If you're reading this, you already know the news: Qualtrics is sunsetting Delighted on June 30, 2026. All your data — surveys, NPS scores, customer comments — gets permanently deleted after that date. No recovery. No extensions.

And the "official" migration path? Qualtrics XM.

For most Delighted users, that's the wrong move. Here's why — and what the smarter path looks like.

Why Most Delighted Users Built Their Program on It in the First Place

Delighted worked because it was simple. You could sign up, set up an NPS survey, and have your first responses coming in the same afternoon. No IT involvement. No six-month implementation. No enterprise contract.

That's what product managers, customer success leads, and growth marketers actually needed: a fast, affordable way to listen to customers and track sentiment over time.

It was $224–$424/month. It integrated with Slack, HubSpot, and Zendesk in minutes. And it got out of your way.

Why Qualtrics XM Is the Wrong Migration

Qualtrics acquired Delighted in 2021. Now they're shutting it down and directing everyone toward their enterprise XM Suite. The gap between the two products is enormous.

The Cost Problem

Delighted costs $3k–6k per year. Qualtrics XM starts at $50,000 per year and regularly runs $200,000–$400,000 annually for mid-size companies. Add $20,000–$50,000+ in professional services to get it set up. That's not an upgrade — that's a category change.

The Complexity Problem

Qualtrics is not a scaled-up Delighted. It's a different product for a different team. A successful Qualtrics implementation requires:

• IT resources for integrations and SSO

• Executive sponsorship and dedicated budget approval

• A CX analyst or operations specialist to manage the platform

• A 3–6 month onboarding project

Delighted users are product managers and CSMs running a lean program. They don't have a CX department. They need something that works, not something they need to configure.

Qualtrics has a 1.2/5 on Trustpilot. That tells you everything.

The Feature Mismatch Problem

Qualtrics gives you 100+ question types, complex logic branching, enterprise permissions, and a sprawling dashboard. Delighted users ran 1-question surveys. The feature set isn't an upgrade — it's noise.

And there's a deeper problem: neither Delighted nor Qualtrics actually tells you why your customers feel the way they do.

The Real Gap in Survey-Based CX Tools

Here's something worth sitting with: NPS scores tell you what customers rated you. They don't tell you how those customers actually felt, what caught their attention, what made them hesitate, or what emotion drove their decision.

Every survey tool — Delighted, Qualtrics, Survicate, AskNicely — is capturing self-reported data. People tell you what they think they feel, filtered through their ability and willingness to articulate it.

But most consumer decisions are driven by subconscious emotion and attention. That layer is invisible to every survey tool on the market.

What Entropik Decode Offers Instead

Decode is a Unified Human Insights Platform that goes beyond surveys to capture the emotional and behavioural truth behind customer responses.

What Decode gives you that Delighted never could:

Facial Emotion AI
Through a standard webcam, Decode captures real-time emotional reactions — happiness, surprise, engagement, frustration — as customers interact with your product, ad, or experience. Not what they say they felt. What their face actually showed.

Eye Gaze Tracking
Know exactly where customers look (and where they don't). Attention heatmaps reveal whether your CTA is being seen, whether your onboarding flow is confusing, and whether your ad creative is landing.

Voice Emotion AI
When customers speak in interviews or usability tests, tone and pitch carry emotional signals that text transcripts lose. Decode captures those signals.

AI Moderator
Run qualitative interviews at scale — globally, asynchronously — without a human moderator. The AI adapts questions based on participant responses, giving you depth without the cost of a research agency.

Gen AI Research Agent
Upload your survey data, interview transcripts, and behavioural recordings. The AI synthesises everything, extracts themes, generates insight reports, and answers follow-up questions in plain language.

What Decode has in common with what you loved about Delighted:

• Serves product, UX, marketing, and research teams — not just enterprise CX departments

• Designed for non-analysts to run studies and get insights independently

• Covers the full research lifecycle from survey to synthesis

• Serves the mid-market without a six-figure commitment

Delighted vs Qualtrics vs Decode: Side-by-Side

 The Bottom Line

If you're a Delighted user evaluating your options, here's the honest picture:

• Qualtrics XM is an enterprise infrastructure designed for large CX departments. If you have the budget, the team, and 6 months to implement, it's powerful. Most Delighted users don't fit that profile.

• Other survey tools (Survicate, AskNicely, Simplesat) are lateral moves — same category, different UI. You'll still only know what customers say, not what they feel.

• Entropik Decode is the upgrade path for teams who want to understand their customers more deeply — without becoming a research agency.

Before June 30, export your Delighted data. Then decide where you want to go next.

Book a Decode demo → https://www.entropik.io/book-demo