Qualtrics vs FeedbackFruits for Course Evaluation (2026)

Short answer: Qualtrics and FeedbackFruits both turn up on course-evaluation shortlists, but they are built for two different jobs. Qualtrics Course Evaluations is an institution-wide survey platform for standardized, end-of-term summative evaluation of teaching (SET) — the structured ratings that feed programme review and accreditation files. FeedbackFruits is an LMS-embedded suite of formative learning-design tools — peer review, group-member evaluation, self-assessment, interactive documents — that live inside a running course. If your problem is "administer the same evaluation across every module and report it to a committee," Qualtrics is the closer fit. If your problem is "help students give each other structured feedback while the course is still running," FeedbackFruits is. Neither tool runs an AI-moderated conversational interview that probes open-text answers and analyses them automatically — which is the specific gap Koji was built to fill.

This guide compares the two fairly, based on publicly available information as of publication, and is candid about when a competitor is the better choice.

What each tool actually is

Qualtrics is an experience-management (XM) platform. Its education offering, Qualtrics Course Evaluations, is a unified solution to manage the whole evaluation process — customising questions, distributing surveys by email or through the LMS, sending automated reminders, and analysing results at institutional, department and instructor level. Qualtrics reports that it serves education institutions worldwide, including 99 of the top 100 business schools (Qualtrics newsroom). It is a mature, enterprise-grade survey engine.

FeedbackFruits is a teaching-and-learning toolset that embeds directly into the LMS — Canvas, Blackboard, D2L Brightspace, Moodle and Microsoft Teams. Its tools include Peer Review, Group Member Evaluation, Self-Assessment, Comprehension, Discussion, Interactive Document and Automated Feedback, and it added a Learning Collection feature in 2026. It was named UDL Platform of the Year at the 2026 EdTech Breakthrough Awards (FeedbackFruits). FeedbackFruits excels at in-course feedback activities; it is not a dedicated institution-wide SET administration platform in the way EvaSys, Explorance Blue or Qualtrics are.

That distinction is the whole comparison. Choosing between them is less "which is better" and more "which problem am I actually solving?"

Qualtrics vs FeedbackFruits: comparison table

Dimension	Qualtrics Course Evaluations	FeedbackFruits	Koji
Primary purpose	Institution-wide summative SET surveys	In-course formative & peer feedback	AI-moderated evaluation interviews
Where it runs	Standalone XM platform + LMS/email distribution	Embedded inside the LMS	Link, email or LMS; conversational web app
Question format	Likert scales, open text, branching logic	Peer/self rubrics, structured activities, in-course surveys	Adaptive conversation that probes each answer
Open-text analysis	Text iQ topic/sentiment (add-on)	Activity-level analytics, not thematic SET analysis	Automatic thematic analysis on every transcript
Formative (mid-course)	Possible but not its focus	Core strength	Supported (formative and summative)
Summative (end-of-term SET)	Core strength	Not its purpose	Core strength
Response-rate features	Automated reminders, immediate results	Tied to graded course activities	Conversational format designed to lift depth and completion
Closing-the-loop / action tracking	Dashboards; workflows on higher tiers	Instructor-level, per activity	Built-in action tracking across cycles
Standardisation & bias control	Standard templates; analyst-dependent	Rubric-based within a course	Standardised, bias-aware AI moderation
Data residency / GDPR	EU data centres available (enterprise)	EU-based vendor; LMS-hosted data	EU/GDPR-first data handling
Pricing	Custom quote; Academic plan withdrawn	Institutional licence	Custom; contact sales

Pricing note: as of publication, neither vendor publishes standard list pricing for course evaluation. Third-party listings estimate Qualtrics contracts starting around $5,000+ per year, rising into six figures for large institutions, and note that Qualtrics has withdrawn the lower-cost Academic plan many universities previously used (Capterra). Treat all figures as indicative and confirm directly.

Where Qualtrics wins

Institution-wide SET at scale. If you need every module evaluated on a consistent instrument, distributed automatically and reported by department and instructor, Qualtrics is designed for exactly this.
A single survey platform for everything else. Many universities already run pulse surveys, the student experience survey and staff surveys on Qualtrics. Consolidating course evaluation onto the same platform reduces vendor sprawl.
Mature quantitative reporting. Cross-tabs, dashboards and role-based access are enterprise-grade and immediate — results are available as the term closes rather than months later.

