Survey Builder - labeled Classic Surveys in your workspace, to distinguish it from the newer Visual Tests area - is where a traditional, text-based survey gets put together from start to finish: questions, structure, logic, and everything involved in actually getting it in front of people. If your project involves asking people questions in the familiar sense - choice, rating, open-ended, and so on - rather than gathering reaction to an image or a design, this is the tool the rest of your project runs through.
What You Can Actually Do Here¶
A survey in Survey Builder is built from questions, and each question is one of seven types: single choice, multiple choice, open-ended, rating, yes/no, contact info, or a hidden field that captures something automatically without ever being shown to a respondent. You assemble these into a flow, reorder them as needed, and layer on logic where it genuinely helps - showing or hiding a question depending on an earlier answer, or ending the survey early for someone who doesn't qualify for it in the first place. On top of that, specific open-ended questions can be set up to receive AI-generated follow-up questions during the actual survey-taking experience, digging a layer deeper into an answer without you having to anticipate every possible follow-up in advance.
Once a survey looks right, you preview it - both as it'll appear on a desktop screen and on mobile, since the two don't always match - and publish it from there, which generates a shareable link you can send out however makes sense for your project.
Two Ways to Start¶
You can build a survey entirely by hand, question by question, which makes sense when you already know exactly what you want to ask. Or you can describe what you're trying to learn in plain language and let AI put together a starting draft for you to edit - useful when you know your goal clearly but would rather start from a structured draft than a blank page. Both paths land you in the exact same builder afterward, with the exact same tools available regardless of how the survey came to exist.
We've written two deeper, dedicated guides depending on which path you're on: how to build a good survey covers question types, structure, and writing questions that get accurate answers, in real depth; how to use the AI Survey Builder covers what makes a strong AI prompt, with worked examples and templates you can adapt directly.
Where This Fits Into the Rest of Your Project¶
Survey Builder is the starting point, not the whole project. Once responses start coming in, the open-ended answers you've collected are what Text Analytics is built to make sense of at scale, and Reports is where the whole dataset turns into something presentable rather than a table of raw responses. None of that requires leaving the survey you built here - it's the same underlying data, just picked up by a different tool depending on what you need to do with it next.
FAQ¶
Is Survey Builder the same as "Classic Surveys"?
Yes - Classic Surveys is the name you'll see in the workspace sidebar; Survey Builder is the tool itself.
Do I need to decide upfront whether to build manually or with AI?
No - both approaches land in the same editable builder, so you can always start with AI and finish by hand, or the reverse.
What happens after I publish?
You get a shareable link for collecting responses. From there, Text Analytics and Reports are the tools for making sense of what comes back.
Where do I learn about specific question types in depth?
See our guide to building a good survey for a full walkthrough of when to use each question type and how to structure a survey well.
Ready to start? Open Survey Builder on Opionate and build your first survey manually or with AI.