SurveyMonkey review

SurveyMonkey builds online survey software for customer feedback, employee surveys and market research, with a free Basic plan and paid tiers that add skip logic, analysis tools and white-label branding. Paid individual plans start at $39 a month billed annually (a $300/yr Standard Annual price appears on one SurveyMonkey page only and is unconfirmed), though several of its price figures conflict across sources. Trustpilot rates it 2.6 out of 5 from 1,077 reviews as of November 7, 2026, and 62% of those reviews are one star. For a broader comparison, see our best online form builders guide.

What SurveyMonkey is for

SurveyMonkey is built for surveys rather than general forms. Skip logic arrives at Standard. Advantage adds statistical significance, AI analysis, thematic analysis, multi-survey analysis and payments. Premier adds randomization, multilingual surveys, crosstabs, white label and phone support. Of the five tools we compared, it is the one with the deepest analysis stack. A separate paid Survey Audience panel lets you buy respondents, and it is sold apart from the plans.

If you need a signup form, an order form or an intake packet with a signature, you do not need this depth. Jotform, Fillout and Tally fit that job at lower cost.

What you get on each plan

Figures come from SurveyMonkey’s US price table, a EU-rendered page and a competitor’s pricing write-up, and they do not agree. The EU page lists 15,000 responses a year for Advantage and 40,000 for Premier, while the US table says unlimited with overage. Overage is $0.10 per response on the EU page and $0.15 in the US table. Responses count per year on annual plans, so a busy survey can burn through a cap before the plan renews.

Auto-renewal and cancellation

This is the section to read before you pay. Auto-renew is on by default. The EU pricing page says that turning it off drops the account to Basic and deletes responses older than 365 days beyond the free cap. So the exit has a price: export first, then cancel.

The reviews match that setup. In the roughly 20 recent Trustpilot reviews we read, the one- and two-star complaints repeated three things: a renewal charge with no warning, an unexpected annual bill after a single survey or trial, and a cancellation process that reviewers describe as a dead end. A competitor’s pricing write-up also notes that plans renew on their own. The sample is the recent page only, so it supports a pattern, not an exact share of the 62%.

What users say in reviews

Trustpilot gives SurveyMonkey 2.6 out of 5 from 1,077 reviews: 62% one-star and 21% five-star. One reviewer wrote that “the auto-renewal function does NOT notify the billing owner before the next charge hits.” Another described an “endless electronic dead end” while trying to cancel. One reported a charge above $500 for a survey run a year earlier. Reviewers say refund requests are mostly declined, and we saw no company replies to the negative reviews.

The picture is far kinder on the software review sites. G2 and Capterra blocked direct access, but secondary sources list G2 at about 4.4 from roughly 23,500 reviews and Capterra at about 4.6 from roughly 10,500. Treat those as unconfirmed. The gap between those scores and Trustpilot’s 2.6 is the gap between how the product works and how the billing feels.

Who should skip it

Skip SurveyMonkey if you want a form for contact requests, payments or file uploads, or if you cannot commit to tracking a renewal date. The free plan is tiny, white label and randomization sit at Premier ($139 a month billed annually), and plans below the team tier are one user each. If forms matter more than statistics, start with Jotform, which has 1,856 Trustpilot reviews at 4.2 out of 5. If you want a polished conversational format, compare Typeform, and if budget matters most, read the free plan details in Tally. We rated SurveyMonkey on the product and its billing record, not on the commission we may earn if you sign up through our link.