Why we charge per survey, not per month

MapX has no subscription. You create an account for free with no time limit, collect as many responses as you like, and when a single survey grows past 20 responses you pay €490 (excluding VAT) once to unlock everything that survey will ever collect. That is the whole price list.

Most survey tools do not work like this, and most people who see our pricing page ask why. This post is the long answer.

Surveys are projects, subscriptions are not

A housing company runs a neighbourhood dialogue in March, a safety survey in September and nothing in between. A planning consultancy runs three surveys for one client and then moves on to a client who needs none. A researcher collects data for four months and spends the next eighteen writing about it.

None of these people have a monthly need. They have a survey-shaped need, with a start and an end. A monthly subscription asks them to pay for the quiet months or to cancel and re-subscribe, which means exporting data, losing dashboards, and explaining to a finance department why the same tool keeps appearing and disappearing on the card statement.

A per-survey price matches the shape of the work. You pay when a survey matters, and you pay once.

Why 20 responses is free

20 responses is enough to find out whether a survey works. You can test the question flow with colleagues, run a real pilot with a small group, see how the map answers cluster, build a dashboard and export a PDF. If the survey is wrong, you fix it before anyone pays anything.

It is also enough for many small studies to never need an unlock at all. A student project with 15 interviews, an internal workshop, a quick check with the board: all free, forever, with the full toolkit. We would rather those people use MapX and tell a colleague than pay us a monthly fee for something they use twice a year.

Why the unlock never expires

Responses do not stop being valuable when a project ends. The safety survey from 2024 is exactly what you want to compare with the one from 2026. If analysis access expired with a subscription, you would lose that comparison, or export everything to spreadsheets where the map disappears.

An unlocked survey stays unlocked for as long as it exists. New responses that arrive two years later are analysable without another payment. You can keep a survey open as a standing channel, the way Hyresgästföreningen has with "Örat mot marken", its dialogue with 5,000 to 6,000 tenants out in their own neighbourhoods, and never think about billing again.

What about AI?

AI features use credits, and credits are the one thing we do sell in quantities. Every new workspace gets 25 to start, to use within 90 days. Generating a full survey costs 5 credits, each change you ask for in the survey chat costs 2 credits, each message to the AI that builds your dashboard costs 2 credits, and summarising a question costs 1 credit. Top-ups start at 100 credits for €29, and bought credits never expire.

We separated this from the unlock price because AI usage varies enormously between customers. Some people generate one survey and never touch AI again. Others want a summary of every open-text question every week. Charging everyone a blended price would mean the first group subsidising the second. Credits let each workspace pay for what it actually uses, and the shared pool with personal balances means an admin can give a colleague a budget without handing over a card.

The honest trade-off

Per-survey pricing is simpler for you and less predictable for us. A subscription business can forecast next quarter from this quarter. We cannot, not with the same confidence, because our revenue follows your project calendar rather than our billing calendar.

We accept that. MapX is built to be a company that pays its owners from what customers actually buy, not one optimised for a valuation multiple on recurring revenue. That changes what kind of pricing is rational. We do not need you locked in. We need you to come back when the next survey matters, and to tell the person at the next desk why you did.

What this means in practice

• Create an account and build as many surveys as you like. Nothing expires.
• Collect without limits. Responses above 20 are stored and held, not lost.
• When a survey matters, unlock it from inside the app for €490 excluding VAT. Pay by card, or ask for an invoice.
• If you are leaving an annual contract with another platform, email us and we will send a single-use discount code for your first unlock.
• If you teach or research at a university, apply for the academic programme and we remove the response cap entirely.

Everything else is on the pricing page, including the questions people ask most often. If yours is not there, write to us and we will add it.