SurveyMonkey — Independent Software Review

Turn curiosity into clarity

Compliance Transparency Index

Grade: A — Score: 85/100

Best For

• Marketing, customer-experience, and HR teams that need structured feedback programs. SurveyMonkey combines templates, survey logic, multiple collection channels, and integrations in one platform.
• Researchers analyzing open-ended feedback. Advantage and higher plans add Analyze with AI and Thematic Analysis, while SurveyMonkey also documents sentiment and response-quality analysis.
• Individuals and small businesses that want a self-service path from free surveys to paid research features. Basic is free, while paid individual plans add higher response limits, exports, logic, and AI analysis.
• Enterprises that need centralized governance, SAML 2.0 SSO, regional data-center options, and Enterprise integrations such as Salesforce, Power BI, Tableau, Marketo, and Zoom.

Not Ideal For

• Free users who need long surveys or raw-data exports. Basic limits surveys to 10 questions, and SurveyMonkey documents exports as a paid feature.
• Two-person teams that need a shared Team plan. Team Advantage and Team Premier require at least three users.
• Organizations that need SSO on a self-service tier. SurveyMonkey documents single sign-on as an Enterprise feature.
• High-response programs with tight usage budgets. Paid plans have response allowances and can incur per-response overage charges, while SurveyMonkey Audience responses are sold separately.
• Organizations that require a clearly documented product-level opt-out from model training. SurveyMonkey documents proprietary-model training on de-identified customer response data and separately documents controls over AI feature access, but the reviewed public sources do not establish whether those controls also opt customer data out of SurveyMonkey's proprietary model-training use.

Operational Overview

Pricing Structure

Basic: Free

• 1 user
• Unlimited surveys
• 10 questions per survey
• Limited visible responses per survey
• Build with AI
• Zapier integration

Standard Monthly: $129/month (U.S. pricing, billed monthly)

• 1 user
• Unlimited questions
• 1,000 responses per month
• Custom design
• Skip logic
• Data exports
• 200+ integrations

Advantage Annual: $39/month (U.S. pricing, $468 billed annually)

• 1 user
• 15,000 responses per year
• Analyze with AI
• Thematic Analysis
• Statistical significance
• Multi-survey analysis
• More logic features

Premier Annual: $139/month (U.S. pricing, $1,668 billed annually)

• 1 user
• 40,000 responses per year
• White-label branding
• Advanced logic
• Block randomization
• Multilingual surveys
• Crosstabs

Team Advantage: $30/user/month (U.S. pricing, minimum 3 users, billed annually)

• 50,000 responses per year
• Shared brand assets
• User roles and permissions
• Analyze with AI
• Thematic Analysis
• Consolidated billing

Team Premier: $92/user/month (U.S. pricing, minimum 3 users, billed annually)

• 100,000 responses per year
• Everything in Team Advantage
• White-label branding
• Advanced logic
• Block randomization
• Multilingual surveys

Enterprise: Custom quote (5+ users)

• Custom response limit
• Single sign-on
• Enhanced governance and security
• US, Canada, or EU data center
• Premium onboarding
• Customer Success access

Alternative Consideration

Consider switching to Google Forms: Google Forms offers a free and straightforward alternative for basic survey needs without response limits.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does SurveyMonkey compare with Google Forms?

Google Forms handles straightforward surveys and quizzes, collaboration, response charts, Google Sheets storage, and CSV downloads. SurveyMonkey Basic allows unlimited surveys with up to 10 questions; its current U.S. product page says Basic users can view up to 25 responses per survey, while some localized pricing pages describe the allowance only as limited. Paid SurveyMonkey plans add deeper logic, AI analysis, branding controls, and 200+ integrations, so Google Forms fits simple Google-centric collection while SurveyMonkey targets more structured survey research and analysis.

How does SurveyMonkey compare with Typeform?

