Frequently Asked Questions

On the surface, Poll Everywhere is a simple text message voting application that works well for live audiences. People vote by sending text messages (or using Twitter) to options displayed on-screen. The poll that is embedded within the presentation or web page will update in real time. Advanced uses include texting comments to a presentation, texting questions to a presenter, web voting, and SMS interactivity in print, radio, and TV.

You can vote by following the instructions shown on the poll when it is displayed. The poll does not need to be displayed to actively receive votes, but it does need to be "started" by the presenter on the edit poll page. In the US, you send a text message to the number 99503 that contains a voting keyword, like 1234, or blue.

You can also vote via your poll's web page on Poll Everywhere, via an embeddable voting widget, on a phone's web browser using poll4.com, or via Twitter.

As a poll is displayed to an audience, they cast votes by sending text messages to our short code number (99503) indicating the option they wish to select. Their mobile carrier (e.g., Sprint, Verizon, AT&T) routes their text message to our web servers where the vote is counted. Once counted, the vote is displayed in real time on-screen. You can learn more on our how it works page.

Yes, a poll is a single question or prompt you are inviting your audience to interact with.

A multiple choice poll lets you define a set of fixed choices that participants can choose from. Results can be displayed in a graph. An example of a multiple choice poll might be, "Which candidate will be President in 2009?" with options like "McCain", "Obama", and "Other".

A free text poll allows participants to send free-form text responses instead of fixed choices. A free text poll might ask, "What questions do you have for the presenter?" and participants can send in any short answer they want. Their answers might be just one word, a short phrase, or an entire sentence.

A goal poll adds up numeric contributions in a rising thermometer. Goal polls are commonly used for encouraging participation at fundraisers. People in the audience can text in a pledge to donate a specific amount, followed by an encouraging comment.

You can display your audience's answers in real time on a projector for everyone to see, or just on a laptop in front of the presenter. Some polls are not used in live-event settings (for example, radio, print, or long-term exhibition voting), so a live display of results isn't that relevant.

The numbers are called "keywords" (we call them "codes" when all the keywords are numeric), and are pre-assigned to each option so that votes get routed to the correct option. This allows us to host multiple polls on one short code. Short codes are expensive, so this scheme helps us keep our prices down. If you don't want the automatic numbers as your voting keywords, some premium plans offer the ability to select "custom keywords", like MICROSOFT or OPTION5.

We always show them in bold capital letters as a convention, but case doesn't matter when using them.

There's also an advanced feature called "Events" where your audience can first text in an event keyword (for example, "INFOCOM" or "SESSION23"), and then your polls assign themselves simple keywords like A, B, C, and so on. From "My Polls", you first group some polls, then click the group name and select "Change this Group into an Event".

A poll is active and can receive votes as long as it is "started". If 30 days pass and a poll is not modified by you AND it doesn't receive any responses, we will automatically stop your poll.

We show you the polls that are about to auto-stop in your My Polls list.

If you hover over the "Stops in X days" text, we tell you: Polls auto-stop after 30 days of inactivity. Need an extension? Just stop then restart the poll (and reload this page).

Your keywords (custom and auto-numbered) will stay reserved and assigned to that poll for another 30 days after the poll is stopped.

Absolutely! When you're viewing your Poll, click on the "Web Voting" link on the right. If you send this URL to your voters they will be able to click on the option they wish to vote for and see the results.

If you want to link to a web poll from your website, you can redirect the user back to your website after they vote by appending "?redirect=http://www.yourwebsite.com/" to the end of your Poll Everywhere URL like this:

After the user votes for an option, they will be shown a confirmation message and redirected back to your website.

Yep. If you've enabled Twitter as a way to respond to a poll, then tweets that mention @poll are treated the same as text messages sent to 99503

After someone Tweets to your poll, @poll replies back to them.

Learn more on our Twitter page.

Typically a vote will be displayed within 2-5 seconds. The delay depends on the voter's cellular carrier and how long it takes to route an SMS message to our SMS gateway, web servers, and finally on to live polls wherever they are being viewed. Poll Everywhere has handled very large events with thousands of responses, and multi-day polls with hundreds of thousands of responses.

Web and smartphone votes are instant, and Twitter votes are as fast as Twitter is operating

Most of our users setup their polls to allow a person to participate only once. If that's the case, then generally you should purchase a plan with an "audience size" greater than the number of people that will vote. The "audience size" is the maximum number of votes that can be received by any given poll (the number of polls you can create is unlimited). We've handled much larger polls than shown on our plans page; just give us a call at +1 (800) 388-2039.

That will depend on the event you are running and who is in your audience. As with any great speech or presentation, "know your audience" applies. For sales and marketing events with partners and clients, questions about their buying experience, concerns about purchasing, and their upcoming plans are often good topics for questions. If you are a university professor, ask a question about yesterday's lecture or assess the class's comprehension of the reading. If you are a spiritual organization, the polls can serve as an anonymous response medium for the group which could be useful for forming community around sensitive questions that might be difficult to answer aloud or by a show of hands.

