SurveyMonkey Reviews – 100 Reviews of Surveymonkey.com

SurveyMonkey has a rating of 1.32 stars from 100 reviews, indicating that most customers are generally dissatisfied with their purchases. Reviewers complaining about SurveyMonkey most frequently mention customer service, credit card, and monthly plan problems. SurveyMonkey ranks 152nd among Survey sites.

This company does not typically respond to reviews

No positive highlights yet

This one of my oldest and favorites it does pay out it’s quick easy and don’t waste your time letting you get halfway through a survey only to get dropped. You only get the surveys you will qualify for

SurveyMonkey claims to be a Basic Free tool, yet they limit the responses given to you to 10. Yes a lousy 10 and this is never stated up front. Once you have more responses they start hounding you with emails to “Upgrade” so they will release YOUR DATA. No mention of this is made on the landing page! And they will only to for a ANNUAL charge of hundreds to thousands of $$$$$. What happened to this company? I’ve used them before and this was NOT the set-up.

SurveyMonkey claims to be a Basic Free tool, yet they limit the responses given to you to 10. Yes a lousy 10 and this is never stated up front. Once you have more responses they start hounding you with emails to “Upgrade” so they will release YOUR DATA. No mention of this is made on the landing page! And they will only to for a ANNUAL charge of hundreds to thousands of $$$$$. What happened to this company? I’ve used them before and this was NOT the set-up.

Tip for consumers:
JUST DON’T! If you just need a quick survey this is NOT the COMPANY for you

Products used:
survey

I went to the Survey Monkey site and chose the $25 per month plan ($300 annually). I was charged $468 ($39 per month). When I disputed the charge and asked for a refund I was told their policy is no refunds… partial or otherwise. So, they can charge whatever they want and there’s nothing that can be done about it? That’s completely unethical and a horrible way to do business.

Functionality is fine but pricing is very shady. Here are some examples:
-free account seems like a good fit for you, until you realize they only allow you to survey 10 people (my example I had 50 respondents to a survey for a non-profit)
-they force you to upgrade to see anything past 10 responses per survey
-they try to shove the 1 year pre-paid subscription down your throat at every possibiliy
-upgrade looked like it would cost a reasonable $35 a month for the “monthly plan” but actually it was $39 a month and ONLY if you pay for the entire year in one lump sum. For the true monthly plan it was $99 a month.
-canceling the $99/month subscription is less than straightforward, so i could see it possible to get frustrated looking for how to do it and then ending up paying for many more months than planned
If you just need to do one survey or some basic stuff, look for another survey service with more transparency. I should have just used microsoft or google’s survey builders that would have been free.

Survey Monkey just charged me $443 on my AMEX for an annual auto renew I knew nothing about. I had to “communicate” with bots for two hours just to get an email to a live person. No access to anyone by phone. Then I was informed via email that because I disputed their bogus charge with AMEX they could not refund it. An outright lie. Try navigating their site to deal with bogus charges. It’s designed to frustrate, confuse and exhaust the user so they will give up. Please don’t give your money or business to a company like this.

Beware if you sign up for a ‘free’ SurveyMonkey account. They advertise 40 responses / survey available in free account option. We got 20 responses but SurveyMonkey is only enabling us access to 10 responses. Customer service says if we “wish to view more than 10 responses, you will need to upgrade to a paid plan”. So, they’re holding our data to ransom until we sign up and pay them money! This sounds like misleading advertising, luring people in with false claims as to what’s available. We’re a community group with 25 members, and little money, and only need to do one survey per year. Customer service justified the change to our account options, saying that SurveyMonkey selected our account for one of their many experiments to change what an account is able to do, so they can ‘test the market’ on ‘optimizations for prices and packages’. My response to SurveyMonkey about whether the market will accept them restricting a free account after the survey has run from 40 down to 10 responses and holding the data for free is: NO! We’re not going to upgrade, and we’ll find a different way to survey members.

We used a paid version of SM for a few customer and prospect reviews over the last year. Often wasted hours trying to do something simple (e.g. Repeat a test run with the same recipients when fine-tuning a survey) only to find that this basic function is only available in the ‘Enterprise’ edition.
This isn’t a bug – it’s cynical price-gouging.
The company doesn’t deserve its customers’ business. We’re going elsewhere.