Where FeedbackFruits wins

Formative feedback inside the course. Peer review, group-member evaluation and self-assessment are genuinely strong, and they improve learning during the module rather than auditing it afterwards.
Deep LMS integration. Activities live in Canvas, Moodle, Brightspace, Blackboard and Teams, with marks flowing to the gradebook. For teaching teams that live in the LMS, adoption friction is low.
Learning-design credibility. Its Universal Design for Learning focus and 2026 award reflect a product built around pedagogy, not just data collection.

The gap both tools leave

Both platforms handle their core job well, and both leave the same thing on the table: the qualitative half of course evaluation, at scale.

Qualtrics can collect open-text comments, but a static box cannot ask a follow-up. When a student writes "the assessment was confusing," nobody probes which assessment or why, and an analyst is left hand-coding thousands of thin comments — or, increasingly, letting an add-on summarise them without a human in the loop. FeedbackFruits, by design, keeps feedback within a course; it was never meant to standardise evaluation across a whole faculty.

This is where an AI-moderated approach changes the shape of the problem. Instead of a fixed form, Koji runs a short adaptive conversation with each student: it asks the standard questions, then follows up on vague or important answers the way a skilled interviewer would — consistently, in the student's own language, without the fatigue or bias of a human moderator. Every transcript is then run through automatic thematic analysis, so a programme director opens a report of themes and representative quotes rather than a spreadsheet of raw text. The same AI interview engine powers customer and user research on the main Koji platform; the education product applies it to teaching and course quality.

Koji also closes the loop that summative SET usually drops: actions committed in response to feedback are tracked across cycles, which is exactly the evidence accreditation panels ask for. If that matters to you, see AI course evaluation vs traditional SET surveys and our closing-the-loop comparison.

GDPR and EU data handling

For European universities this is rarely optional. Qualtrics offers EU data-centre hosting on enterprise agreements, but you should confirm the data-processing terms, sub-processors and residency for your specific contract. FeedbackFruits is an EU-headquartered vendor with data handled through your LMS context. Koji is built EU/GDPR-first, with data-processing terms designed for institutional procurement. Whichever you choose, put the DPA and Article 28 sub-processor checklist in front of your DPO before signing, and read our guide to GDPR-compliant course evaluation software.

When a competitor is the better choice

Be honest with yourself about the job to be done:

Choose FeedbackFruits if your priority is formative, in-course peer and self-assessment tightly woven into LMS activities, and you already run summative SET elsewhere. It is the better learning-design tool, and Koji does not try to replace peer-review-inside-a-module.
Choose Qualtrics if you are standardising on one enterprise survey platform across the whole institution, your evaluation is primarily quantitative, and you have the analyst capacity (and budget) to work its open-text tooling.
Choose Koji if the qualitative side of evaluation is where your current tool falls short — if you want conversational depth, automatic thematic analysis, standardised bias-aware moderation, and closing-the-loop evidence without hand-coding.

There is no shame in running more than one: some institutions keep FeedbackFruits for in-course activities and add a conversational evaluation layer for end-of-term insight.

How to choose

Name the job. Formative-in-course, summative-institutional, or qualitative-depth? That single answer eliminates one or two options immediately.
Audit your open text. If comments already pile up unread, more Likert scales will not help — prioritise a tool that analyses qualitative data automatically.
Check the integration you actually use. Confirm live support for your LMS (Canvas, Moodle, Brightspace, Blackboard) and your SSO/SIS, not just a logo on a page. See our integration and security review.
Run the DPA past your DPO early. EU residency and sub-processors decide more procurements than features do.
Pilot on real modules. Compare response depth and time-to-insight on the same courses before committing.

For a structured process, use our RFP guide and the wider student feedback software comparison.

The bottom line

Qualtrics and FeedbackFruits are not really rivals — they answer different questions. Qualtrics is the enterprise SET-and-survey platform; FeedbackFruits is the in-course formative-feedback suite. The question neither was built to answer well is "how do we get deep, standardised, analysed qualitative feedback across every course without an army of coders?" That is the question Koji answers.

See how Koji compares on your own modules — book a walkthrough or explore Koji vs Qualtrics and Koji vs FeedbackFruits.