Forms & Surveys

SmartSurvey

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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: not determined

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by SmartSurvey Ltd · www.smartsurvey.co.uk

An AI-assisted analysis of public evidence — not a hands-on test.

Every score, rationale and verdict on this page is AI-generated. Every claim cites the source it was read from. Nothing here is a human star review — and no score can be bought. How scores are made →

Method and versions

The Market Researcher v1.0 · The Operations Manager v1.0 · The HR Lead v1.0 · The Academic Researcher v1.0 · The Data Protection Officer v1.0 · The Skeptic v1.0 · rubric v1 · evaluated 3 Nov 2026

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<a href="https://whats-best.ai/software/forms-and-surveys/smartsurvey"><img src="https://whats-best.ai/badge/forms-and-surveys/smartsurvey.svg" alt="SmartSurvey: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai" height="66"></a>

Markdown

[![SmartSurvey: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai](https://whats-best.ai/badge/forms-and-surveys/smartsurvey.svg)](https://whats-best.ai/software/forms-and-surveys/smartsurvey)

Add ?theme=dark to the image address for dark backgrounds. The badge shows the category and the month of the latest evaluation, and EU-Made where that is the product’s provenance. It never shows a score.

SmartSurvey at a glance

Vendor: SmartSurvey Ltd
Headquarters: Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 3 Nov 2026
Data hosting: Default not stated; pages mention United Kingdom source, captured 3 Nov 2026
Free plan: Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 3 Nov 2026
Panel verdict: The AI panel rates SmartSurvey 3/5, the mean of 6 judges. SmartSurvey is a UK survey and form builder whose strongest criterion is collection and workflows, scored 7-8: contact-list invitations with reminders that skip bounced and completed recipients, email and SMS delivery, website and in-app embeds, popups, QR codes, unlimited tracking links, event triggers, a documented API and stated panel access to over 20 million respondents across 70+ countries. how scores are made
As of: Vendor pages captured 3 Nov 2026; evaluated by the panel 3 Nov 2026. all sources

SmartSurvey alternatives, European ones first →

Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Academic Researcher

Weighted verdict

Runs questionnaire studies at a European university and has to satisfy the ethics board before the first respondent sees a question. Wants complex branching, randomisation and validated scales, an informed-consent page that is part of the instrument, exports to SPSS and R with labels intact, and a licence the faculty can host or at least keep in the EU.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Academic Researcher

Panel median The Academic Researcher This judge’s scores over the panel median. Each label opens its reasoning below.

Scores per criterion, in stars out of 5
Criterion	Panel median	The Academic Researcher
Form & survey building	3 of 5	3 of 5
Distribution, response collection & workflows	3.5 of 5	4 of 5
Survey analysis & reporting	3 of 5	3 of 5
Consent, GDPR & respondent data	3 of 5	3.5 of 5
Hosting choice, teams & portability	3 of 5	3 of 5
European sovereignty	2.5 of 5	2 of 5

Form & survey building

How this is scored

What can be built without code: question and field types, conditional logic and branching, piping and hidden fields, calculations, multi-page forms and progress, templates, design and branding, multiple languages, and accessible output for respondents.

0 — Not a form or survey builder; questions cannot be authored in the product.

3 — A builder with the common question types and a few templates; logic, branding or languages are basic or not described.

5 — A drag-and-drop builder with a wide range of question types, conditional logic that shows, hides or skips questions, multi-page forms, a template library, and the customer's logo, colours and fonts.

8 — Advanced logic with piping, hidden fields, calculations and scoring, randomisation, surveys translated into several languages from one master, reusable question libraries, custom CSS or themes, and accessible forms with a named standard (WCAG 2.1 AA or BITV) stated.

10 — Best-in-class authoring: complex research designs (loops, quotas in logic, conjoint or MaxDiff), versioned forms with change history, a published accessibility conformance report, and every element of a form available through the API.