Typeform Basic includes unlimited forms and questions, one user, 100 responses per month, AI form creation, conditional logic, webhooks, and integrations. SurveyMonkey Standard includes one user, 1,000 responses per month, unlimited questions, skip logic, exports, and 200+ integrations, while Advantage and higher add Analyze with AI and Thematic Analysis. The choice therefore depends on whether you prioritize Typeform's interactive form workflow or SurveyMonkey's broader survey-research and analysis features.

How does SurveyMonkey compare with Qualtrics?

Qualtrics' free account allows 3 active surveys, up to 30 questions per survey, and 500 total responses, while its Strategic Research offering includes 23 question types, conjoint, MaxDiff, video and audio responses, and advanced analysis. SurveyMonkey Basic allows unlimited surveys but 10 questions per survey and limited response visibility, while paid tiers add advanced logic, multi-survey analysis, AI analysis, and team controls. Buyers who specifically need conjoint, MaxDiff, or deeper research-design tooling should evaluate Qualtrics directly.

Can SurveyMonkey surveys be anonymous?

Yes, but anonymity is configured by the survey creator rather than guaranteed automatically. SurveyMonkey says web links record IP addresses in survey results by default and email invitations can also store email and contact data unless Anonymous Responses is enabled; it also says respondent IP addresses are retained in backend logs and deleted after 13 months. Existing responses cannot be made anonymous retroactively, and identifying questions, custom data, respondent authentication, or integration-specific settings can still make a respondent identifiable.

Can SurveyMonkey analyze open-ended responses with AI?

Yes. Thematic Analysis groups open-ended responses into themes and summaries, Sentiment Analysis classifies tone, and Analyze with AI can work with Comment Box or Single Text Box responses when those responses are tagged. SurveyMonkey lists Analyze with AI and Thematic Analysis on Advantage, Premier, Team, and Enterprise plans, and its help documentation lists prompt limits of 20 per survey on Advantage, 50 on Premier, and unlimited per survey on Enterprise.

Does SurveyMonkey integrate with Salesforce, Slack, and Microsoft Teams?

SurveyMonkey documents 200+ integrations plus API connections. Slack can receive survey-response notifications, Salesforce is an Enterprise add-on that can trigger surveys and write data back to Salesforce records, and the Microsoft Teams integration can create and share surveys and results inside Teams. SurveyMonkey states that its Microsoft Teams integration is limited to US data center accounts, so plan and region restrictions should be checked before purchase.

Can SurveyMonkey export survey data to Excel, CSV, or SPSS?

Yes, but exports are a paid feature. Question Summary exports support PDF, PowerPoint, Excel, and CSV, while Individual Response exports support Excel, CSV, SPSS, and PDF. SurveyMonkey Standard already lists data exports, so Basic users should not assume raw export access is included.

Can SurveyMonkey be used for HIPAA-regulated surveys?

SurveyMonkey offers HIPAA-enabled accounts only as an Enterprise add-on and requires a Business Associate Agreement for regulated entities collecting or storing protected health information. Once an account is HIPAA-enabled it cannot be converted back to a regular account, and SurveyMonkey says Analyze with AI is not available on HIPAA-enabled accounts. A standard Basic, individual, or team account should not be treated as the HIPAA configuration.

Does SurveyMonkey provide survey respondents if I do not have an audience?

Yes, through SurveyMonkey Audience, which is purchased separately from the normal plan subscription. SurveyMonkey says Audience can source panelists in 130+ countries and lets buyers target demographic and other attributes through the Target Audience collector. Audience responses are sold separately from subscription response allowances.

Does SurveyMonkey use survey responses to train AI models?

SurveyMonkey says it uses de-identified customer response data or synthetically generated data to train and build its proprietary AI models, while excluding personal data from those training datasets. It separately lets some Team and Enterprise admins manage access to individual AI features, and says data sent to OpenAI or other third-party AI providers is not used to train those providers' models. The public sources reviewed do not explain whether disabling SurveyMonkey AI features changes SurveyMonkey's own de-identified model-training use or otherwise establishes a customer training opt-out.

AI Visibility Report

How AI agents (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, others) read this review page in the past 7 days. Updated weekly. View SurveyMonkey AI Visibility Report.