A brand is a set of design settings: logo, colors, font, background and Custom CSS. When you map a survey to a brand, its settings apply to the survey page and the web embed on your website. Survey emails use only the logo. If all your surveys should look the same, one brand is all you need.
Change the logo, colors and font
You need the Manage brands permission, which comes with the Owner and Admin roles.
Go to Admin → Brands and expand the brand.
Update its name, logo, accent color and font. For the logo, click Upload image and choose a PNG, JPG or GIF.
Use the Web survey tab to change the survey page's Background color or Wallpaper. Use the Web-embed survey tab to change the Background color of the survey on your website.
Check the preview, then click Update brand.
The survey page and the web embed both use the brand's accent color and font, but each has its own background and Custom CSS. The brand name also shows in the survey page's browser tab. The logo shows on the survey page, the confirmation page and in survey emails.
Logo size
Use a wide, short logo, about 400 by 200 pixels. A tall or square logo can look small when it's scaled to fit. There's no logo-size setting, so adjust the image itself and upload it again.
Map a survey to a brand
Open the survey and click Configure.
Under Brand mapping, choose the brand.
Click Save.
A new survey starts on the default brand. That's the first brand on the Brands page, labeled Default brand. A duplicated survey keeps the brand of the survey it was copied from.
Managing multiple brands
How many brands you can have depends on your plan:
Plan | Brands |
Starter | 1 |
Pro | 2 |
Premium | 3 |
Scale | 4 |
Enterprise | Usage based |
Plans from before October 2026 keep their original brand limits. Admin → Usage shows how many brands your workspace has and what your limit is.
Create a new brand
Creating a brand needs the Manage brands permission, which the Owner and Admin roles have.
Go to Admin → Brands and click New brand.
Type a name in Brand name.
Click Create brand.
The new brand appears at the bottom of the list. Expand it to set it up, then map surveys to it.
Delete a brand
Expand the brand.
Open the ellipsis menu next to Update brand and choose Delete brand.
Click Delete brand to confirm.
Deleting a brand doesn't delete its surveys or change their content. They switch to the default brand and use its design. You can't delete the default brand.
Custom CSS
Custom CSS is available on Pro and above. Use it for design changes beyond the brand settings.
Each brand has two CSS fields, and CSS in one has no effect on the other:
Web survey → Custom CSS styles the survey page.
Web-embed survey → Custom CSS styles the web embed.
To add CSS:
Go to Admin → Brands and expand the brand.
Paste your CSS into Custom CSS on the Web survey or Web-embed survey tab.
Click Update brand.
Changes apply to every survey mapped to this brand. To reuse CSS on another brand, copy it into that brand's CSS field.
For theme variables and how to load your own web font, see Optional CSS guidance further down.
Background images
The survey page background comes from Background color and Wallpaper on the brand's Web survey tab. An image hosted on another website doesn't show on the survey page or in the Brands page preview.
Rating icons
On CSAT and 5-Star questions, the icons customers click to rate come from an icon set. NPS and CES use different scales and have no icon set.
To change the set:
On the survey's Build tab, open the question your metric rating comes from.
Choose a set from the Icon set row.
Save the survey.
The Choices field under the row holds the label for each icon.
Change the order the icons run in
Flip choice order, in the survey's ellipsis menu, sets which end of a CSAT rating scale comes first. It doesn't change 5-Star questions.
Icon options for surveys embedded in your own emails
For CSAT and 5-Star surveys embedded in your own emails, open the Publish tab to choose:
Rating icon type: Images uses the survey's icon set, and Emojis uses a built-in emoji scale.
Display text labels under rating images: shows each image's label. Available with Images.
Display colored boxes if images doesn't load: shows a colored square if an image fails to load. Available with Images when the icon set uses PNG files.
Icon size: Small, Medium or Large.
Heads up: After you change any of these, copy the embed code again and replace the copy in your email.
Custom rating icons
If none of the built-in sets fits your brand, send us your icons and we'll add them to your workspace as an icon set.
Send two to five square images, one for each rating, at least 300 pixels wide and tall. Use PNG, JPG or GIF, not SVG. For transparency, use PNG or GIF. Custom sets are available for CSAT and 5-Star questions.
Attach the files to a chat or an email to us. Tell us the workspace, the survey and the order you want the icons in. Once they're uploaded, choose the set from Icon set on the survey's Build tab and save the survey. The set is available for every question using that metric in the workspace. To use it in another workspace, send it to us for that workspace too.
Wording on the survey page
On the Build tab, you can edit question text and rating icon labels.
To change button text, the comment box placeholder or the customer information prompts, send us the survey and the exact wording you want. These changes apply only to that survey.
Remove Simplesat branding
If you're on Pro or above, ask us in chat or by email to remove Simplesat branding from your workspace. It comes off every survey and widget in the workspace at once.
This removes the Simplesat logo, attribution and promotional banner. It doesn't change the address the survey page opens on, which stays survey.simplesat.io. To use your own subdomain there, set up a web survey display URL.
We reply in the same chat or email when it's done. Refresh any pages that were already open.
Web survey display URL
A display URL makes survey links open on your subdomain, such as feedback.yourcompany.com, instead of survey.simplesat.io. You can set one up on Pro and above.
Display URLs are set per brand. A survey opens on the address of the brand it's mapped to, and a brand without a display URL uses survey.simplesat.io.
