the standard, although that package is considerable overkill for most SME organisations.
If you mainly want to build assessments or scans yourself, where participants receive an automatic PDF, Pointerpro is an option. And for benchmark research, member research and customer research in which every participant receives a personal report in your brand style, there is BenchLab. Which one it becomes depends mainly on what you want to do with the results.
When BenchLab is the logical successor
If you mainly used CheckMarket to collect data, there are several fine successors. If you used it for research where something needs to go back to the participants, for example members of your association or clients of your consultancy, then BenchLab was built for exactly that purpose. Every respondent receives a personal benchmark report immediately after completing the questionnaire: this is where your organisation stands, and this is how that compares to similar organisations.
On top of that, BenchLab was built by people who know CheckMarket inside and out. You can quickly convert questionnaires from CheckMarket to BenchLab, including question types. And importantly: BenchLab integrates with all major research packages. If you want to keep your familiar survey environment, you simply can, BenchLab then handles the benchmark and the personal reports on top. Your study is usually ready within 48 hours.
How to switch without losing anything
Switching does not have to be a months-long project. First export your questionnaires and, if you have them, the results of earlier measurements. You convert your question set into BenchLab, after which you see a trial version of the new questionnaire and the accompanying report before anything goes live. Earlier results can serve as a baseline, so your first BenchLab study immediately shows a comparison with the past.
Plan the switch in a quiet period between two measurements, and your participants will not notice a thing. The only thing they will see is that from now on they receive a personal report themselves, and that is an improvement.
Further reading
Switching from CheckMarket?
Send us your current questionnaire and within a few days you will see a trial report in your own brand style. No obligations, and you will know right away whether BenchLab fits your research.