I wish I had checked this site BEFORE I used SurveyMonkey for a post-fundraiser survey! I signed up and paid for what I thought was a $16 monthly rate but the company charged me $192 for an annual plan. Of course they don’t answer actual phones, but did get back to me by email, basically saying that I did not read what I signed up for:
“Unfortunately, we are unable to offer you a full or partial refund per our policy on non-refundable fees.”
After a few back and forth emails they offered to modify my billing to monthly, FOR $99 instead of the $16 I originally agreed to paying. I DID NOT see anything about paying for an annual plan when I signed up and clicked only on the $16 monthly plan, but I wrote back and said that I would like them to switch my account to monthly as suggested in their email, to which they replied:
“We will bill you $99 total and require no subsequent payments. And then we will process a refund to your credit card for the $162 you paid originally.” I decided against throwing good money after bad and did not take them up on this offer.
My credit card dispute with Citibank was unsuccessful even though I sent them ratings from this and sitejabber pointing to Survey Monkey’s shady business practices.
Finally after 2 months of sending emails to Survey Monkey, Citibank was able to get them to agree to credit my account back all but the original $16. I held off writing this review until I saw the actual credit on my account, received August 18,2022.
Date of experience: June 22,2022

Tip for consumers:
Take screenshots of everything you agree to

Products used:
Survey Monkey is a service. I deleted my account 3 days after I made payment.

This one of my oldest and favorites it does pay out it’s quick easy and don’t waste your time letting you get halfway through a survey only to get dropped. You only get the surveys you will qualify for

Description says freemium, says up to 10 questions for basic plan and unlimited responses. After survey is deployed, you have to pay $100 minimum to see the “unlimited responses.” Survey Monkey used to be a good honest low cost survey engine, but now it is relying on bait and switch to make money because their software is better than free but not as good as other paid services.

Products used:
Free survey…which didn’t work.

I run a business that only needs 1-2 surveys a year. I’m happy to pay per survey, or a reasonable 1 month fee even – but they make it impossible to do. As other reviewers have noted, they insist you sign up for a subscription (with your credit card: warning) and although they claim they offer a monthly service (at $99!) they make you sign up for yearly/pay FIRST and then you get to adjust everything.
I tried to use a basic survey and they waited until I had results coming in (this was small – maybe 45 responses from a small event) and they HID surveys and basically held my results for ransom until I subscribed at ridiculous rates. They did not disclose that they would hide your results after 40 answers until it was in process. That’s just not good business, and it’s not honest.
There is no way to contact them directly unless you have a paid subscription. Not email, not a chat line, no phone. So on their contact page? Everything is greyed out with a “upgrade to a paid subscription” account button conveniently available.
This is really bad practice and I’m done with them.

Tip for consumers:
Don’t use this survey company. There are many more out there that are more flexible and willing to let customers choose a plan or service that fits specific needs, job size, and budget.

Products used:
Tried to sign up for an educator’s account, didn’t want to pay a year, ended up using basic/free.

They charge you ridiculous fees to see the responses after you send out a “free” surveyNot cool. Do not recommend. I want my $100 back.

1. Their cancellation policy is no refunds. *UPDATE* I heard back from a real person and they still refused to refund me –> they value short-term profit over long-term profit/success.
2. They ludicrously overcharge for their service ($100/month is ridiculous).
3. They automatically charge you without your consent (their website is purposely built that way to cheat people). *UPDATE* Their customer service representative defended this position! They prioritize short-term profit over customers & long-term profit/success.
4. They have no customer service. Their customer service is a help bot with no alternatives. *UPDATE* Customer service is unwilling to work/compromise with customers!
5. They tell paid users that they have 24/7 customer support, but it’s controlled by the help bot.
6. Every single time I’ve logged in from the same device, but they tell me they don’t “recognize my device”.
7. Every single time I’ve logged in they tell me my login is suspicious because of the above and make me do a complicated “verification routine” that wastes my time.
8. Their website is super simple but cluttered. So I’m paying $100 a month for extremely basic features that are hard to find and waste my time.

Tip for consumers:
Look up their features before use, but it’s still not simple/fast to use. You still have to figure it out.

Every time I attempt to log in, it requires me to add a new device, even though I’m using the same device. This is because SurveyMonkey’s system is cookie-driven. If you delete cookies or use VPN, you’re out of luck. Once you log-in, it prompts you to delete a prior log-in device. Then, without warning, after a number of log-ins it blocks you completely because you created and deleted too many devices. There is no phone support for my paid account, just email support and they make that almost impossible to find. SurveyMonkey used to have a simple ID/PW log-in, but now it totally blows monkey balls.

Tip for consumers:
Look elsewhere and compare. SurveyMonkey has gone downhill.