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The Academic Researcher

Branching is documented in real depth — skip logic with several condition types, jump-to-page with a start-at question, all-rules evaluation and disqualified-response tagging — and piping covers answers, questions, carry-forward options, system variables and delimiters. But we found no public information on randomisation, reusable question libraries, calculations or scoring, custom CSS, or any named accessibility standard, and question types are listed only as "multiple choice, sliders, NPS, free text, and more". 1 4 5 7 10

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Distribution, response collection & workflows

How this is scored

How forms reach people and what happens to an answer: share links, embedding, QR codes, email invitations with reminders, contact lists and panels, offline or kiosk collection, file uploads, payments and signatures inside the form, notifications, approval or assignment of submissions, and automations that pass a response on to other tools.

0 — No way to collect responses from other people; the product only analyses data collected elsewhere.

3 — A share link and an embed code, with responses visible in the product; invitations, notifications and onward workflows are basic or not described.

5 — Links, embedding and QR codes, email notifications on submission, file uploads, a few native integrations (spreadsheets, CRM, chat) plus a connector service such as Zapier or Make, and either email invitations with reminders or payments inside the form.

8 — Invitations to managed contact lists with reminders and unique links, response quotas and closing rules, offline or kiosk collection, submissions routed for approval or assignment, conditional notifications, documented webhooks and a REST API to read and write responses.

10 — Collection at research and process scale: panel or sample sourcing, multi-channel distribution (email, SMS, web, app intercept) with deduplication, workflows with branching and audit trail, and every response event exposed to the customer's systems in real time with a stated delivery guarantee.

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The Academic Researcher

This is close to how my panel studies actually run: contact-list invitations with reminders that exclude bounces and removed recipients, unique tracking links, QR codes, JavaScript and iframe embeds, pop-up and exit-intent triggers, email and SMS delivery, event-based sending, and API or native integrations with documentation. Panel access to over 20 million respondents across 70+ countries is stated on the homepage; we found no public information on response quotas, closing rules, offline or kiosk collection, or webhooks. 1 6 7

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Survey analysis & reporting

How this is scored

What the product does with the answers: live results and charts, filters and segments, cross-tabulation, NPS, CSAT and other standard scores, open-text and sentiment analysis, shareable dashboards and reports, and exports to the formats analysts use (CSV, Excel, SPSS, R).

0 — No view of results inside the product; submissions can only be forwarded or downloaded one at a time.

3 — A table of responses with simple charts per question and a CSV export; filters, comparisons and report sharing are basic or not described.

5 — Charts per question, filters and segments, at least one comparison or cross-tab view, standard scores such as NPS, shareable or exportable reports (PDF, presentation), and exports to CSV and Excel.

8 — Cross-tabulation with significance testing, weighting, open-text coding or sentiment analysis, trend reports across survey waves, dashboards for different audiences with permissions, and SPSS or R exports with labels.

10 — A research-grade analysis environment: statistical models beyond cross-tabs (driver analysis, regression), benchmarks, text analytics with themes the customer can edit, and every analysis reproducible from documented exports or an analytics API.

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The Academic Researcher

Cross-tab reports with filters, chart types and export options are documented in detail, and the homepage promises dashboards, scheduled shared reports and AI theme and sentiment spotting in open text. But we found no public information on significance testing, weighting, trend reports across waves, or exports to SPSS or R with labels — the formats my statistics lab opens — and the export formats themselves are not named on the captured pages. 1 3 8 9

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Consent, GDPR & respondent data

How this is scored

What the product gives the customer to collect personal data lawfully: consent and privacy-notice fields, anonymous surveys that really drop IP addresses and identifiers, retention periods and automatic deletion, handling of access and erasure requests, encryption of responses, a data processing agreement, and controls over cookies and tracking on the form itself.

0 — The product collects no personal data from respondents, so there is nothing to protect; or it is a different kind of product.

3 — A privacy policy and a statement of GDPR compliance, with a checkbox field usable for consent; anonymity, retention and deletion are not described.

5 — A data processing agreement offered to customers, a consent or privacy-notice field, an anonymous mode that does not store IP addresses, responses deletable by the customer, and encryption in transit and at rest stated.

