How to Make Questions Anonymous on SurveyMonkey

Getting people to tell you the truth is harder than it sounds.

When respondents know their name is attached to a survey, they soften their answers. They pick the “safe” option. They skip the questions that feel too personal. And you end up with data that looks clean but means nothing.

Anonymous surveys fix that — and SurveyMonkey gives you real control over how much privacy you extend to your respondents. This guide shows you exactly how to use it.

Why Anonymity in Surveys Actually Matters

Before jumping into the steps, it helps to understand what you are actually solving for.

Research consistently shows that anonymity changes how people respond. A study published in the Journal of Business and Psychology found that employees were significantly more willing to report workplace concerns on anonymous surveys than on identified ones. Similarly, Gallup data shows that organizations using fully anonymous engagement surveys see 20–40% higher response rates than those collecting identified responses.

The numbers tell the same story across industries:

• 70% of employees say they would be more honest in a workplace survey if it were anonymous (source: Qualtrics Employee Experience Report)
• Surveys with anonymous guarantees see an average 30–40% lift in completion rates compared to non-anonymous surveys
• 65% of people say they have abandoned a survey mid-way because they were worried about being identified (SurveyMonkey Audience data)
• According to Harvard Business Review, companies that regularly collect honest, anonymous feedback are 3.5x more likely to outperform their industry peers on revenue growth
• Response rates for sensitive HR topics jump from as low as 34% on identified surveys to over 70% on anonymous ones (SHRM, 2022)

The implication is clear: if you want data you can act on, you need to take identity out of the equation.

What “Anonymous” Actually Means on SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey uses the word “anonymous” in two different contexts, and mixing them up leads to headaches later.

Collector-level anonymity refers to settings at the distribution level — controlling whether SurveyMonkey tracks metadata like IP addresses, names, email addresses, or browser data when someone submits a response.

Question-level anonymity refers to whether specific questions inside your survey ask for personally identifiable information (PII) — like name fields, email inputs, or demographic questions that could narrow down who someone is.

Most people come looking for the first. But true anonymity often requires handling both.

How to Make Your Survey Anonymous on SurveyMonkey

Step One: Access Your Survey’s Collector Settings

Once you have created or opened your survey in SurveyMonkey:

1. Go to the Collect Responses tab at the top of your survey
2. Choose your collector (Web Link, Email Invitation, or another type)
3. Click on the collector to open its settings

The collector is where most of the anonymity controls live.

Step Two: Turn Off Respondent Tracking

Inside the collector settings, look for the “Track Respondents” toggle or the “Anonymous Responses” option depending on your plan tier.

• For Web Link collectors: Click “Settings” next to your link. Scroll to find the “Anonymous” toggle and switch it on. When enabled, SurveyMonkey stops recording IP addresses and metadata linked to the response.
• For Email Invitation collectors: This is trickier. Email collectors track who opened and completed the survey by default. To make responses anonymous, look for the “Track email responses” setting and disable it. Note: this removes your ability to see who completed versus who did not.

Important: On free SurveyMonkey plans, anonymity controls are limited. Full anonymous response settings — including stripping IP addresses — are available on Advantage, Premier, and Team plans.

Step Three: Remove Identifying Questions from Your Survey

Collector-level settings stop SurveyMonkey from collecting metadata. But if your survey itself asks “What is your name?” or “What is your email address?”, you have created an identification channel on your own.

To audit your questions:

1. Click on the Design Survey tab
2. Review every question that collects personal information
3. Delete name fields, company fields, and any demographic combination that could single out an individual (e.g., “What department are you in?” combined with “What is your job title?” can identify someone in a small team)

If you need demographic breakdowns, consider using ranges instead of exact values — for example, “What is your age range?” rather than “What is your birth year?”

Step Four: Disable the “Required” Setting on Sensitive Questions

If any identifying question must stay in the survey (for segmentation purposes), make it optional rather than required. This gives respondents the choice to protect their identity without abandoning the survey entirely.

Go to the question settings, find the “Required” toggle, and switch it off.

