WHAT IS IT?
LimeSurvey is an online survey platform you install on your own server. You build questionnaires with more than 30 question types, skip logic and answer-based branching, then distribute them through a public link, a QR code or a personal invitation. The editor starts from a blank questionnaire or from one of the 900+ bundled templates, and styling goes as far as custom CSS and JavaScript. A hosted offering exists for anyone who would rather not administer a PHP server.
WHY IS IT INTERESTING?
- Complex questionnaires: more than 30 question types, skip logic and branching based on previous answers. This is where simple form builders stop and LimeSurvey keeps going.
- Multilingual by default: more than 80 languages for the admin interface and for the surveys themselves, which counts as soon as a study crosses a border.
- Access and data control: closed-access mode through personal links, two-factor authentication, response anonymization and GDPR compliance.
- Driven by API: the RemoteControl API over XML-RPC and JSON-RPC, plus a REST API, to create surveys and pull responses from another system.
- Enterprise integrations: SAML, LDAP and SURFconext for authentication, with a plugin system covering themes, audit logs and exports to R or Stata.
USE CASES
- Academic research or field studies with long, conditional questionnaires.
- Internal surveys in an organization that requires LDAP or SAML for access.
- Personal data collection where hosting and anonymization have to stay under your control.
- A multilingual questionnaire distributed across several countries from a single instance.
- Exporting responses to R or Stata for statistical analysis.
On requirements, the install needs PHP 8.1.29 or later with mbstring and PDO, an Apache or nginx server, and a MySQL 8, MariaDB 10.3.38, PostgreSQL 14 or MSSQL 2019 database. The code is released under GPL-2.0 or any later version, and the interface targets WCAG 2.0 compliance.