Djulian wrote: I understand that even if you are good guys it would be counter productive for you to advise a hosting company other than limesurvey

No, not really. Because as you can see from my forum signature, I am not member of Limesurvey GmbH, the guys behind the Limesurvey Pro offer. I am a volunteer here in the forum and I am doing this on my spare time. I am not earning money with this and I am not getting any comission for recommending LimesurveyPro.

In my job I use survey tools as well, but generally not Limesurvey. We use survey systems that cost several thousand Euros per year. So why am I doing all this? Because I was a student as well and when I wrote my theses I would have been more than happy to have something like Limesurvey at my hand. But back then either LS did not exist or I didn't know about it.

So today I find it great that there is an open source survey tool with all these features, that you can download for free. Yes, you have to pay for the hosting, but generally this is nothing too expensive.

So I support the project by moderating the forum, giving help to others through the forum, help translating, creating bug reports, etc.

But as nice as you can be, I'm a student which means I don't have much money as you can guess.

I totally get it. As I said, I was once a student too. But let's be honest, as a student we sometimes spent money on stuff that could be invested a lot better.

And this seems to be for your thesis or something, so investing a few bucks in your future would be probably a good idea, to get the best results.

Now having the free pack limit the responses to 25 participants which isn't great so I'm kind of stuck :') The pro version seems to be a good option (you defend it pretty well btw), but there are several kinds that can be very expensive for me and you didn't mention which one would be suitable for my issue... The only one I could afford would be the basic one, for one month, is this pack offering a hosting ? I mean if I take it, I won't have to rent a web server, find a hosting company or anything ?

Well, as I don't know what your requirements are, I can't tell you what you need. We know very little about your project.

Yes, 25 participants is quite low. But the free version is probably not meant for production use, but rather for potential clients to test the offer and then decide if it is for them or not. At the end of the day the guys from the Limesurvey GmbH are doing this for a living.

If you do not need more than 1000 responses per month (1000 questionnaires completed by respondents) and not more than 250MB of files to upload, the Basic one is good enough.

I don't find it particulary expensive, for me it says it costs R$ 89 or roughly 22 Euros. So in most countries in the EU this is probably the value of 4-6 drinks when you go out at night. This is 1-2 drinks less per Saturday during 4 weeks. Going with the Limesurvey PRO hosting is the easy solution, if you don't want to spend much time and don't want to worry about anything.

But there is also another option, hosting it on your own webspace, as Joffm mentioned as well. However, watch out with that offer that Joffm mentioned, the 0,99 Euro per month seem to be only if you go for the 12 months (not very good in french). But you can see that getting a server to host your survey is not all that expensive, if your project is not huge. But we can't tell, because we know nothing about it (how many participants, how long is the questionnaire, how many respondents at a time would you expect, etc).

I host my website for about 8 Euros at allinkl.com and this handles Limesurvey just fine. If you don't have many respondents, you can probably also go with a smaller package, but it has to have PHP and MySQL.

My normal Limesurvey installation runs on a managed VPS which costs about $ 25,00, so that is quite a bit more expensive, but will also be able to hold higher loads and gives you more freedom. But I think it would be overkill for you.

Just find yourself a half decent hosting company and install Limesurvey on this.

So if you are willing to invest some of your time and brain, as Joffm said, you will be able to get Limesurvey up and running in no time and the cost should be more than reasonable. You don't have to spend more than 5-10 Euros per month for hosting, if at all. 2-3 beer less, remember?

Now it is up to you. You could also try to go with one of those free hosters out there, but I honestly wouldn't recommend it, because you generally get what you pay for and they are generally not very reliable and often have ridiculous limitations.

You don't want to loose respondents. Someone that is halfway into filling in the questionnaire when it breaks down will most probably not start over again, especially as I assume that they will not get rewarded for doing it.

Installing Limesurvey has become pretty easy with the web installer that guides you through the process. But if you are doing the installation of a web application for the first time, you might have to read a little bit in the manual and the forum here.

But in general, the installation can be done in about 5-10minutes, including the download of the Limesurvey zip file and the upload to the server.

So in case of the self hosting Limesurvey is completely free for you (as long as you don't want to use the ComfortUpdate feature, which you would have to pay for, but you can always update manually, investing a bit more of your time), you only would pay the hosting company for providing you with the necessary webspace.

If you run into problems, the forum here usually giving quick response if you explain your problem well.

By the way: You CAN get a webserver for free from Limesurvey. Actually you already seem to have it. The Limesurvey Xampp package comes with the webserver already and you can install it on your computer. But this is meant for testing and development purposes, and not for production. You don't want your personal computer as the production server, because you don't want your computer to be accessible from the internet for everyone.

One other thing: Many universities offer an account to Limesurvey (or some other survey software) for free to their students. You migh want to have a look into this as well.

Djulian wrote: Having no knowledges about informatique doesn't make an idiot you know... I'm trying. That's nice to answer my questions and help me, I always thank you for it, but no need to tell me things like I'm a lazy retard (" you are not willing to invest money into your future", " somebody like you without knowledge"). Maybe you meant no offense but the way of telling this and jumping to these conclusions is offensive.

You might want to rethink this. No one here is saying that you are lazy or an idiot.

All Joffm and I are doing is showing you the different alternatives you have and all have their advantages and disadvantages (in the light of a very limited budget):

Alternative 1: Limesurvey Pro hosting
+ Easy to get it running (only need to register and pay)
+ Don't have to worry about anything and you get support from Limesurvey GmbH directly
- More expensive than the other two alternatives

Alternative 2: Selfhosting Limesurvey
+ Limesurvey software is totally free for download
+ Relatively cheap, need to get your own webspace
- you need to spend some time on installing Limesurvey on your own webspace

Alternative 3: Paper & Pencil
+ Very, very cheap. But actually, if you factor in the printing it might not come out that cheap anymore, depending on the length of your survey and the number of participants
- Very, very labor intensive. You'll spend a lot of time interviewing people, typing up responses and put it into excel.

I wouldn't even consider alternative 3 today, but Joffm brought it up and it can be the cheapest version. But I wouldn't think of going down that route.

Djulian wrote: Having no knowledges about informatique doesn't make an idiot you know... I'm trying.

And that is why we are still here and trying to help you.

but no need to tell me things like I'm a lazy retard (" you are not willing to invest money into your future"

No one is saying you are a lazy retard. I am just highlighting that if you look at it from a different perspective, it is actually not that expensive, compared to what we often spend on other things. I don't know you, I don't know your situation. But if I look back to my time as a student I would also have tried to get this up and running as cheap as possible. But looking back, I am sure I could have spent this money on it if I would have wanted to. Even if it looked very expensive at that time. If you put it into perspective with other things that we spend money on, it doesn't look that much anymore. Just that. And we gave you many alternatives.

"somebody like you without knowledge"

Well, we are talking about the very basics of how the internet works. It is no problem, if you don't know about this. But this also means that you need to be willing to learn quite a bit about how web applications like Limesurvey work. Many are not willing to invest that time, either because they actually lazy or because they really have a lot of other stuff to do to get their thesis done, which is totally understandable. And the whole thing of installing a webapplication for the first time can be a scary thing. But if you are willing to learn and invest some of your time it is well worth it and it actually is quite easy. Some hosters even offer 1-click installst of software like Limesurvey.

Maybe you meant no offense but the way of telling this and jumping to these conclusions is offensive.

No, I am quite sure no one meant any offense. I might be a little bit sarcastic at times, though.

But at the end of it comes down to a few things:
You will (should) invest at least a little bit of money in a decent webhosting package (if your university doesn't offer this for free as i mentioned above)
You will have to invest some time and brain to install it. But I think anyone who has the ability to get a university degree (and is not totally scared of technolgy) will be able to get this running. And if there are specific questions, there is always this forum.