We set it up with you:
Tell us which brand and subdomain you want to use, such as
feedback.yourcompany.com. We'll send you a CNAME record.Add the record at your domain's DNS provider for that exact subdomain. Ask whoever manages your domain if you need help.
Tell us when you've added the record. It can take a few hours to become available. Once it is, we'll set up the security certificate and switch the address on.
Open a link to a survey mapped to that brand to check the address.
Once it's live, the address shows on the brand's Web survey tab under Web survey display URL.
Note: This CNAME is separate from the records that authenticate your email sending domain, and it doesn't change who survey emails come from.
If a live address starts returning an error, send us the exact URL, the error and how you tested it.
Optional CSS guidance
CSS theme variables
Set these variables in a :root block in Custom CSS. They override the matching brand settings or default styles.
Variable | What it sets |
| The survey page background |
| The main text color |
| The card background and the confirmation page background |
| Buttons, the multiple choice border and the sliding scale bar |
| The button fill and its label |
| The button fill and its label on hover |
| The question card and its text |
| The background of multiple choice options and of the boxes around rating icons |
| The background of the text fields in the customer information question and of the file upload area. The comment box stays white. |
| The text typed in the comment box and in the customer information fields |
| The gray prompt inside the comment box |
| The font across the page |
| The corner radius of buttons, cards, inputs and multiple choice options |
A purple accent with tight, 4-pixel corners:
:root {
--accent: #6b2fb3;
--border-radius: 4px;
}Load your own web font
To use a font that isn't in the Font list, load it with @font-face and assign it to --font-family.
On the survey page, some elements ignore both --font-family and the Font setting: the buttons, the comment box, and the text fields in the customer information question. Add input, textarea, textarea::placeholder and button rules that name your font. You need these rules for a font picked from the Font list too.
@font-face {
font-family: 'Your Font';
src: url('https://yourdomain.com/your-font.woff2') format('woff2');
}
:root {
--font-family: 'Your Font', sans-serif;
}
input,
textarea,
textarea::placeholder,
button {
font-family: 'Your Font', sans-serif;
}Web-embed surveys
A web-embed survey appears as a bar at the bottom of the browser window. On Pro and above, use the brand's Web-embed survey → Custom CSS field to change its size or position.
This example places the survey at full width at the end of the page, below the other content:
.ss-survey {
position: static;
width: 100%;
margin: 0;
}The embed is part of your webpage. Your website's CSS can change how the survey looks, and Custom CSS in this field can affect other parts of your website. Target the survey with .ss-survey to avoid changing the rest of the page.
Troubleshooting
The brand styling isn't showing on the survey
Open the survey, click Configure and check that Brand mapping shows the brand you edited.
Check the CSS field. Web survey styles the survey page, and Web-embed survey styles the embed on your website.
Check the preview on the Brands page. If the change is missing there too, check the CSS rule.
Background images hosted on another website won't appear on the survey page.
New brand can't be clicked
Your workspace has reached its plan's brand limit. Hover over the button and you'll see Brand limit reached. Admin → Usage shows how many brands you have and your limit. Delete a brand you don't use, or move to a plan with more brands. If there's no New brand button at all, your role doesn't have the Manage brands permission.
The font changed everywhere except the comment box and the buttons
On the survey page, the comment box, the buttons and the text fields in the customer information question keep a standard sans-serif font. They ignore both --font-family and the Font setting. Add input, textarea, textarea::placeholder and button rules that name your font, as in the example under Load your own web font.
The logo looks too big on the survey page
A very wide logo can look too large on the survey page. Crop it closer to 400 by 200 pixels and upload it again. The logo can look different in emails because it's shown at a different size there.
The custom icons look stretched
The images weren't square. Crop them to equal width and height, at least 300 pixels on each side, and send them to us again.
The buttons and multiple choice options are the wrong color
Those colors come from Accent color, and from any --accent or --button-background rule in the brand's Custom CSS. Check both on the brand the survey is mapped to.
The survey looks wrong on only one of our websites
The web embed picks up the stylesheet of the page it's on. Compare it with the preview on the Web-embed survey tab. If it looks right there, the difference comes from that site's CSS. A more specific rule in the brand's web-embed Custom CSS fixes it.
Survey links still open on survey.simplesat.io
The display URL works only after we issue the certificate, and we can do that only once your CNAME is published. Let us know when it is. Then check that the survey is mapped to the brand that has the display URL. Once the address is live, the brand's Web survey tab shows it under Web survey display URL.
FAQ
Can I use custom HTML as well as CSS?
No. Custom CSS changes styling only.
Will you write the CSS for us?
We'll help. Tell us what you want the survey to look like, and we'll tell you what's possible and help you with the CSS.
Can I make the rating icons bigger?
On an external email embed, set Icon size to Large on the Publish tab. On the survey page, Custom CSS can change their size. Larger source images don't change the size the icons show at.
Can the icons change color when someone hovers over them?
An icon set has one image per rating, with no hover version. 5-Star stars show gray until the customer moves across them, then show in color.
Do you have a set of plain numbers or stars instead of the faces?
No. The built-in CSAT sets are faces, hands, clouds and cats. Stars are the icon for 5-Star questions. For numbers or stars on a CSAT question, send us your images and we'll add them to your workspace as a custom set.