For how long does SurveyMonkey retain my data?

Data associated with your user account (including personal information and survey data) is retained for as long as you have a SurveyMonkey account and for such longer period as may be required by applicable law. We don’t cancel or deregister accounts for inactivity. If you have a paid account which later downgrades to a basic (non-paid) account, your data will be retained, although there may be restrictions on what data you can see unless you upgrade back to a paid account.

You may delete your survey data at any time. Click on the following links to learn how to delete: survey questions, survey responses, and entire surveys.

Survey data deleted in these ways will be rendered inaccessible but not permanently deleted, as permitted by law. We retain your data to allow you to restore surveys which have accidentally been deleted (this happens surprisingly often!). To request for your deleted survey data to be restored, see the instructions under “Restoration of deleted responses” on this page. You may also be able to restore survey questions deleted within the last 14 days by yourself by following these instructions. However, because we do eventually permanently purge old, deleted data to reclaim storage space, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to restore deleted data. The more recent the deletion, the more likely it will be able to be restored.

Please note that we generally do not use deleted survey data for any purpose other than to permit you the opportunity to restore it. Sometimes we may retain deleted data to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, or enforce our agreements. In these cases, we ensure that access to such data is blocked except for the purposes for which we have been required to retain the information.

Permanent deletion:

To permanently delete your survey data, this can be done directly in your account. Simply click the Delete button associated with each survey on the My Surveys page. Once deleted from your account, the data will be fully purged from our system within 90 days.

If wish to cancel your account (as well as all surveys and any data associated with your account), please contact customer support. This action is irrecoverable and we will not be able to restore your account or any of the survey data it contained if you do this.

Backup copies:

Please note that residual copies of deleted data may remain on backup media as permitted by law. This data generally disappears after 90 days as old backup media gets overwritten with newer backups.