Step Five: Review the Confirmation Message

When respondents submit, the confirmation screen is another trust signal. Consider updating your Thank You / Confirmation Message to explicitly state that responses are anonymous and cannot be linked back to individuals.

This small touch has been shown to increase willingness to answer sensitive follow-up questions on the same form by as much as 18%, according to a study in the International Journal of Survey Methodology.

To edit this:

1. Go to Collect Responses → select your collector → Settings
2. Find “Thank You Page” or “Confirmation Message”
3. Add a line confirming anonymity

Additional Anonymity Settings Worth Knowing

IP Address Collection

By default, SurveyMonkey logs the IP address of respondents. On paid plans, you can turn this off:

• Go to Collector Settings → Show Advanced Options (or similar, depending on plan)
• Find “Track IP Address” and disable it

Preventing Multiple Responses Without Login

If you use the “Prevent Ballot Box Stuffing” feature (which prevents duplicate responses), SurveyMonkey uses cookies or IP tracking to enforce it. This partially breaks anonymity. You will need to decide whether preventing duplicates or protecting anonymity is the higher priority for your use case.

Single-Use Links

For email campaigns where you want anonymity but also controlled distribution, consider using single-use anonymous links — each recipient gets a unique link, but responses are not tied to their email. This is available on paid SurveyMonkey plans.

Common Mistakes That Break Survey Anonymity

Even when you set everything up correctly, these mistakes expose respondents:

Asking too many narrow demographic questions. If you ask for department, seniority level, tenure, and location in a company of 50 people, any combination of two or three of those answers can identify someone. Keep demographic questions broad or optional.

Sharing raw results with stakeholders. If you export response-level data and share it, even without names, text responses can reveal the author. Consider only sharing aggregated summaries with leadership, not individual response records.

Using email invitation collectors without disabling tracking. This is the most common error. Sending the survey via email by default tracks who responded. Turn off response tracking explicitly in the collector settings.

Forgetting about open-text fields. Free-text answers often contain identifying details — project names, relationship references, specific dates. Remind respondents at the top of open-text questions to avoid including personal details if they wish to stay anonymous.

When Anonymity Backfires (And What To Do Instead)

Anonymous surveys are not always the right choice.

If you are running a Net Promoter Score (NPS) campaign and need to follow up with detractors, anonymity blocks that workflow. If you are conducting 360-degree feedback and need to attribute comments to specific relationship types (peer vs. manager), full anonymity removes that layer.

In those cases, consider confidential surveys instead of fully anonymous ones. Confidential means responses are seen only by a designated admin — they are not shared with the respondent’s manager — but the admin can still access individual responses if needed.

SurveyMonkey allows you to set this up through role-based access controls on Team plans.

How Anonymous Surveys Connect to Stronger Business Decisions

The real value of anonymous surveys is not just higher response rates — it is more reliable signal.

When people answer honestly:

• Your product teams build features based on real pain, not what users think you want to hear
• Your people managers get accurate read on team morale before it becomes a retention crisis
• Your sales and marketing teams understand why deals are lost, not the sanitized version prospects give on record

According to Forrester Research, companies that act on reliable customer feedback data see 10–15% lower customer churn compared to those working from incomplete or biased datasets.

Anonymous feedback is not just a survey design choice. It is a data quality decision.

Conclusion

Making questions anonymous on SurveyMonkey is not complicated once you know where to look — but it does require attention to both collector settings and survey design. Turn off respondent tracking at the collector level, strip identifying questions from the form itself, and confirm anonymity in your thank-you message.

The payoff is real: higher response rates, more honest answers, and data you can actually build decisions on.

If you are using surveys as part of a broader outbound or lead generation strategy — to qualify prospects, understand your market, or benchmark client satisfaction — the quality of that feedback is only as good as your targeting. Reaching the right people in the first place is where most teams lose. That is the problem we solve at SalesSo.

Book a Strategy Meeting to see how we help teams build complete outbound systems that deliver pipeline, not just data points.