Lime Survey – A Review on the Open Source Survey Software

Lime Survey (formerly known as PHP Surveyor) is an open source survey software that you can use for setting up online surveys. The software generates survey forms and collects data by using a set of PHP scripts with MySQL or MS SQL.

The main advantage of Lime Survey is that it comes with a good collection of ready made templates. The survey software has a dashboard that you can use for a variety of purposes like monitoring the surveys, setting quotas, and displaying the results into a range of formats as well as local Excel spreadsheets. Once you have completed the survey, you can save it and use it for future surveys. Thus after designing a particular survey, you save a lot of work that you may have to put in for a fresh survey. The software also allows users to save the survey and complete it in another sitting if they want. The collections of questions available with the software are fully customizable to the nature of your business. Apart from all that, you get PDF automatically and also printed versions of the survey.

Considering the disadvantages which are only a few, Lime Survey requires setup on a server, and the problem is that it takes a lot of time to install and configure the software. But although the initial setup is somewhat technical, once the setup process is over, anybody can start using the software for setting up the survey. However, it does take some time to learn and understand.

On the whole, Lime Survey is a rugged and priceless survey tool that comes free. Although it has a few issues, it all diminishes considering the many advantages and the fact that the software is open source.