Closing it by hand
- 1Open My Surveys, or the survey itself
The control is in both places — on the survey card, and in the editor's top bar.
- 2Click Close survey
Once a survey has any responses, this is what sits where Unpublish used to. You are asked to confirm once.
- 3The badge reads Closed
The link stays exactly the same. Anyone who opens it now sees your closing page instead of the questions.
What closing does and does not do
- Keeps everything — Results, the AI Analyst, CSV, Excel, SPSS and Google Sheets exports, and trends across waves all work on a closed survey exactly as before.
- Frees a slot on Free — The 3-survey limit counts live surveys, so closing one lets you publish another.
- Stops invites — Sending is refused while a survey is closed, including sends you scheduled earlier. Reopen it first.
- Is reversible — Reopen puts it straight back to collecting, on the same link.
- Lets people in flight finish — Anyone already part-way through keeps 24 hours to submit. Closing stops recruitment, not the person who is three questions from the end.
Closing it automatically
In the editor, open Settings → Closing. Set either rule, or both — whichever is met first closes the survey. Automatic closing is a Pro feature; closing by hand is on every plan.
- 1Close automatically on a date and time
Entered in your own local time. Useful for a fieldwork window that ends on a fixed day.
- 2Close after a number of completed responses
Partial answers never count toward it — only submitted ones. Useful when you are paying per response, or only need a sample of a given size.
- 3Write the message respondents see
Optional. Leave it blank and they get the standard wording. This one applies on every plan.
Close or unpublish?
Keeps the link, the results and the wave history.
Respondents see a proper closing page.
The only option once anyone has answered.
Puts the survey back to draft, as if it had not been published.
The link stops working entirely.
Only possible while the survey has no responses at all.
They get to finish. Anyone who started before you closed has 24 hours to submit what they began, and a banner appears on their page telling them so. New arrivals see the closing page immediately.
So a small number of responses can land after the moment you closed — worth knowing if you are closing on a deadline or exporting straight away. After 24 hours the window shuts and any unfinished answers stay in-progress.
Use New wave rather than reopening months later. You get a fresh survey that trends against this one, and the option to close the current wave in the same click.