Why frequency limits matter
Nobody likes being spammed with too many surveys. If your customers or employees receive multiple survey invitations in a short period, they may:
Stop responding altogether
Mark your messages as spam
Develop a negative perception of your brand
To prevent this, Netigate lets you set frequency limits: rules that control how many times a person can receive survey invitations within a set time period.
Where frequency limits apply
Frequency limits work for:
Email distributions
SMS distributions
Frequency limits do not apply when you share surveys via:
Generic links
Embedded widgets
If you distribute using links or widgets, there is no way to track which individual is receiving the survey, so limits cannot be enforced.
What you can do
You can use frequency limits in two ways:
Account-wide limit
Applies to all surveys you send.
Example: “No one should get more than 3 surveys in 30 days, no matter which survey it is.”
Survey-specific limit
Applies only to one survey.
Example: “This NPS survey should only be sent once every 14 days to the same person.”
This overrides the account-wide limit if both are set.
Blocked invitations are still logged in your survey statistics under a special status called Frequency Limit Reached. This way, you can see how many messages were skipped because of your rules.
How can I get started using Frequency Limits?
Currently, frequency limits can only be defined through the API. While we expect to have this accessible from the platform itself in the future, using the API will allow you to easily set a frequency limit within Netigate Surveys.
Below are example payloads for defining a frequency limit. You can view more examples and further documentation from the Netigate REST API documentation.
Limit for a specific survey
Endpoint:
PUT /api/surveys/{surveyId}/frequency
Body example:
{ "enabled": true, "settings": { "maxNumberOfSurveys": 1, "numberOfDays": 14 } }How it works:
With this configuration, survey 12345 can only be sent once every 14 days to the same contact detail (email or phone number).
Attempts to send again within 14 days will be blocked, but blocked sendouts are still logged with status FrequencyLimitReached.
Limit for the whole account
Endpoint:
PUT /api/surveys/frequency
Body example:
{ "enabled": true, "settings": { "maxNumberOfSurveys": 3, "numberOfDays": 30 } }How it works:
With this configuration, any survey in the account can only be sent up to 3 times per 30 days to the same contact detail (email or phone number).
If a survey has its own frequency limit, that overrides the account-wide rule. Blocked sendouts are still logged with status FrequencyLimitReached.
Benefits
Protects your respondents from survey fatigue
Improves response rates over time
Helps you stay in good standing with email and SMS providers (avoiding spam flags)
Gives you transparency through reporting
Edge cases to be aware of
Channels: Works only for Email and SMS distributions. Does not work with generic links or widgets.
Email and SMS are treated separately: If a contact exists with both an email and a phone number, they may still receive surveys via both channels. There’s no way to unify them into “one person” today.
Reminders don’t count: Frequency limits only apply to initial invitations. Reminder messages are not blocked.
Overlapping rules: If you have both account-wide and survey-specific limits, the survey-specific rule always wins.
Blocked surveys still show in stats: You won’t lose track of skipped send-outs — they are counted, just not delivered.
Data retention: To respect GDPR, the system eventually deletes information about how many times a person was contacted. However, it keeps this data long enough to enforce the rules correctly.
When to use survey vs. account-wide limits
Use an account-wide rule when you want to set a general baseline, e.g., “No one should ever get too many surveys from us in a short time.”
Use a survey-specific rule when you need stricter control for a particular project, e.g., transactional or follow-up surveys.
✅ Tip: A good starting point is setting your account-wide rule to 3 surveys per 30 days, and then adding tighter rules for specific surveys where needed.