The long-running survey platform for market research, customer feedback and employee engagement, with a large question bank and serious analysis tools. Here's how it stacks up against FormBuilder on pricing, features, and fit — so you can pick the right tool for the forms you actually build.
100 responses / month free · No credit card · Held responses never lost
The short answer
Choose SurveyMonkey when you are running research or feedback programs and the analysis — significance, crosstabs, text theming, benchmarks, a respondent panel — is the deliverable. Choose FormBuilder when you need everyday business forms built fast with AI, flat monthly pricing with far more responses per dollar, and the guarantee that a busy month never deletes a submission.
Overview
SurveyMonkey (owned by Momentive, which returned to the SurveyMonkey name) is one of the oldest and best-known online survey tools. Its core is a survey builder backed by a large question bank, hundreds of expert-written templates (NPS, CSAT, employee engagement, event feedback, market research) and a results dashboard that goes further than most form tools: filters, crosstabs, statistical significance, sentiment and thematic analysis of open-text answers.
Around the builder sits a research and feedback suite: SurveyMonkey Audience for buying respondents from a panel, always-on feedback programs, multilingual surveys, block randomisation, and integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Tableau, Zapier and roughly 200 other apps. Team plans add shared brand assets, roles and permissions; Enterprise adds SSO, governance and regional data centres.
It is a survey tool first and a form tool second. You can build a contact or registration form in it, but there is no e-signature field, file upload is limited to paid plans, and payments are a survey add-on rather than a checkout. Pricing reflects the research heritage: the free Basic plan is capped at 10 questions per survey with a small per-survey response cap, and paid plans start at $39 a month billed annually with response allowances counted per year (or 1,000 a month on the $99 monthly plan), plus $0.15 per response over the limit.
FormBuilder is an AI-first form builder with a generous free plan, held (never lost) responses, and 6,000+ integrations. You describe the form you need, the AI generator drafts it, and you refine it in a drag-and-drop editor with conditional logic, multi-page layouts, file uploads, signatures and calculations. Every response can be routed to 6,000+ apps through Zapier or webhooks. The free plan includes 100 responses a month — and if a form gets busier than that, the extra responses are held safely rather than rejected, unlocking the moment you upgrade to Pro ($39 / month for 10,000 responses).
Pricing
Side by side, in each vendor's own terms. SurveyMonkey pricing was checked on 2026-08-17 and may change; FormBuilder pricing is current.
Feature comparison
25 capabilities across building, design, data workflow and security. Notes call out plan tiers and caveats so there are no surprises after you sign up.
| Feature | FFormBuilder | SSurveyMonkey |
|---|---|---|
| Building | ||
| AI form generation from a prompt | Yes | YesBuild with AI, on all plans |
| Drag-and-drop visual builder | Yes | PartialQuestion-list builder with drag reordering |
| Template library | Yes300+ | YesHundreds, research-focused |
| Conditional logic / branching | Yes | YesSkip logic Standard+; advanced logic Advantage+ |
| Multi-page / multi-step forms | YesPro | Yes |
| Calculations & scoring | YesCalculation field + auto-graded quizzes | PartialQuiz scoring; no calculated fields |
| File uploads | Yes100 MB free · 1 GB Pro | YesPaid plans only |
| Payment collection | YesStripe — paid to your own account, no platform fee | YesStripe, Advantage+ |
| E-signature field | Yes | No |
| Design | ||
| Custom themes & branding | YesPro | YesCustom design Standard+; premium themes Advantage+ |
| Remove vendor badge | YesPro, $39 | PartialCustom footer on paid; full white-label on Premier, $139 / mo |
| Custom domain | Yes | PartialCustom subdomain, Enterprise |
| Embed on any site | Yes | Yes |
| Data & workflow | ||
| Free-plan monthly responses | Partial100 / mo, overflow held | PartialSmall per-survey cap; over-limit responses deleted |
| Over-limit responses kept (not rejected) | Yes | NoOver-limit responses deleted; $0.15 each on paid plans |
| Email notifications & autoresponders | Yes | YesEmail invitations Standard+ |
| Webhooks | YesAll plans | YesVia API / paid plans |
| Zapier / native integrations | Yes6,000+ apps | Yes200+ integrations + Zapier |
| Built-in analytics (views, drop-off) | Yes | YesStrongest in class: filters, crosstabs, significance |
| CSV / spreadsheet export | Yes | YesPaid plans only |
| Team workspaces & collaboration | Yes | YesTeam plans, 3-user minimum |
| Security | ||
| Password-protected forms | YesPro | YesPaid plans |
| HIPAA / BAA | PartialHIPAA plan coming soon | YesEnterprise only |
| GDPR tooling & DPA | Yes | Yes |
| SSO / SAML | PartialEnterprise | YesEnterprise |
Honest assessment
A fair read of both sides. If the strengths column describes your work, SurveyMonkey may genuinely be the better fit.
