LimeSurvey vs SurveyMonkey

LimeSurvey

The authoring evidence reaches research level: randomisation of questions and groups, relevance equations, piping and micro-tailoring, 28+ question types including matrix variants and semantic differential, quota setting, reusable questionnaire labels, custom HTML/CSS/JavaScript, surveys in 80+ languages, and WCAG 2.2 AA stated by name, with conjoint/CBC and MaxDiff methods listed for research designs. We found no public information on versioned forms with change history or a published accessibility conformance report, which keeps it just short of the top.

SurveyMonkey

The captured pages document skip logic and question-and-answer piping on the individual plan, A/B testing, multilingual surveys, block randomisation on Team Premier, and branching rules that skip to pages, randomly traverse page ranges, and show, hide or invalidate questions with ANY/ALL conditions — enough for a randomised design. A team library for reusable items and premium themes are also described; we found no public information on scoring or calculations inside the authoring tool, or on an accessibility standard such as WCAG for respondent-facing forms.

LimeSurvey

Distribution is built for panels: mass mailing of invitations and reminders, a participants table with unique access codes per respondent, open and closed access modes, quota setting, scheduled start and end times, panel integration with end URLs and URL parameters, QR codes, embedding, and a RemoteControl API over XML-RPC/JSON-RPC. We found no public information on offline or kiosk collection, approval routing of submissions, conditional notifications, or webhooks, so I cannot place it higher.

SurveyMonkey

Email invitations go out from an address book via collectors, delivery runs through SparkPost email and Twilio SMS, payments and file uploads live inside the product, and webhooks and Zapier push responses onward — with SurveyMonkey Audience able to source panel respondents by country, age and income. We found no public information on invitation reminders, response quotas or closing rules, or on a REST API for reading and writing responses in the core survey product.

LimeSurvey

Live response summaries, filtering, graphs and charts, quick statistics with graphical evaluation, and exports to SPSS, R, Stata, CSV, Excel and PDF cover the minimum my faculty needs, though the pages do not state whether variable and value labels survive the SPSS and R exports. We found no public information on cross-tabulation with significance testing, weighting, or open-text coding and sentiment analysis, which is what would lift this to research grade.

SurveyMonkey

Cross-tabs with statistical significance, multi-survey analysis, AI sentiment and thematic analysis of open text, shareable dashboards with password protection and Enterprise SSO enforcement, and an SPSS export producing an SAV file are all documented. That covers most of a research workflow; we found no public information on weighting, R exports, or whether value labels are preserved in the SPSS export.

LimeSurvey

The basics my ethics board asks about are documented: anonymous surveys, a data processing agreement stored in the customer account, a named data protection officer, 2048-bit SSL in transit, encryption at rest configurable for specific question types and participant fields, third-country transfers only under standard contractual clauses, and a statement that no profiles of survey participants are created; the vendor states its session cookies are strictly necessary and therefore exempt from consent. We found no public information on consent or privacy-notice fields as such, retention periods with automatic deletion of responses, or tools for access and erasure requests per respondent.

SurveyMonkey

There is a genuine consent mechanism — an intro page, a required yes/no consent question, and skip logic that disqualifies refusers, with example consent texts — alongside an online data processing agreement with automatic standard contractual clauses, AES 256 at rest, RSA 2048 in transit, and rights requests answered within 30 days. The ethics board will still ask about anonymity: the privacy notice documents IP addresses being used for duplicate prevention and de-identified response data being transferred to the US even from the EU data centre, and we found no public information on an anonymous mode, automatic deletion of responses after a retention period, or a named data protection officer.

LimeSurvey

The Community Edition under GPLv2, downloadable for self-hosting, is exactly the licence my faculty can run itself, and the cloud offers a choice of hosting regions including the EU, with data stored in Germany on Hetzner infrastructure; SSO with SAML and LDAP sits on the Corporate plan, white-label domains and custom branding on Expert, and questions and surveys can be imported and exported. We found no public information on granular roles per form or folder, an audit log, or user provisioning, which is what separates a department-grade platform from a team one.

SurveyMonkey

A choice of US, Canada or EU data centre is described, together with three team roles, single sign-on, SCIM provisioning against Azure Active Directory, white-label branding on Team Premier and a custom subdomain on Enterprise, plus response exports in CSV, XLS, PDF and PPT. The EU data centre is Enterprise-only, and the pages state that downgrading from Enterprise means opening a new US account because data cannot be migrated; we found no public information on an audit log or an API for the core survey product.

LimeSurvey

The chain I must document in the ethics file is largely proven: the contracting entity is LimeSurvey GmbH of Hamburg, data is stored in Germany on Hetzner Online GmbH infrastructure, a data processing agreement exists, transfers to third countries run only on standard contractual clauses, the named subprocessor Zoho is covered by such clauses, and the AI functions run on an open-source model in provider-controlled infrastructure. ISO 27001 is stated as in progress rather than achieved, and we found no public information on the company's ownership or a complete subprocessor list with locations, so I stop short of the higher level.

SurveyMonkey

European customers contract with SurveyMonkey Europe UC in Dublin, the subprocessor list is published with names and locations, and a data processing agreement with standard contractual clauses and Data Privacy Framework certification exists. However, US data centres are the default, the EU centre is restricted to Enterprise customers, de-identified responses and AI prompts still travel to the US, and central subprocessors — AWS, OpenAI, Twilio, SparkPost, Salesforce — are US-based; we found no public information naming ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certifications.

LimeSurvey

Three plans are priced publicly with their limits — Expert at "29€*/ month billed annually", Basic at "34€*/ month billed monthly", Business at "75€*/ month billed annually", all stated as including VAT (19%), with limits such as 1 admin and 1,000 responses per month on Basic and 3 admins and 10,000 responses per year on Expert — and online cancellation with two weeks' notice is in the terms. The Corporate plan carrying SSO, LDAP/SAML and a dedicated server is contact sales only, and we found no public information on extra-response or overage prices or the free tier's usage limits.

SurveyMonkey

Team Advantage at €30 per user per month and Team Premier at €75 per user per month, each billed annually from three users with 50,000 and 100,000 responses per year and €0.10 per additional response, are published, and the terms state that prices exclude taxes, how auto-renewal and cancellation work, and that free-plan responses over the limit are hidden and deleted. Single sign-on and the EU data centre sit on the Enterprise plan behind a sales call, and we found no public information on a price for the individual paid plan.