This guide covers everything that happens between building a survey and analyzing results — how to control when your survey is open, what respondents see at each stage, and how the public survey experience works.
Survey states#
Every survey goes through a lifecycle of states that control whether it's accepting responses.
| State | What it means |
|---|---|
| Draft | The survey is being built. It's not live yet and can't collect responses. |
| Published | The survey is live and accepting responses (shown as Active in some views). |
| Paused | Temporarily stopped. No new respondents can start; you can resume later. |
| Closed | Permanently ended. No further responses will be accepted. |
| Archived | Removed from active lists but retained for reference (organization workflow). |
Managing field controls#
You can change your survey's state from the survey dashboard or from within the builder toolbar.
Activating a survey#
When your survey is ready, click Activate (or Publish) to make it live. The public link will start accepting responses immediately.
Pausing a survey#
If you need to temporarily stop collecting responses — for example, to fix a question or wait for more budget — click Pause. You'll be asked what to do with any responses that are currently in progress:
- Leave them as incomplete (default) — Their partial answers are kept but marked as unfinished. The safer choice if you intend to resume the survey later.
- Mark them as complete — Their answers so far are saved as finished responses. A warning is shown before you confirm, because the decision is irreversible.
This only touches responses that were still in progress. Respondents who were already screened out, returned by a quota, or removed by a quality-control rule stay terminated. If you want one of those counted as a complete, promote it deliberately from the responses table instead. See Marking a response complete.
You can resume the survey later by activating it again.
Closing a survey#
When data collection is finished, click Close. This permanently ends the survey. Like pausing, you'll choose how to handle in-progress responses. Once closed, a survey cannot be reopened.
What respondents see#
When the survey is active#
Respondents who visit the survey link go through this experience:
- Password gate (optional) — If the survey is password-protected, respondents enter the password before anything else.
- CAPTCHA (optional) — Bot verification at survey start when enabled in settings.
- Email gate (optional) — When sign-in is required, respondents may enter their email before the welcome screen (skipped if
?email=is in the link). - Welcome screen — Survey title, description, estimated length, and Start.
- Questions — Page-by-page navigation with logic applied between pages.
- Completion screen — Thank-you message, optional redirect, and optional response-summary email.
Note: Section names are internal organization — respondents never see them. Section names also don't appear in the builder's own preview, so what you see in Preview is exactly what respondents get.
When the survey is paused#
Respondents who try to access a paused survey see a message explaining that the survey is temporarily unavailable.
When the survey is closed#
Respondents who try to access a closed survey see a message explaining that the survey is no longer accepting responses.
Progress bar and back button#
You can control two navigation elements that respondents see:
- Progress bar — Shows respondents how far along they are. Toggle it on or off in the survey's Settings tab under styling.
- Back button — Lets respondents go back to previous pages. Also toggled in the Settings tab. The setting applies to every link you share, including Test Links: if it is off, testers do not get a Back button either.
Both settings are reflected in the preview, so you can see exactly what respondents will experience.
Required questions#
If a question is marked as required, respondents must answer it before they can move to the next page. If they try to continue without answering, they'll see a prompt asking them to complete the question.
Required questions are marked with a red asterisk (*) next to the question text. If you'd rather not show that marker, turn off Show asterisk on mandatory questions in the survey's Settings tab under Experience settings. This changes the look only: the question stays required, and a respondent who skips it is still stopped with the same message.
Public survey link#
Each survey has a unique public link you can share with respondents. Copy it from the survey dashboard or the builder's distribution settings.
Language and text direction#
Each survey has a base language setting. When a respondent opens the survey:
- The page language is set automatically (so browsers and screen readers know what language the content is in).
- For right-to-left languages (like Arabic, Hebrew, or Urdu), the text direction is adjusted automatically.
- The language used is recorded with each response, which is useful for filtering in analytics.
Response summary email#
When enabled, Intuify automatically sends the respondent an email copy of their answers immediately after they submit the survey.
The email includes:
- The survey name
- Every question they answered, with their response displayed in a readable format
- A note that it was sent automatically on submission
To activate this, turn on Send response summary to respondent in the survey's Settings → Completion section. Because the email is sent to the respondent, you also need to capture their email address — either by setting the survey to require sign-in (turning off Allow anonymous responses) or by passing [email protected] in the distribution link.
Mutual exclusion: If Allow anonymous responses is on, the Send response summary toggle is automatically disabled (greyed out) — there's no way to email a summary to someone whose email you never capture. Turn off anonymous responses first, then enable the summary.
Capturing a respondent's email (the email gate)#
For surveys that need to know who is responding — panel studies, follow-up research, response-summary emails — Intuify can show an email gate before the welcome screen. The respondent enters their email once, and that address is stored with their response.
The email gate has a clean, friendly layout:
- A left-aligned explanation of why the email is needed.
- A single email input with live validation (so typos get caught before the respondent clicks Continue).
- A short privacy note assuring the respondent that their email is only used for this study.
- Smooth button animations so the flow feels responsive on both desktop and mobile.
When does the gate appear?
- On surveys that require sign-in (i.e., anonymous responses are disabled) and no
?email=parameter is present in the link. - If an
?email=...value is passed in the link, the gate is skipped because the email is already known.
Tips for a good respondent experience#
- Keep it short — Shorter surveys get higher completion rates. Use the completion funnel in Analytics to spot where people drop off.
- Use logic — Don't ask questions that aren't relevant. Display logic and skip logic keep the survey focused for each respondent.
- Preview before publishing — Always preview your survey on desktop and mobile to catch layout issues or confusing wording.
- Customize the completion message — A thoughtful thank-you message leaves a good impression and can include next steps or links.
Was this page helpful?