Filters and compare rules, crosstabs, statistical significance, sentiment and thematic analysis of open text, and multi-survey analysis. If the survey is the research, this is where SurveyMonkey pulls away from every form builder.
Hundreds of expert-written templates and a question bank designed to reduce bias, plus industry benchmarks for NPS and employee engagement. You are less likely to write a bad survey.
SurveyMonkey Audience lets you target and pay for respondents from a global panel without leaving the tool — no form builder offers that.
SSO, roles and permissions, shared brand assets, regional data hosting (US, Canada, EU) and HIPAA on Enterprise make it viable for large organisations with compliance teams.
Basic caps every survey at 10 questions and a small number of viewable responses, and blocks exports, logic and custom design. Responses over the cap are not held — they are deleted.
The advertised $39 and $139 plans require paying a full year up front, responses are counted per year, and going over costs $0.15 per response. The only monthly option is $99 for 1,000 responses.
Fully removing SurveyMonkey branding needs Premier. FormBuilder removes its badge, adds custom themes and webhooks, and includes 10,000 responses a month for $39.
No e-signature field, no calculated fields, and payments are a survey add-on. Order forms, applications, intake and registration workflows feel bolted on.
Switching
Most teams migrate a handful of forms in an afternoon. Here's the practical path.
Open each survey → Analyze Results → Save As → Export file → All responses data (CSV or XLSX). Do this while your paid plan is active; Basic cannot export.
Copy your question list (or the survey preview text) into FormBuilder's AI generator; it drafts fields, choice options and required flags. Add skip logic and pages in the editor.
Reconnect Sheets, Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce or Mailchimp through Zapier (6,000+ apps) or webhooks — both included on every plan.
Replace SurveyMonkey web-link collectors and embed snippets with the FormBuilder link or embed. Close the old collectors so late responses do not split across tools.
Questions
For business forms, yes. FormBuilder gives you an AI generator, drag-and-drop builder, conditional logic, multi-page forms, file uploads, e-signatures, webhooks and Zapier, with 100 free responses a month and a $39 Pro plan for 10,000. If your work is research — significance testing, crosstabs, buying respondents — SurveyMonkey is still the stronger tool.
SurveyMonkey is a survey and research platform: question bank, benchmarks, statistical analysis and a respondent panel, priced with annual response allowances. FormBuilder is a form builder for everyday business use — intake, lead capture, orders, applications — with an AI generator, flat monthly pricing and held responses that are never deleted.
SurveyMonkey's free Basic plan allows 10 questions per survey and a small number of responses. Paid individual plans are $39 a month (Advantage, billed annually at $468, 15,000 responses a year), $99 a month billed monthly (Standard, 1,000 responses a month) and $139 a month (Premier, billed annually, 40,000 responses a year), with $0.15 per extra response. FormBuilder is free for 100 responses a month and $39 month-to-month for 10,000 responses with branding removed.
Yes. The Basic plan is free and allows unlimited surveys, but each survey is capped at 10 questions and a limited number of viewable responses (commonly reported as 25), and it does not include exports, skip logic, email invitations or custom design. Responses over the cap are deleted rather than held.
On SurveyMonkey, responses over a per-survey limit are not viewable and are deleted; on paid plans, responses over your allowance are billed at $0.15 each. On FormBuilder, responses beyond your plan's limit are held — the form keeps accepting them and they unlock the moment you upgrade.
You can export response data from SurveyMonkey as CSV or XLSX on a paid plan. Survey structures cannot be transferred directly, but pasting the question list into FormBuilder's AI generator recreates the form in seconds.
SurveyMonkey offers HIPAA-compliant features and a BAA on its Enterprise plan only. FormBuilder's HIPAA plan with BAA support is $99 a month and is currently rolling out.
SurveyMonkey. Its question bank, benchmarks, statistical significance, crosstabs, text analysis and the SurveyMonkey Audience panel are built for research. FormBuilder is the better choice when the survey is simple and what you actually need is a fast, cheap, embeddable form with reliable delivery to your other tools.
Last reviewed August 2026. Spotted something out of date? Tell us and we'll fix it.
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