8 — Retention periods with automatic deletion, tools for access and erasure requests per respondent, field-level encryption or masking of sensitive answers, forms that set no tracking cookies by default, a published list of technical and organisational measures, and a named data protection officer.

10 — Data protection by design and evidenced: end-to-end or customer-key encryption of responses, documented data minimisation defaults, a DPA with audit rights and subprocessor change notice, records of consent kept with each response, and an independent audit of the privacy controls published.

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The Academic Researcher

The GDPR pages are unusually specific: an anonymous mode that does not record IP or email addresses, per-response find-edit-export-delete, an appointed DPO with a legal contact, TLS 1.2 in transit and transparent data encryption at rest, and an export of consent plus completion timestamp presented as GDPR evidence — exactly the consent record my ethics board asks for. Three things temper it: IP addresses are recorded by default until the anonymous option is switched on, survey deletion is manual, and the captured pages give different figures for how long backups persist after deletion (21 days on the security page, 30 days in the privacy policy); TLS encryption is also stated to exclude the free Basic account, so every instrument would need a paid plan. 2 3 10 11

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Hosting choice, teams & portability

How this is scored

What the customer may choose about where and how the product runs and who uses it: a selectable data region or EU-only hosting, self-hosting or an on-premise edition, team workspaces with roles and permissions, single sign-on, an audit log, custom domains and white-labelling, and a complete export of forms and responses that another tool can import.

0 — A single-user tool with no export of forms or responses.

3 — Shared access for a team and a response export; data location, roles and single sign-on are not described.

5 — Hosting location stated with an EU option, team workspaces with at least two roles, single sign-on on a higher plan, a custom domain or removed vendor branding, and an export of all responses.

8 — EU-only hosting selectable per account or a self-hosted edition, granular roles per form or folder, SSO with SAML and user provisioning, an audit log, white-labelling, and forms and responses exportable in a documented format with an API.

10 — Full control over operation: an open-source or on-premise edition with feature parity, customer-chosen region per workspace, administrative APIs, a documented migration path in and out, and an uptime commitment with a published status history.

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The Academic Researcher

Granular per-survey permissions for sub-users, user management on Business or Enterprise team accounts, and single sign-on using OpenID Connect on Scale plans and above are evidenced — though the help pages state plainly that SAML2 and Shibboleth are not supported, which our university federation relies on. Hosting is stated to be UK-based with ANS named for dedicated servers, and responses are exportable; we found no public information on a selectable EU region, self-hosting, an audit log, custom domains or white-labelling, and the privacy policy states data may be stored, transferred and processed outside the UK or EEA. 2 3 12 13

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Who the contracting entity and the parent company are, where forms and responses are hosted, and who the subprocessors are (hosting, email delivery, payment providers, analytics, AI features). Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; responses often carry personal and sometimes special-category data, so the whole chain counts, not only the database.

0 — Non-EU vendor and contracting entity, hosting unstated, subprocessors unnamed, and no data processing agreement offered.

3 — A privacy policy and a data processing agreement exist, but hosting location is unstated or non-EU and the subprocessors are not listed.

5 — EU hosting available and an EU contracting entity or EU representative, but parts of the chain (email, analytics, AI features, support) run through non-EU providers without a stated safeguard.

8 — EU hosting on named infrastructure, EU contracting entity, subprocessors listed with their locations, a data processing agreement published, and security certifications (ISO 27001, SOC 2) stated.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: European ownership, entity, hosting and every subprocessor, data export and deletion documented, and certifications published with their scope rather than implied.

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The Academic Researcher

The contracting entity is SmartSurvey Ltd under English and Welsh law, servers and backups are UK-based with ANS named as the hosting provider, an EU representative (IT Governance Europe Limited) is appointed, a sub-processor list is published, PayPal and Stripe handle payments, and ISO 27001, FSQS and Cyber Essentials Plus are stated. But the entity and hosting are UK rather than EU, and the privacy policy permits storage, transfer and processing outside the UK or EEA — for my faculty, that means a transfer assessment before any special-category data goes in. 1 2 3

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Pricing transparency not rated — the vendor publishes no price

How this is scored

Whether a buyer can compute the real annual cost from public pages alone: price per plan and per user, response or submission limits and what happens above them, which features (logic, branding removal, SSO, EU hosting, analysis modules) need a higher plan, add-ons, minimum term and the free tier's limits.

