Setting a Cutoff Date and Time

Response Limits

The Cutoff date and time collector option lets you automatically close a survey or limit the time a survey is open. You can control when respondents no longer have access to your survey – everyone, just one respondent, or a few.

You can choose to:

Close your collector for all respondents at a specific date and time, or
Use custom variables to assign an expiration date to each web link or respondent.

You can edit the collector options to automatically close a collector (stop collecting responses) at a certain date and time. If you have multiple collectors, you need to set a Cutoff Date and Time for each one separately.

Tip! If you have multiple collectors and want all to close at a certain time and date, be sure to set a Cutoff Date and Time for each collector.

Set Up a Cutoff Date and Time

Close Your Survey at a Specified Date and Time

To close a collector for all respondents at a specific date and time:

Go to the Publish survey section of your survey.
Create a collector for your survey or select an existing collector, and access the collector options. You may need to select Show advanced options.
Select On, close this collector on a specified date and time.Choose a Date and Time in the future.
Select Edit "survey closed" message to customize a message for anyone accessing the survey after it has been closed. You can choose to include Surveymonkey branding or Preview survey, and Save.

Set Expiring Web Links for Each Response

It is the survey owner’s discretion whether respondent personal data is used for Unique web links.

Expiring weblinks let you automatically block your respondent’s survey access after a specific date and time. This works best when you want to schedule an end date for an individual or small group of respondents so that the survey won’t be accessible. Every web link will have its own expiration date.

Expiring web links use custom variables to pass known data about each respondent through the link and into Analyze results.

To specify a cutoff date and time to close the collector with expiring web links:

Make sure you add custom variables to your survey before considering collectors. Be sure your date-time custom variable value is in ISO 8601 format.
Go to the Publish survey section.
Create a collector for your survey or select an existing collector name to access the collector options. You may need to select Show advanced options to see this option.
Select On, assign expiration date for each response. If this option is greyed out, return to the Design survey section to add custom variables to your survey.
Select a custom variable to use for the expiration date and time.
Set the Expiration timing in day(s), select an offset, Before, On, or After to calculate the expiration of a link, and a time. For context on offset, check out the Offset definitions and examples table, below.
Select Edit "survey closed" message to customize a message for anyone accessing the survey after it has been closed. You can choose to include Surveymonkey branding or Preview survey, and Save.

Offset definitions and examples

Offset	How it works	Example
On	The web link expires on the date and time specified in the custom variable value. Add Z to the date and time format to use the UTC time zone.	If the value is 2026-06-12 15:00, the link expires on 2026-06-12 15:00.
Before	The web link expiration date is calculated by subtracting the specified number of calendar days from the custom variable value and applying the collector time.	If the value is 2026-06-12 15:00 and the offset is BEFORE 7 days, the link expires on 2026-06-05 at the time specified in the collector setting.
After	The web link expiration date is calculated by adding the specified number of calendar days from the custom variable value and applying the collector time.	If the value is 2026-06-12 15:00 and the offset is AFTER 7 days, the link expires on 2026-06-19 at the time specified in the collector setting.

Supported date and time format

Each link’s expiration date is calculated with the date and time value passed through as a custom variable.

Before you can set up the expiring link option, set up your custom variable date and time value in ISO 8601 format, in the Design Survey section, for example:

Year-Month-DayHour:Minute:Second

Expiring web links require you enter a Date, but Time is optional. If a time isn’t entered, we default time to 00:00:00 (midnight).

All date and time values align with the Time zone under General Preferences in My Account.

If you choose the offset, On, add a Z after the time and date so that the expiring web link uses the UTC time zone.

Set the expiration time carefully if you’re sending your web link to respondents in different time zones. Expiration doesn’t consider the respondent's local time zone.

Date and time formatting examples

Acceptable value formats	Required?	Example
YYYY-MM-DD	Date is a required value.	2025-12-31
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS or YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM	Time is optional, but you can specify the hours and minutes, and seconds.	2025-12-31T23:59:59 or 2025-12-31T23:59
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ	Adding Z to the date and time format is required when you select the offset, On.	2025-12-31T23:59:59Z

Response Limits

If you're using both Response Limits and a Cutoff date and time, whichever comes first will close the collector.

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SurveyMonkey

Setting a Cutoff Date and Time

Set Up a Cutoff Date and Time

Close Your Survey at a Specified Date and Time

Set Expiring Web Links for Each Response

Response Limits

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