LimeSurvey
Twenty years of serious survey methodology, GPL, self-hosted.
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sovereigntyLimeSurvey is the survey tool academic and research institutions actually use, and it shows: dozens of question types, quotas, randomisation, complex conditional logic, multilingual surveys and statistical export. It is not trying to be beautiful and it is not conversational — it is trying to be methodologically sound, which is a different and sometimes more important thing. GPL-2.0, self-hosted, with two decades of development behind it. Choose it when the survey is research rather than marketing.
OPEN SOURCEGPL-2.0SELF-HOSTLOCAL-FIRST
LicenseGPL-2.0
PricingFree and open source to self-host. Paid cloud hosting available.
Open sourceYes
Self-hostableYes
Local-first dataYes
What it does well
- +Most methodologically serious tool here — quotas, randomisation, complex logic
- +Excellent multilingual support
- +Twenty years of development; trusted in academic research
- +GPL-2.0 with a complete self-host path
Where it falls short
- −Interface is dated and the learning curve is real
- −Nothing conversational about it
- −PHP and MySQL to operate
- −Overkill for a contact form or a short marketing survey
LimeSurvey as an alternative to
Where LimeSurvey shows up in our comparisons, and how it ranked.
LimeSurvey head-to-head
Straight comparisons against the tools people weigh it against.