Forms & Surveys

SurveyMonkey

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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 SurveyMonkey Europe UC · www.surveymonkey.com

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 29 Oct 2026

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Link to this page

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

Markdown

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

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.

SurveyMonkey at a glance

Vendor: SurveyMonkey Europe UC
Headquarters: Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 28 Oct 2026
Data hosting: Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 28 Oct 2026
Free plan: Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 28 Oct 2026
Panel verdict: The AI panel rates SurveyMonkey 3/5, the mean of 6 judges. SurveyMonkey is an online survey and forms platform. how scores are made
As of: Vendor pages captured 28 Oct 2026; evaluated by the panel 29 Oct 2026. all sources

SurveyMonkey alternatives, European ones first →

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

The HR Lead

Weighted verdict

Runs the yearly engagement survey and pulse checks for a German company of six hundred, with the works council reading every question. Wants anonymity that is real and stated, results hidden below a minimum group size, reports per department that managers can read, and answers that are deleted when the agreement with the works council says so.

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

Scored by The HR Lead

Panel median The HR Lead 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 HR Lead
Form & survey building	3.5 of 5	3 of 5
Distribution, response collection & workflows	3 of 5	3 of 5
Survey analysis & reporting	3.5 of 5	3.5 of 5
Consent, GDPR & respondent data	3 of 5	3 of 5
Hosting choice, teams & portability	3.5 of 5	3 of 5
European sovereignty	3 of 5	2.5 of 5
Pricing transparency	3 of 5	2.5 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 HR Lead

Skip logic, question and answer piping, A/B testing and block randomization are listed plan features, multilingual surveys and an employee-engagement template set are public, and the Apply product documents branching, dynamic and advanced logic with show/hide/skip actions and ANY/ALL multi-condition rules. The consent pattern is genuinely well documented: a required yes/no question with skip logic that disqualifies anyone who declines. We found no public information on calculations or scoring, custom CSS, or a named accessibility standard such as WCAG or BITV. 1 3 10 17

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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 HR Lead

An address book feeds the invitation collectors, email and SMS delivery run through named providers, payments can be collected inside the form, webhooks push responses conditionally into Slack, Teams, Tableau and Power BI, and Zapier can trigger on every new complete response or add contacts and send surveys. We found no public information on email reminders with unique links, response quotas or closing rules, offline collection, or a documented API for the core survey product — the pages we read describe only Wufoo's API. That leaves this between the solid mid level and the advanced one. 3 7 12 13

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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 HR Lead

Crosstabs, statistical significance, multi-survey analysis, AI thematic analysis and sentiment on open text are listed features, results dashboards auto-update while a survey runs and can be password-protected or, on Enterprise, locked behind SSO — usable as manager-facing department reports. Exports reach CSV, Excel, PDF, PowerPoint and SPSS with an SAV file. We found no public information on weighting, trend reporting across survey waves, or suppressing results below a minimum group size, which is the first question my works council asks. 3 14 15 7

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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 HR Lead

Consent statements with skip logic that removes declining respondents, a disqualification page and example consent texts in German and English are well documented; an online DPA with standard contractual clauses, encryption in transit and at rest, creator-controlled retention and privacy-rights responses within 30 days are all stated. The concern for us: IP addresses are used for duplicate-response prevention and inferred location, and we found no public information on an anonymous mode that does not store them, on automatic deletion at a fixed period, or on cookie controls for the form itself. De-identified response data is also stated to be transferred to the United States and used to train models. 5 7 9 16 17

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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 HR Lead

Team roles (Primary Admin, Full User, Analyst), two seat types, SSO on Enterprise and SCIM provisioning with an identity provider like Azure AD are documented, plus white-label branding, a custom subdomain and exports to CSV, PDF, PPT, XLS and SPSS. An EU data centre exists but is reserved for Enterprise customers, data cannot be migrated back if you downgrade, and accounts opened before 2019 cannot move at all; we found no public information on an audit log or a self-hosted edition. EU storage being a sales conversation rather than a plan choice is what caps this for a 600-person German company. 3 6 14 18 19

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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 HR Lead

The rest-of-world contracting entity is SurveyMonkey Europe UC in Dublin with an Irish-entity DPA for EEA customers, the subprocessor list is published with locations and a PDF download, and standard contractual clauses plus Data Privacy Framework certification are stated. But storage defaults to the US, the EU data centre is Enterprise-only, and the chain runs through US providers for hosting (AWS), email (SparkPost), SMS (Twilio), AI (OpenAI, Anthropic), analytics (Snowflake) and support (Salesforce), with survey prompts sent to a US AI vendor and de-identified responses transferred to the US from the EU data centre. We found no public information on security certifications such as ISO 27001 or SOC 2. 5 6 7 9

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Pricing transparency

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 HR Lead

The team plans are public — Team Advantage at €30 per user per month from 3 users billed annually with 50,000 responses a year, Team Premier at €75 per user per month with 100,000 responses a year and €0.10 per additional response — with taxes excluded, auto-renewal and cancellation terms stated, and the free tier's over-limit behaviour explicit (responses hidden and deleted unless you upgrade). But SSO and the choice of a US, Canada or EU data centre appear only in the Enterprise plan, which the pricing page presents as "get a demo" for 5+ users, priced on request. For a buyer who must have EU hosting for works-council-approved surveys, the real annual cost is not computable from the public pages. 1 3 9

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

Questions about SurveyMonkey

Is SurveyMonkey European?

No. whats-best.ai classifies SurveyMonkey as Rest of world.

Where does SurveyMonkey store data?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 28 Oct 2026.

Does SurveyMonkey have a free plan?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 28 Oct 2026.

What are the best alternatives to SurveyMonkey?

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: SurveyMonkey alternatives.

Where this could be wrong

Evidence ages. The oldest capture behind this page is from 28 Oct 2026. Vendors change pricing and policies without notice; every fact reflects its source as of the capture date shown in the registry.
Weak sourcing — Data processing agreement, Transfer impact assessment, Legal entity, Hosting location, Hosting options. Not confirmed on the vendor’s own pages as captured.
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.

19 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
8 integrations 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
5 legal 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
5 sovereignty dimensions could not be confirmed on the vendor’s own pages and are shown as unknown. Know more? Tell us
6 of the readings below were written against an earlier fact sheet — a fact has been corrected, added or pulled since. Until the panel next runs on this product you are reading the older judgement. Know more? Tell us

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Sources (19)

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

1 Vendor homepage www.surveymonkey.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
2 Features page www.surveymonkey.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
3 Pricing page www.surveymonkey.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
4 Trust centre www.surveymonkey.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
5 Subprocessor list www.surveymonkey.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
6 Data centre overview www.surveymonkey.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
7 Privacy policy www.surveymonkey.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
8 Legal notice www.surveymonkey.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
9 Terms of service www.surveymonkey.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
10 Form & survey building — found from sitemap help.surveymonkey.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
11 Form & survey building — found from sitemap help.surveymonkey.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
12 Distribution, response collection & workflows — found from sitemap help.surveymonkey.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
13 Distribution, response collection & workflows — found from sitemap help.surveymonkey.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
14 Survey analysis & reporting — found from sitemap help.surveymonkey.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
15 Survey analysis & reporting — found from sitemap help.surveymonkey.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
16 Consent, GDPR & respondent data — found from sitemap help.surveymonkey.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
17 Consent, GDPR & respondent data — found from sitemap help.surveymonkey.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
18 Hosting choice, teams & portability — found from sitemap help.surveymonkey.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
19 Hosting choice, teams & portability — found from sitemap help.surveymonkey.com Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →