The best time to send a survey depends on when people are most focused and willing to respond, and these quick rules give you the clearest starting point.
- Email surveys: The best time to send an email survey is usually Tuesday–Thursday, 9–11am in each recipient’s local time. Mid-week, late-morning sends typically earn higher opens and completion rates.
- Work audiences: Stick with weekdays. Avoid weekends and major holidays, when people are offline or inboxes are backed up.
- Transactional and post-event surveys: Send the survey as soon as possible. That often means immediately after a support interaction or product moment, and within 24–48 hours after an event.
Reminders: If you need more responses, send one reminder at 48–72 hours and a final reminder around day 7. More reminders create fatigue with little gain.
Use these timing rules with strong survey design so your invites are clear, mobile-friendly, and easy to complete.
How timing affects your survey’s visibility
When people are focused, your survey has a better shot at being opened and completed. That focus usually shows up on weekdays, when response rates are much stronger than on weekends.
There’s more to visibility than the day, though. The devices people use shift throughout the day, which affects how easily they can respond. Late afternoons and evenings lean heavily mobile, while mornings and early afternoons tend to bring more desktop activity.
This device mix matters. Longer surveys with open-ended questions often perform better on desktops, where typing is easier. But if you’re concept testing imagery, UI elements, or product flows, mobile-heavy windows can be useful because they show you how your ideas land on a small screen.
Choosing the right send time shapes who sees your survey, how they experience it, and how many complete it. Use timing to support the kind of feedback you need—not just to get more clicks, but to get better data.
Email vs. in-product vs. SMS vs. social
Different channels prompt people to respond at different times, so the best time to send a survey depends on where your audience sees it.
- Email tends to follow natural work rhythms. Mid-morning and early afternoon openings are mostly on desktops, which supports longer surveys, richer prompts, and tasks that work better on a larger screen.
- In-product or in-app surveys align with moments of active use. Time of day matters less than the moment in the workflow when the prompt appears. Micro-surveys work especially well when they’re triggered by task completion.
- SMS reaches people wherever they are, which often means mobile-heavy activity in the evening or on weekends. Use very short, tap-friendly question types to limit drop-off.
- Social links follow platform behavior patterns: commutes, lunch breaks, and evenings often produce the most clicks. Expect mostly mobile responses and plan the design accordingly.
Related reading: Best practices and channels for sending surveys.
Time zone localization
Send surveys in each recipient’s local time instead of a single global send time to improve completion rates and reduce friction. Start by testing two weekday windows that often have stronger response rates: 9–11am and 1–2pm in the respondent’s time zone.
A few quick rules to keep in mind:
- Use automation to handle time zones. If you’re sending to a global list, schedule by local time so respondents in New York, London, and Sydney all receive your invite at roughly the same point in their day.
- Watch daylight saving changes. Around daylight saving transitions, double-check that your survey sends in the intended local window, especially for audiences that span regions that do and do not observe daylight saving time.
- Plan international sends by work week norms. In some regions, the work week is Sunday–Thursday instead of Monday–Friday, or weekends fall on different days. Align survey timing with local work patterns rather than assuming a single “right” schedule.
Mobile-first considerations
Survey-taking is increasingly mobile and that mobile completion is more likely on evenings and weekends. If weekend sending is necessary for your program, design with a mobile-first mindset:
- Keep it short. Aim for just a few core questions that respondents can finish in a couple of minutes on their phone.
- Use mobile-friendly formats. Use closed-ended questions, short answer fields, and minimize scrolling.
- Preview on multiple devices. Make sure text is legible, images scale correctly, and buttons are easy to tap before you finalize and send your survey.
- Prioritize clarity over volume. If you have more questions, consider an additional follow-up survey at a later, desktop-heavy window rather than trying to do everything in one long weekend questionnaire.
When’s the best time of day to send a survey?
The best time of day to send a survey is mid-morning, typically around 9–11am, when response rates peak and people are most likely to open and complete your questionnaire.
Activity starts rising around 7am, climbs steadily, and peaks at 10am. After a midday dip, engagement bumps again in early afternoon, with a secondary peak around 2pm before tapering off.
Tuesday through Friday follow this same pattern, so these morning and early-afternoon windows are your most reliable options for stronger response rates. Pro tip: if you don’t want to wake up early or lose Monday morning productivity, you can schedule your survey to send automatically at a given date and time.
There’s one exception to the up-and-down pattern: weekends. Responses on Saturdays rise through the early morning and reach a peak around 10 am, just like on weekdays, but then they peter out. Apparently, people have better things to do on Saturday afternoons and evenings rather than answer surveys. If you do want to target people on the weekend, earlier mornings are (again) better.
Best survey send times for different audiences
Different audiences follow different rhythms. This matrix outlines common patterns that can help teams form initial hypotheses before testing.
| Audience persona | Recommended windows | Reasoning |
| Desk workers | 9–11am; 1–2pm | Strong desktop activity; good for longer surveys |
| Shift workers | Early afternoon; post-shift windows | Predictable breaks; more mobile responses |
| Field workers | Early morning; early evening | Activity tied to job sites; mobile-first |
| Students | Late morning; early evening | Coursework patterns; mixed device use |
| Global teams | Localized windows across regions | Ensures consistent timing across time zones |
Best day of the week to send a survey
The best days of the week to send a survey are Monday through Thursday.
Our historic insights show that Monday can work well for programs tied to weekly workflows, while Friday tends to underperform as people wrap up the week or shift to weekend plans. Mid-week sends remain the most reliable baseline, especially for email-based surveys.
These patterns also apply to specialized programs such as Net Promoter Score (NPS®) surveys. Many teams start by testing Monday through Thursday and avoid late-day Friday sends for work audiences that are already signing off.
Times and days to avoid sending surveys
Certain send windows consistently reduce response rates. Avoid:
- Major public holidays
- High-distraction days such as product launches, company events, or organizational breaks
- Overnight hours in any region
- Fridays, especially for business audiences
Many teams use a simple shared “no-send” calendar to prevent overlap with holidays, peak workload periods, or known low-engagement days.
When’s the best time to send post-event surveys?
The best time to send a post-event survey is within 24–48 hours of the event, when the experience is still fresh and attendees can recall specific details.
There’s no need to wait for the next business day. Whether it’s a conference, webinar, workshop, or concert, sending your survey within a day or two captures reactions while people still remember what they enjoyed, what stood out, and what could improve.
As our event-planning expert and survey power user Berenice Lai explains, people attend many events and their memories blur quickly: “You’re going to want to catch them while it’s fresh in their minds. People go to a lot of events, and they’re going to forget the little details that they liked or disliked if you wait too long.”
In practice, aim to send your post-event survey during that 24–48 hour window so you can gather clear, reliable feedback before details fade.
When’s the best time to send transactional surveys?
The best time to send a transactional survey is as close as possible to the interaction you want feedback on. For support conversations, that usually means sending the survey immediately after the chat ends or the ticket closes.
Post-purchase surveys follow a different rhythm. Customers often need time to receive, unpack, or try the product before they can give meaningful feedback, so these sends may happen hours or days later, depending on the experience you’re measuring.
Automating transactional surveys through scheduling or integrations like Zapier keeps timing consistent across every interaction. That consistency helps you gather clean, comparable data without relying on manual sends.
Reminder cadence that works
Reminder strategy matters as much as the initial send time. Many teams find that:
- The first reminder performs well at 48–72 hours.
- A second and final reminder around Day 7 captures remaining respondents.
- Additional reminders typically produce diminishing returns and may create fatigue.
This simple 1–2 reminder cadence keeps engagement high without overwhelming your audience.
Test, learn, and roll forward
Small timing experiments often produce outsized gains. A two-week A/B plan can compare different dayparts or days of week using a portion of your audience. Metrics like open rate, click-through rate, and completion rate show which window performs best. The winner can then become the default for future surveys, with periodic retesting to maintain performance as behavior shifts over time.
The bottom line
The best time to send a survey is mid-week and mid-morning, but the strongest results come from matching your send window to your audience, channel, and survey type. Email surveys typically perform well around 9–11am on Tuesday–Thursday, while in-product prompts and SMS follow different daily rhythms. Keep an eye on device mix so your layout and length fit whether people respond on mobile or desktop.
Localize every send to each recipient’s time zone and avoid major holidays, high-distraction days, and overnight windows. To keep response rates steady without creating fatigue, use a simple reminder pattern: one reminder at 48–72 hours and a final reminder around Day 7.
Small A/B tests help refine your timing. Compare morning vs. afternoon, or Monday vs. Wednesday, and track open rates, click-through rates, and completion rates to identify the best-performing window. Revisit timing periodically as behavior shifts across channels and devices.
NPS, Net Promoter & Net Promoter Score are registered trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company and Fred Reichheld.
