LimeSurvey surveys and forms

You want to measure customer satisfaction, run an employee pulse survey or collect sign-ups. SaaS tools like SurveyMonkey or Typeform get the job done, but the answers (often personal data) leave for American servers, and every survey page loads its own trackers. Bunker hosts LimeSurvey, the open source survey and form platform written in PHP.

Access: your dedicated instance, for example at https://survey.getbunker.net, deployed from the Bunker console.

Why LimeSurvey?

LimeSurvey handles the whole survey lifecycle, from questionnaire design (28 question types) to distribution through unique links, then collection, analysis and export. Its real strength is invitation management. You import a list of participants, each one receives a token (a personal link), and the software always knows who has answered and who has not.

All answers are stored on Bunker servers. The survey pages load no third-party script on the client side.

Reminders to non-respondents

This is the criterion that sets LimeSurvey apart from almost the entire recent open source market. Because each participant has their own token, you target a reminder at the people who have not answered yet, as many times as needed, without ever sending a nudge to those who already returned their answers. A response rate often turns on the second and third reminder, and a Google Form simply cannot tell who has answered.

LimeSurvey schedules these sends, personalizes the message with the recipient's name and tracks each invitation's status (sent, opened, answered). By enabling the anonymized-responses mode, you keep the participant's identity separate from their answer and remind by token while the results stay anonymous.

Edition and license

Bunker operates the LimeSurvey community version, released under the GNU GPL v2 or later license (GPLv2+, free software). The code is auditable, your data exportable, and the instance re-internalizable on your own infrastructure whenever you decide. That license imposes no mandatory visible attribution, so the interface can be served without the LimeSurvey name or logo, on your own domain. Bunker is not affiliated with LimeSurvey GmbH; "LimeSurvey" is a trademark of its publisher, referenced here to designate the operated software, never resold as a commercial brand.

Comparison with alternatives

Criterion	Bunker	SurveyMonkey	Typeform	Google Forms	Self-hosting
Open source	Yes (GPLv2+)	No	No	No	Yes
Sovereign hosting	Yes (Europe)	No (USA)	No (USA)	No (USA)	Up to you
Targeted reminders to non-respondents	Yes	Partial	No	No	Yes
Anonymous answers with tokens	Yes	Limited	No	No	Yes
Question types	28	Plan-dependent	Reduced	Reduced	28
SPSS / R / Excel export	Yes	Plan-dependent	Plan-dependent	CSV only	Yes
Integration API	RemoteControl2	Plan-dependent	Yes	No	RemoteControl2
Auto backups	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	To configure
Ops cost	Zero	Zero	Zero	Zero	Time + server

In practice

The source code is auditable by anyone, under a GPLv2+ license, with no black box and no vendor lock-in.

The answers belong to you. You export them in open formats (CSV, Excel, SPSS, R) whenever you want, with no collection quota and no per-respondent billing.

Your surveys stay in Europe, under European law. No CLOUD Act, no access by foreign authorities, no advertising tracker on the page your respondents see.

Portability

A survey sometimes touches sensitive data, like named feedback, HR data or health answers for an insurer. With LimeSurvey:

• Full export of answers (CSV, Excel, SPSS, R, PDF)
• Export and reimport of a whole survey in .lss format
• Documented RemoteControl2 API to drive collection
• GPLv2+ license guaranteeing the project's longevity

If Bunker disappears tomorrow, you export your surveys and answers, then reinstall LimeSurvey on your own server. Try getting that much back from a cancelled SurveyMonkey account.

Bunker vs self-hosting

You could install LimeSurvey on your own server. But:

Aspect	Self-hosting	Bunker
High availability	Up to you	Guaranteed
Backups	To configure	Automatic
Security updates	To monitor	Applied
SSL certificates	To renew	Managed
24/7 monitoring	To set up	Included
HA database	DBMS to manage (MySQL / MariaDB / PostgreSQL)	Managed replicated PostgreSQL (CloudNativePG)
Authentication	Local accounts to manage	Organization SSO (OpenID Connect)
Invitation sending	SMTP to operate	Configured email relay

A survey left open during an outage means a collapsing response rate and a wasted campaign. At Bunker, availability and backups are guaranteed. The database runs on replicated PostgreSQL (CloudNativePG), and the invitation email relay is configured so your messages go out without landing in spam.

Quick start

1. Deploy from the console

1. Go to console.getbunker.net
2. Create your Bunker account or sign in
3. Activate the LimeSurvey service from the console
4. Access your instance via the provided URL, then sign in with your organization's SSO (OpenID Connect); a break-glass admin account remains available in the service details

2. Create a survey

1. In the LimeSurvey administration, open Surveys → Create survey
2. Set a title, choose the language and write the welcome message
3. Add your question groups, then your questions (multiple choice, scale, free text, matrix)
4. Activate the survey once it is ready

3. Invite participants and manage tokens

1. Open Survey participants → Initialise participant table
2. Import your list (CSV) or enter the contacts manually
3. Generate the tokens: each participant receives a unique personal link
4. Launch the email invitation from the Invitations and reminders tab

4. Remind non-respondents

1. Go back to Invitations and reminders → Send email reminder
2. LimeSurvey only offers the participants with a "not answered" status
3. Personalize the reminder message and schedule the send
4. Repeat a few days apart until you reach the target response rate

API and integration

LimeSurvey exposes the RemoteControl2 API over JSON-RPC to drive collection from your systems:

# Fetch a survey's responses in JSON via RemoteControl2
curl -X POST https://survey.getbunker.net/index.php/admin/remotecontrol \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "method": "export_responses",
    "params": ["SESSION_KEY", 123456, "json"],
    "id": 1
  }'

RemoteControl2 call	Description
get_session_key	Opens an authenticated session
add_survey	Creates a survey
add_participants	Adds participants and generates their tokens
invite_participants	Sends the email invitations
remind_participants	Reminds participants who have not answered
export_responses	Exports the answers (JSON, CSV, SPSS…)

Best practices

• Test the survey in preview mode before activating tokens, a badly worded question skews the whole campaign
• Keep the invitation table separate from the response table when you promise anonymity
• Space out the reminders: a first one at day 3, a second at day 7, rarely more than three
• Set a closing date and a clear retention policy for the answers
• Export and archive the raw results at closing time, before any analysis

References

• LimeSurvey documentation to go further
• Externalized backups for complete protection