How to Close a Survey in SurveyMonkey: A Complete Guide

Closing a survey in SurveyMonkey stops new responses from coming in — but the process isn't always as straightforward as hitting a single button. Depending on your account type, how the survey was shared, and what "closed" means for your use case, there are several different methods available, each with distinct effects on your data and respondents.

What "Closing" a Survey Actually Means

Before diving into steps, it helps to understand what closing does — and doesn't do — in SurveyMonkey.

Closing a survey means new respondents can no longer submit answers. Existing responses are preserved and remain fully accessible in your results. The survey itself isn't deleted, and you can typically reopen it later.

This is different from:

• Pausing a collector (temporarily stops responses, same effect but framed as reversible)
• Deleting a survey (permanently removes it)
• Archiving a survey (hides it from your dashboard without affecting response collection)

Understanding the distinction matters because SurveyMonkey doesn't have a single global "close" button — you close collectors, which are the individual links or distribution channels through which people access your survey.

How Collectors Work

Every time you share a survey, SurveyMonkey creates a collector — a specific channel tied to a web link, email invitation, or embedded form. A single survey can have multiple collectors running simultaneously. Closing one collector doesn't automatically close the others.

This architecture is important: if you shared your survey via email and posted a web link, those are two separate collectors. You need to close each one to fully stop new responses.

Step-by-Step: How to Close a Collector in SurveyMonkey

Closing via the Survey Dashboard

1. Log in to your SurveyMonkey account
2. Find the survey you want to close from My Surveys
3. Click on the survey name to open it
4. Navigate to the Collect Responses tab
5. Locate the collector you want to close
6. Click the three-dot menu (⋮) or settings icon next to the collector
7. Select Close Collector or toggle the collector status to Closed

Once closed, anyone who clicks the survey link will see a message indicating the survey is no longer accepting responses. The exact message can sometimes be customized depending on your plan.

Closing via Collector Settings

For more control — including scheduling a close date — you can go deeper into collector settings:

1. From Collect Responses, click directly on the collector name
2. Open Collector Options or Settings
3. Look for Close Date or Response Limits
4. Set a specific end date/time, or manually toggle the status to closed

⏰ The scheduled close date feature is particularly useful for time-sensitive surveys like employee feedback cycles or event registrations. Set it once, and SurveyMonkey closes it automatically at the specified time.

Closing vs. Setting a Response Limit

SurveyMonkey also allows you to close a collector automatically once a maximum number of responses is reached. This is found in the same collector settings area:

All three achieve the same outcome — no new submissions — but through different triggers.

What Happens After You Close a Collector

• Existing responses are unaffected — your data stays intact
• The survey link shows a "closed" message to new visitors
• You can still analyze and export results normally
• You can reopen the collector at any time by returning to settings and toggling it back to open

🔒 Closing a collector doesn't lock your results from editing in any way — it purely controls new response intake.

Account Plan and Feature Availability

Not all SurveyMonkey features are available on every plan tier. Some scheduling and auto-close options may be restricted to paid plans. If you don't see a close date option or certain collector settings in your account, it's worth checking which plan is active.

Free accounts can still manually close collectors at any time — the limitation typically applies to automated or scheduled closing features.

When You Have Multiple Collectors

If your goal is to completely shut down a survey across all channels, you need to audit every collector attached to it. Under the Collect Responses tab, all active collectors are listed. A survey showing responses still coming in after you've closed one collector is almost always explained by a second collector still being open.

Surveys distributed through SurveyMonkey integrations — such as those embedded in websites, shared through third-party platforms, or sent via connected tools — may require closing within both SurveyMonkey and the external platform to fully stop response collection.

Variables That Affect Your Process

How you close a survey — and what steps matter most — depends on several factors that vary by user:

• How many collectors are active on the survey
• Whether the survey was shared via email, link, or embed
• Your account plan and which automation features are available
• Whether you need a custom closed-survey message for respondents
• Whether this is a recurring survey you plan to reopen on a schedule

A one-time feedback form for a small team looks very different from a multi-channel research survey with hundreds of respondents coming from different sources. The right closing approach — manual, scheduled, or limit-based — depends entirely on the shape of your own setup.