Free vs Pro
Free and Pro are two separate WordPress plugins, not one plugin with a switch. This page covers what each gives you, and — because a comparison table alone doesn't explain why something's locked — the three independent checks that decide whether a survey actually renders.
What's free
Four survey types (Quick Vote, Survey, Personality Test, Knowledge Quiz), 7 question types,
6 built-in themes, unlimited surveys, unlimited responses per survey, revision history, and both
publishing methods (the survey's own page and the [surveyx] shortcode). The one hard limit: a
survey holds exactly one question.
What Pro adds
| Area | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Questions per survey | 1 | Unlimited |
| Question types | 7 | 13 (adds contact info, opinion scale, rating, date, file upload, matrix/Likert) |
| Closing and result screens | 1 of each | Unlimited, cloneable |
| Skip logic | Not available | Per-answer jump map |
@ answer recall | Not available | Yes, from any earlier question |
| CTA button on closing/result | Field exists, locked in the UI | Usable |
| Built-in themes | 6 of 22 | All 22 |
| Custom theme builder | Not available | Full editor — colours, gradients, images, patterns, fonts, custom CSS |
| Google Fonts | Not available | 1,907-font catalogue |
| Branding | Footer "Powered by SurveyX" on/off | + custom logo, header logo, site-wide white-label |
| Survey page indexing / redirect | Always noindex,nofollow | Indexing switch + post-submit redirect |
| Gutenberg block / Elementor widget | Not available | Yes |
| Email notifications | Not available | One recipient, on completion, no answers in the body |
| Mailchimp, Webhooks, Google Sheets | Not available | Yes |
| Individual responses + CSV export | Not available | Full drawer, search, export |
| Cross-survey analytics dashboard | Not available | Trends, top performers, month-over-month |
| Bulk survey JSON import/export | Not available | Up to 20 MB |
| Spam protection | reCAPTCHA v2 | + reCAPTCHA v3, Cloudflare Turnstile |
| "Start Again" restart | Not available | Yes |
See pricing for licence options.
The three gates
"This is Pro" turns out to mean one of three different things, and telling them apart is the fastest way to fix a lock you didn't expect.
1. Edition gate — which plugin is active
Free and Pro are two separate plugin files. Only one is meant to run at a time: activating Pro doesn't automatically deactivate Free, but if both are left active, Free detects Pro and goes completely inert — no admin menu, no REST routes, nothing. This gate decides what the admin interface shows you: Pro's editor exposes every setting and question type regardless of whether your licence is currently valid, because this check only asks "which plugin is running," not "is the licence active."
2. Content gate — is this survey inside what Free can render
Independent of which plugin is active, every survey is classified the moment it's saved: a survey becomes Pro-locked if it has more than one question, or if its single question uses one of the 6 Pro-only types. A locked survey won't open in Free's editor ("This survey uses Pro features. Please activate SurveyX Pro to edit it."), won't render through its shortcode, and won't render on its own page — on Free, regardless of whether you also have a Pro licence sitting unused.
3. Licence gate — is your Pro licence active right now
Checked only on Pro, only on the paths a respondent actually uses, and per survey. If your Pro licence expires or is deactivated, the surveys that use a Pro feature stop being shown to visitors — their shortcode outputs nothing and their own page 404s. Surveys inside the free feature set keep running. Nothing is lost either way, the admin editor keeps working because it is not checked here, and SurveyX's admin screens carry a warning naming how many surveys are affected. Full detail: Activate your Pro licence.
Which gate did you hit?
- The admin editor won't open a specific survey, with a "Pro required" message, while other surveys are fine → the content gate. That survey has more than one question or a Pro-only question type.
- No Pro controls appear anywhere in the admin (theme picker capped at 6, no Skip Logic editor, integrations show an upgrade card) → the edition gate. The free plugin is running, not Pro.
- Your bigger surveys are dark to visitors while simple ones still work, and the editor is fine → the licence gate, which asks the same question the content gate does but at render time. An admin warning names the count. See Activate your Pro licence.
The free import trap
Free's template library isn't restricted to single-question templates — you can browse and import any of them, including ones tagged "Pro" (which Free blocks outright) and ones with no version tag at all, which Free treats as importable. A template with no Pro tag can still have more than one question. Import one, and you get a real survey row in your dashboard — immediately caught by the content gate because it has more than one question. It shows up greyed out, and opening it returns the same "Pro required" message as any other locked survey.
Nothing is broken here: the import worked as designed, and the survey exists and holds its questions. It can't be opened, edited or published until you activate Pro — worth checking a template's question count before importing it on a free install.