Products used:
SurveyMonkey paid subscription

This website is absolute garbage. I am a public school teacher. I wanted to use the free version to conduct one survey with my students in order to better my teaching practice. I avoided using any paid features as I live on a teacher’s salary and cannot afford extra expenses. Little did I know that if you go to the page where it compares versions you are informed that they will WITHHOLD responses from you behind a pay wall.
I have over 150 students and I will only be able to read 10 of their responses. Otherwise I need to pay them $50 for the privilege of reading text that my students have already filled out for me. It would cost them nothing to give me the information I need, however their customer service team has been decidedly unhelpful. They believe that paying $50 for one survey is a reasonable, cheap option. I believe that I have been deceived and I am profoundly disgusted by their business practices. I will be telling everyone I can not to use this service. Go somewhere less deceitful.

Tip for consumers:
DON’T

I accidentally purchased the wrong plan. I noticed I was double billed on my ccd- 404.00 then 895.00. When I contacted surveymonkey via email they were not engaging or helpful. I thought this was an email exchange issue. Souring their website I found that they had no phone contact or established customer service help desk. They insisted I purchased the plan and I insisted it was an error. I have not used the plan and they still have my 895.00.

I was slightly excited when Surveymonkey appeared and I learned that with them every time you do a survey $0.50 cents goes towards your favorite charity and I’m all about that!
Well, in roughly I’d guess to be around 3 months now or so I’ve only donated $4.00 dollars because they never have any surveys for me. I find it very frustrating!

I just needed to send out a survey for a class project, and the only way was to subscribe for a month. They automatically make your account auto-renew. The one survey ended up costing just under $100, as I forgot to unsubscribe. Moreover, that was a basic survey, without much of any analytics at all. There doesn’t appear to be a way to unsubscribe from a mobile device, and it is not immediately intuitive from a computer. Once you do, they try to guilt you into staying. Quite a disgusting greedy company in my opinion.

Tip for consumers:
Buyer beware!

Free version: they do not inform you that to view more than 10 responses, then you must pay $99. This is after you have already published your survey and can’t reasonably publish another (same) survey using another service. Subterfuge!

Tip for consumers:
Be aware of costs after you publish

Products used:
Free version to publish a single survey – it was all I needded to do. But I had to pay $99 after the survey was published. Decietful

We purchased a plan from Survey Monkey and within a week discovered that the plan was insufficient for our needs after some preliminary testing. We upgraded to a higher level plan and asked for a refund for the original plan. This request was denied.
We do not recommend this company.

Tip for consumers:
Do not use.

Their renewal policy is fraudulous and does not respect market laws. Even if we canceled in advance and turned off the renewal policy Momentive decided to take money from our accounts, which is considered a fraud. Also consider that for the price, there are so many tools much more in advance. Survey Monkey functionalities and product offering are outdated.

I had high hopes for SM. But the service that they offer is not very good. They are VERY expensive, and the membership options are shockingly poor. There are way better options out there for less or free. In order to get even some pretty basic services, they really overcharge. Additionally, it’s sort of a trap. I have yet to figure out how to cancel my membership. They will let me upgrade (of course), but not downgrade. They won’t cancel my subscription either. Customer Service is horrible. I’m appalled. I had high hopes, but this has been incredibly disappointing.

I am on a very tight budget and needed a quick small survey. I thought if I liked SM I would come back when I had a budget, and use it for a larger survey. Surprise – even though I tried hard to remain in the free domain, after 40 responses you have no choice but to fork out a very large amount of dough. It’s nothing but a money grab. I remember when it used to be pretty cool, and something you would want to contribute to. Now, the fine print is ridiculous and I’ll use google docs or something instead from now on. Thanks but no thanks Survey Monkey. Like everything that was good, this company is not about it’s customers but lining it’s pockets. Waste of time.

They set the auto renew feature to on automatically. They do not tell you this nor do they send an email before it renews – only after. Its very misleading in my view

Basic plan is crap. So you want to have a test run on the ONLY monthly plan which costs 35$. The rest of the plans are to be paid annually, so naturally we go on the only monthly plan.
Once you start the plan, you find out that it lacks functionality. Even the basic things are available to upgraded plans, except the 35$ one.
When you navigate deep on their website because there’s no friendly way of contacting them, they simply reply that they WON’T REFUND YOUR MONEY. Even if the product was used for less than an hour.

Tip for consumers:
DO NOT USE IT.

Products used:
basic 35$ plan

Beware of this site Survey monkey their auto renew policy does not notify you when your up for renewal. I found the charge on my card and have not used this service in months due to it’s irregular functionality. Upon contacting them about the charge they refused to even discuss the matter of even a partial refund. Rip off artist any reputable company. Would refund ones purchase most exotically when they can see i have not used it. They just close my account they suffer no lose.

Use SurveyMonkey to drive your business forward by using our free online survey tool to capture the voices and opinions of the people who matter most to you.