ViewFruit

ViewFruit Review

At first glance, ViewFruit appears like a standard survey site offering virtual points in return for your survey answers. However, what sets ViewFruit apart is that it’s run by a Chinese company that also operates panels in English-speaking countries USA, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. In this survey review, we’ve made a deep dive into ViewFruit’s panel-model, to see if it’s worth signing up for.

Is ViewFruit a legit survey site?

ViewFruit is a site run by a market research provider called Paneland. Paneland is a Chinese company headquartered in Shanghai, founded in 2011. The company also claims to be a member of market research bodies ESOMAR and Insights Association. However, when checking the member directories of these associations (in March 2023), we could not find Paneland listed as a corporate member.

Another red flag is the fact that they provide you with the screening criteria before taking surveys. Here is an example:

By telling you the exact criteria for how to qualify for the survey in advance, they make it very easy and tempting for respondents to cheat. This is a big no-no in terms of research methodology and would go against the advice of professional organisations such as ESOMAR and Insights Association (which Paneland claim to be a member of, but are not).

While Paneland is missing the international memberships, they do seem to be a legit Chinese business displaying the mandatory license number with a link to the official certificate on the Chinese government website:

While there are plenty of red flags, it’s important to note that Paneland is not a scam. They will also pay rewards as advertised (see proof of payment further down).

Data Privacy: Any reason for concern?

Since this is a Chinese company, you’ll need to factor in that your profile information and survey answers will be stored and processed under the laws of China. Without going too deep into why this could be problematic, we’ll refer to a warning sent out by the US Department of Homeland Security about the risk of sharing data with Chinese companies.

“The following list provides examples of the types of data that should be considered particularly sensitive:
1. Technology and other data in connection to export-controlled products.
2. Intellectual property, including trade secrets, relating to emerging technologies identified in China 2025 and other PRC plans.
3. Biotech, genomic data, and medical test data. Recommended Actions
4. Personally-identifiable and other sensitive information.
5. Geolocation data.”

As you can see, there there are several restrictions in place when it comes to US companies and individuals working with Chinese companies, particularly in the technology sector. This is important to keep in mind if asked to share information by a Chinese company, especially when it comes to B2B topics concerning current or past employers, or business partners. Interestingly, the first survey opportunity we were asked to complete was for business decision-makers within the technology field (see screenshot above)…

How much can I earn with ViewFruit?

ViewFruit has a payout threshold of $5, which is a good level in comparison with many other sites. 500 ViewFruit points equal $1, which means you need to earn 2,500 points to get a payout (in the US). While the rewards options vary from country to country, the most common method is PayPal for English-speaking countries.

In our experience, an average survey is worth ~$0.25, which means you’ll need to complete around 20 surveys before you can redeem $5. However, we qualified for less than half of the survey opportunities, so the amount of time required to earn $5 is massive. It took us as much as 7 weeks of frequent survey taking to accumulate as much as 2500 points. As compensation for “screening out” of the survey, you’ll also get 1 entry to the sweepstakes called “Lucky Draws”. It’s not clear to us how these draws are conducted, what the odds are, or what the prize amounts to. You can also do a “Lucky Survey”. In this case, you’re simply redirected to the Pollfish platform, where you can take 3rd party surveys. These are generally even lower paid than ViewFruit’s own surveys.

Despite all the red flags, ViewFruit did pay the rewards in the end:

Note that this review was mainly conducted based on the US version of the website. The experience for other countries could be different. As an example, the points value differs from country to country; in the UK, 1000 points equal £1 while in the US 500 points equal $1.