0 — No public prices at all; every customer is a sales call.

3 — A starting price or a free tier exists, but how cost scales with users, responses or features is unclear.

5 — Plans are public with prices and their main limits (users, responses, forms), but at least one commonly needed piece (SSO, EU hosting, extra responses, branding removal) is unpriced or "on request".

8 — Every plan priced publicly with its limits, overage or extra-response prices, feature differences per plan in a comparison table, billing period, VAT treatment and cancellation terms stated.

10 — Complete price computability: annual cost derivable for a given number of users, responses and features, with every add-on, enterprise option, support level and data-return term published.

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The Academic Researcher

The captured pages name a free Basic account and two plan families ("Self-service" and "Full Access"), but we found no public prices, plan limits, overage terms or comparison table anywhere; the only feature-to-plan mappings surface incidentally in help articles (default answers need a Business-level account, single sign-on starts on Scale, user management needs Business or Enterprise). A buyer cannot compute an annual cost from these pages. 2 7 10 12

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European sovereignty — proven facts

0 of 6 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Legal entity	Not determined	—	uncited Report an error
Hosting location	Not determined	—	uncited Report an error
Hosting options	Not determined	—	uncited Report an error
Open source	Not determined	—	uncited Report an error
Data processing agreement	Not determined	—	uncited Report an error
Transfer impact assessment	Not determined	—	uncited Report an error

Questions about SmartSurvey

Is SmartSurvey European?

Not determined: the vendor’s pages as captured do not say where SmartSurvey is based.

Where does SmartSurvey store data?

The default storage location for customer data is not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 3 Nov 2026. The vendor’s pages mention United Kingdom as hosting location, per the vendor’s page captured 3 Nov 2026.

Does SmartSurvey have a free plan?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 3 Nov 2026.

What are the best alternatives to SmartSurvey?

As of 3 Nov 2026, the panel rates Formbricks (4/5), easyfeedback (3.5/5) and Netigate (3.5/5) highest among the other 19 Forms & Surveys products evaluated. Ratings that look equal are rounded to half stars; the order uses the unrounded rating, then the name. The highest-rated European alternative is Formbricks (EU-Made). Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made. The full list, with European products first: SmartSurvey alternatives.

Where this could be wrong

Evidence ages. The oldest capture behind this page is from 3 Nov 2026. Vendors change pricing and policies without notice; every fact reflects its source as of the capture date shown in the registry.
AI can misread a source. Extraction and judgement are automated; a citation guarantees traceability, not infallibility. If something here is wrong, say so — no account needed, every report is decided within 5 business days, and accepted corrections are published.

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

6 product facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
2 compliance facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
1 pricing fact could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and was left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us

Do you know more about SmartSurvey? Tell us Report an error on this page

Sources (13)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

1 Vendor page www.smartsurvey.co.uk Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
2 Privacy policy — found from the homepage www.smartsurvey.co.uk Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
3 Security / trust page — found from the homepage www.smartsurvey.co.uk Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
4 Form & survey building — found from sitemap help.smartsurvey.co.uk Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
5 Form & survey building — found from sitemap help.smartsurvey.co.uk Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
6 Distribution, response collection & workflows — found from sitemap help.smartsurvey.co.uk Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
7 Distribution, response collection & workflows — found from sitemap www.smartsurvey.co.uk Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
8 Survey analysis & reporting — found from sitemap help.smartsurvey.co.uk Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
9 Survey analysis & reporting — found from sitemap help.smartsurvey.co.uk Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
10 Consent, GDPR & respondent data — found from sitemap help.smartsurvey.co.uk Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
11 Consent, GDPR & respondent data — found from sitemap help.smartsurvey.co.uk Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
12 Hosting choice, teams & portability — found from sitemap help.smartsurvey.co.uk Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
13 Hosting choice, teams & portability — found from sitemap help.smartsurvey.co.uk Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →