The Best 10 Qualitative Data Analysis Software Platforms in 2023

Qualitative data analysis software has become essential in helping businesses know their customers. In fact, 63% of customers expect you to know their wants and expectations.

Qualitative data analysis software (QDAS) can help you review trends and consumer behavior. You'll then know what your target audience wants and give them great experiences.

In this post, we'll break down some of the best qualitative data analysis software you can use with your team. But first, let's define qualitative data analysis software.

What is qualitative analysis software?

Qualitative data analysis software (QDAS) gathers information beyond pure numbers to help you make better decisions.

These tools scrape your digital presence, chat messages, reviews, and files for customer insights. They then review the details in bulk, saving your team valuable time during reporting.

Additionally, QDAS minimizes data loss, as data is either stored in the cloud or on your computer. These tools account for errors and bias during analysis — common challenges when working with data manually.

With QDAS, your business can test and refine theories to predict future events or customer actions. With great data accuracy, you can reduce risks and achieve greater results.

Survey Tools vs. Qualitative Data Analysis Software

Traditional survey tools just provide you with reporting for quantitative data, such as age and number of visits per month. This narrow view of data limits your analysis to questions with quantifiable answers.

Alternatively, qualitative data analysis software (QDAS) gathers insights beyond numbers. That includes insights from interviews, focus groups, and online reviews. You can then get a broader view of customer concerns.

1. HubSpot

HubSpot offers a customer feedback tool that generates detailed analytics from surveys and customer reviews. The tool can analyze these responses and provides a detailed breakdown of customer satisfaction.

You can access data from one dashboard. This lets you view different charts and graphs summarizing your customers' responses. With a simple setup, your team has a quick, clean way to review customer insights.

HubSpot's customer feedback tool is part of HubSpot's Service Hubtools. It can collect both quantitative and qualitative customer feedback.

What We Love

• The tool connects with HubSpot's NPS surveys, so you can seamlessly collect and analyze customer data.
• There's an easy-to-use interface.
• The interface gathers customer service KPIs so you can discover growth opportunities.

2. MAXQDA

MAXQDAis a qualitative data analysis software designed for companies analyzing a range of customer data.

The software allows you to import data from interviews, focus groups, surveys, videos, and social media. This way, all your qualitative data can be reviewed in one central location.

Once imported into MAXQDA, you can organize your information into different categories. You can mark specific data with tags and leave notes for other employees to review your work.

MAXQDA even lets you color code data so your team knows exactly what to work on each day.

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What We Love

• You can use MAXQDA with multiple data formats, including social media posts, videos, and images.
• MAXQDA supports both mixed method analysis and statistical analysis.
• You can store project data in one project pack to make collaboration easy.

3. Quirkos

Quirkos includes a variety of tools that analyze and review qualitative data. That includes comparative analysis, which shows side-by-side views of your data.

Your team can more easily spot trends and identify roadblocks in the customer experience.

With Quirkos, you'll also have unparalleled customization options. Quirkos, unlike other QDAS, has 16 million colors that you can use in your theme, making coding quicker.

This is useful if you have a large coding framework, as you can label your themes with different colors for easy identification and reading.

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What We Love

• Quirkos is compatible with many operating systems, including Linux and Mac.
• There's a drag-and-drop feature for coding sections of text.
• You can connect to SPSS, Word, or Excel to generate custom reports.

4. Qualtrics

Qualtrics comes with two key tools for simplifying your qualitative research process: TextIQ and DriverIQ.

TextIQ uses AI to analyze open-structured data. You can then assess customer sentiment and draw helpful insights from the data.

The DriverIQ tool helps you see what matters most for your customers, from purchase intent to satisfaction. You can then focus on what will have the most impact on your business.

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What We Love

• The TextIQ tools help uncover trends, problems, and opportunities from customer survey responses. Additionally, it acts as a social listening tool, so you can use it to identify brand mentions on social media.
• The advanced drag-and-drop feature allows you to visualize data quickly.
• Sophisticated intelligence tools (AI+ML) make advanced research for different metrics easier.

5. Raven's Eye

Raven's Eye is a qualitative data analysis software that can process and analyze natural language data. One of its most popular features is its audio converter, which uploads audio files into the software and transforms them into text files.

Then, it analyzes the text for unique insights into customer behavior. Raven's Eye is perfect for audio interviews with customers. You can upload the recorded session to Raven's Eye for analysis.

In addition to audio, Raven's Eye processes text documents. The text analyzer can review text samples written in over 65 different languages.

It then uses a "natural language" analysis to determine a variety of unique metrics, ranging from word count to reading ease.

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What We Love

• Raven's Eye quickly, accurately, and reliably convert audio and text files. This will help you understand how customers think and communicate.
• The program is cloud-based, meaning it can be accessed from multiple devices.
• You can explore text and spoken word (or natural language data) in the same way human beings can.

6. Square Feedback

Square Feedback is a free customer feedback collection tool that provides qualitative data reporting. It can analyze survey responses to see how satisfied your customers are.

Square Feedback also comes with historical filter options. With this feature, you can compare past data to current customer information.

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What We Love

• Square Feedback integrates into your digital receipts and easily collects feedback.
• You can privately track customer comments and responses.
• Square Feedback provides rich customer insights that you can use to make informed decisions.

7. LiGRE

LiGRE can be used by students, business professionals, and researchers to analyze interviews and large bodies of text. It has both free and premium plans.

LiGRE's most important analysis tools include the following:

• Automatic transcription (for transcribing both audio and video files).
• A survey builder.
• Data merging.
• A laboratory (a teaching platform where you can open your own qualitative research laboratory for a team).

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What We Love

• LiGRE Laboratory lets you teach your team about qualitative research.
• You can work with various media types, including books and articles.
• You can transcribe video and audio in more than 90 languages.

8. QDA Miner Lite

QDA Miner can analyze interviews, open-ended questions, and transcripts. Best of all, the user interface is easy and free.

QDA Miner can quickly analyze interviews, open-ended responses, journals, and still images. Plus, there are seven text search and retrieval tools, helping you reliably code your text in less time.

QDA Miner Lite also offers a Boolean text search tool. This gives you the unprecedented ability to retrieve and code text segments.

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What We Love

• QDA Miner Lite has an easy-to-use interface for coding, retrieving, and reviewing data. You can also present results in a variety of file formats.

9. Dedoose

Dedoose has qualitative and mixed method capabilities for anyone looking to analyze text, audio, images, videos, and surveys.

It claims to support traditional qualitative data management, coding, and analysis. Dedoose is a wise choice for analyzing raw consumer or market research data.

Dedoose is free for 30 days. Afterward, you can upgrade to a premium plan with rates adjusted depending on your needs or your group size.

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What We Love

• Dedoose encourages teamwork and collaboration.
• Dedoose presents information in interactive visuals, such as charts, plots, and tables for easy analysis.

10. Glimpse

Glimpse is ideal for customer success teams that want to analyze qualitative data related to consumer behaviors.

The easy-to-use tool comes with a qualitative sentiment analysis survey. This collects data from different sources and presents it in a straightforward format, whether chart, graphs, or heat maps.

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What We Love

• Information is organized or displayed concisely for easy analysis.
• You can collect information from various platforms and display them simultaneously.
• It identifies trends and patterns in products, industries, and companies.
• The software uses machine learning and what-if analysis tools to collect and present real-time data.

Choosing the Right QDAS

Ever since qualitative data analysis software was invented in the 80s, these tools have helped businesses harness data. For those in customer success, QDAS allows businesses to create memorable experiences for customers.

If you're looking for a QDAS to help you reach the right buyer, consider which tool aligns most with your business needs.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in June 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.