SurveyMonkey Free Plan Limits

You cannot add an 11th question. This includes all question types: multiple choice, text entry, rating, matrix. A basic customer satisfaction survey typically needs 15 to 20 questions. An employee engagement survey needs 30+. Ten questions covers basic demographics plus 5 to 6 substantive questions at most.

Not per month. Per survey. Your 26th respondent sees a message that the survey is closed. If you send a survey to 100 people and 26 respond, the 26th person is locked out. This makes the free plan unusable for any audience larger than a small team.

A collector is a distribution method: email, web link, social media, etc. With 3 collectors, you can share your survey via link, email, and one other method. This is sufficient for most small surveys but prevents multi-channel distribution strategies.

You can view results in the SurveyMonkey dashboard but cannot download CSV, Excel, PDF, or SPSS files. If you need to analyze data in Excel, R, Python, or any external tool, you cannot get it out of SurveyMonkey without paying. This is the most frustrating limitation for researchers and analysts.

Every respondent sees every question. You cannot branch based on answers (for example, showing different follow-up questions to satisfied vs unsatisfied customers). This makes surveys longer than necessary and reduces completion rates.

No ranking questions, no slider questions, no matrix/rating scale, no NPS question type. You get multiple choice, checkboxes, dropdown, and text entry. Adequate for simple polls but insufficient for professional survey design.

All surveys display 'Powered by SurveyMonkey' branding that cannot be removed. For internal or informal surveys this is fine. For customer-facing professional surveys, it looks unprofessional.

After completing the survey, respondents see a generic SurveyMonkey thank-you page. You cannot redirect to your website or show a custom message. Paid plans allow custom redirects and branded thank-you pages.

You do not receive email notifications when someone completes your survey. You must manually check the dashboard for new responses. Paid plans offer instant email notifications for each response.

You cannot filter results by respondent attributes, date ranges, or answer patterns. All analysis is done on the complete dataset. Paid plans allow filtering and segmentation for targeted analysis.