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Move surveys between sites

Export your surveys as a single JSON file and import them on another WordPress site. It is how you move work from a staging site to a live one, hand a survey to a colleague, or keep a copy outside the database.

Pro

Import and export needs Pro. The free plugin has an importer, but it only reads the template library — it cannot export, and it cannot read a survey export file.

This is not the same thing as the template library, which brings in a ready-made survey someone else designed.

Export​

  1. Open Import / Export in the SurveyX admin menu.
  2. Tick the surveys you want, or choose to export all of them.
  3. Export. You get one JSON file containing every survey you selected.

You can export your settings the same way, as a separate file.

Contacts​

The same Export tab has a Contacts section below the survey and settings export, unrelated to the JSON files above — it downloads a CSV of the people who answered a contact-info question, for one survey or for all of them.

  1. Under Contacts, choose a survey from the dropdown, or leave All surveys selected.
  2. Click Export contacts CSV.

See contact export for the exact columns and how it differs from a response export.

Import​

  1. On the other site, open Import / Export.
  2. Upload the JSON file. SurveyX previews it first: it reads the file, checks it, and tells you what it contains, without writing anything yet.
  3. Confirm. The surveys are created, images are pulled across, and the report tells you what each one became.

Because the preview is a dry run, an unusable file fails before it has touched your database rather than halfway through.

What the file holds, and what it does not​

FormatA JSON envelope with a version number, so an older file stays readable as the format evolves
Maximum size20 MB, whether you upload the file or post its contents
SurveysQuestions, answers, settings, cover and closing content, images
Not includedSecret keys. The reCAPTCHA v2 and v3 secrets, the Turnstile secret and the Mailchimp API key are stripped from every export

That last row is deliberate, and it works in both directions: importing a file never blanks a secret you already have on the destination site. Re-enter the keys once on the new site and they stay put through later imports.

What respondents see​

Nothing changes for them. Importing creates new surveys with new ids, so an imported survey gets its own URL and its own responses — it does not inherit the original's answers, and links to the original keep pointing at the original.

Troubleshooting​

"This file isn't a SurveyX export." The file is not a SurveyX export envelope — most often a template file, a settings export used where a survey export was expected, or JSON from somewhere else entirely. Export again from the source site and upload that file.

The file is rejected as too large. The cap is 20 MB. Export in smaller batches rather than choosing all surveys at once; surveys carrying many images are the usual reason a file grows.

The import ran but a survey is missing its images. Images are fetched from the source site during the import, so the source has to be reachable and the files still present. Re-run the import once the source is available.

  • The dashboard — the survey list, and the template library
  • Free vs Pro — what else a licence unlocks
  • Export responses — a different thing: the answers people gave, and the contacts they left, as CSV