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This guide walks you through everything you need to go from a new account to a completed analysis. The whole process takes about ten minutes. You’ll sign up, choose a plan, create a project, and run your first workflow — whether that’s a survey, a data classification job, or an interview transcription.
1

Create your account

Go to the Smartinterview sign-up page. Enter your email address and a password of at least 8 characters, then click Start using Smartinterview.You can also sign up with Google, Microsoft, or LinkedIn if you prefer not to use a password.
After signing up, you are automatically placed on a free trial so you can explore the platform before choosing a paid plan.
2

Choose a plan

After your account is created, you land on the pricing page. Smartinterview offers four plans:
  • Trial — 14 days free, no payment details required
  • Essential — for individuals getting started with paid usage
  • Start — the most popular plan for small teams, includes priority support and management tools
  • Elite — for larger teams with higher volume needs and dedicated engineering support
Pricing is displayed in CHF (Swiss Francs). For full plan details and current prices, see Plans & tokens.Select the plan that fits your needs. For the Trial, click Try for free. For paid plans, you are redirected to Stripe to complete payment.
You can upgrade or change your plan at any time from Account > Plans.
3

Create your first project

After completing account setup, you arrive at the Projects dashboard. Projects are workspaces that group your surveys, data files, and transcriptions together.Click Create new project, enter a name for your project, and click Create. You can create separate projects for different research studies, clients, or topics.If this is your first time in the app, an onboarding wizard may appear to help you choose what you want to do. You can follow it or dismiss it and proceed manually.
4

Choose your workflow

Inside your project, choose the workflow that matches your research task:

Survey Builder

Design and deploy a new survey with AI follow-up questions.

Pulse Classifier

Upload existing open-ended response data for AI topic coding and classification.

Pulse Qualitative

Upload interview recordings for transcription and analysis.
Navigate to the relevant section within your project using the sidebar or the section tabs at the top of the project view.
5

Run your first analysis

The steps differ by workflow:Survey Builder
  1. Open your project and click Survey Builder.
  2. Add questions using the question panel on the right — choose from text, multiple choice, vocal, and other types.
  3. Configure skip logic or quotas as needed, then click Save.
  4. Share the survey link with your respondents.
  5. Return to the project to view responses as they come in.
Pulse Classifier
  1. Open your project and click Pulse Classifier.
  2. Click Upload file and select your Excel file. The file must contain a column of open-ended text responses.
  3. Smartinterview generates topics from your data. Review and adjust them, then click Classify.
  4. Once classification is complete, click Export to download the results as an Excel file.
Pulse Qualitative
  1. Open your project and click Pulse Qualitative.
  2. Click Upload and select your audio or video file.
  3. Smartinterview transcribes the recording and identifies speakers. This may take a few minutes depending on file length.
  4. Once the transcript is ready, use the workspace chat to ask questions about the content.
Each operation consumes tokens from your plan balance. Transcription uses 8 tokens per minute of audio. You can check your remaining balance under Account > Tokens.

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Next steps

Survey Builder overview

Learn about question types, skip logic, quotas, and how to share your survey.

Survey codification overview

Understand how to prepare your data file, configure topics, and interpret classification output.

Qualitative Transcription overview

See how transcription works, what diarization produces, and how to use the workspace chat.

Account setup

Set up your company profile, language settings, and team members.