The simple instructions are displayed on every Poll. It helps if you provide verbal cues to your audience during the first few polls. For live events, organizers can supplement the on-screen instructions with printed instructions in an event pamphlet. After the first poll, everyone usually gets the hang of it and you can present the next polls at a faster pace.

If you want to improve poll participation, it is helpful to project your ongoing presentation on one screen, and your poll on another (that's two projectors and two separate screens). This gives the audience the convenience of responding whenever they choose.

Take a few minutes for each poll, guide the audience, and then continue your presentation. You can also show the audience the poll on one slide and then continue the presentation and come back when more results have been tallied.

There are several ways to allow people to participate remotely. The simplest way is to allow people to vote on your poll through our website. When viewing your poll, click the "Ways to Vote" panel and choose Web Voting. Notice that this web address ends in "/web". You can send this web address (URL) to remote participants. They will only see your poll and not the controls on the right hand side.

You can also use Poll Everywhere widgets to embed live polls into your blog or website. Voting widgets can be used to allow people to vote from your web site and display the results afterward.

There are several ways. When you are viewing your poll on our website, you can send this web address (URL) to people. They will only see your summarized poll results in a graph and not the controls on the right hand side.

You can also use the Poll Everywhere web results widget to embed poll results in your blog or website. Of course you can also download the poll results as a spreadsheet and share that file with people.

Your poll's question (but not your results) is indexed by search engines unless you disable this setting in the Settings tab. With indexing turned off, your polls are private unless you share the the secret poll URL (web link) with others, or embed the poll widget in a website. When you share the poll's URL, only the poll's owner can see the controls on the right, view the detailed results, or correlate answers between polls.

Click anywhere on the poll, or mouse over the lower left corner, and click "Chart Options." A panel will appear with several options to change the colors, background, font sizes, logo, and more.

There are two ways: you can either use the reports tab, or have your voters pre-register as participants.

Customers on any paid plan can use the Reports tab. The Reports tab lets you match up a participant's answers across multiple polls. For example, make a free text poll that asks participants to submit their name, a student ID, a pseudonym, their cell phone number, or any other identifying information. Then ask other multiple choice or free text questions as usual. By adding the identifying free text poll and any other polls to a report, you will see how each person answered each question.

Registering Participants is a better fit for repeat audiences such as K-12 schools and Universities. You invite participants (students) by email, or distribute your registration link. They verify their mobile phone number and create a participant login for Poll Everywhere. This way you can see who answered no matter what the device they use (laptop, smartphone, text message). Account administrators can invite participants to register under the Account tab.

Each poll lets you select whether people can use text messages, smartphones and web browsers, or Twitter (or any combination) to participate.

Even better, you can have your voters pre-register as participants, and restrict your poll to only allow participation from that group. This feature is available on paid education plans, and on the Presenter plan and up.

We have a special page dedicated to helping you test international coverage in your country: http://www.polleverywhere.com/international

One common question we get is, "I'm organizing an event in country A. People will be attending from countries A, B, C, and D. Will everybody be able to participate via text message?" This is a tricky situation, and our answer is, "Maybe - but the only way to know is to test it first." Success has been mixed, and it depends on many factors like the home carrier, the host carrier, and the specific global roaming agreements. For example, at one California, USA event, people from Japan were able to text the US-based 5 digit number, people from the UK on certain carriers could respond by texting back to Poll Everywhere's London-based number, and some participants from France couldn't seem to respond via SMS at all. Backup plans are usually quite viable: You can rent cheap pre-paid US phones capable of texting, or if there's WiFi, international participants can use poll4.com from an iPod touch or a laptop.

No, participants will never receive any kind of spam. They may receive a text message confirmation that their message was received (there is a checkbox to turn confirmation messages on/off in the poll editor). Although results are stored by Poll Everywhere to tally up the number of votes, no participant will receive unsolicited text messages in the future as a result of participating in a Poll Everywhere poll. Participants' phone numbers are never shared with poll creators or third parties of any kind. This is also reflected in our terms of service.

That number is not a normal telephone number and it definitely does not charge anyone to send/receive messages to it (don't worry, we're not a scammy 1-900 company). It is called a "short code" in the telecommunications world and it is basically a special number used specifically for text messaging. That number is set by the company that provides our text messaging gateway, which is how we receive participant text messages into Poll Everywhere. If your audience is curious, just tell them not to worry. It is not a toll number and it will not bill anything besides standard rate text messages to a participant's mobile phone bill. Standard rate text messages in the US usually range from free or $0.01 per message up to $0.20 per message for people who do not have a text messaging plan. Check with your mobile carrier for current pricing.

Text STOP to 99503. We will also respect UNSUBSCRIBE, QUIT, END, and CANCEL. We will respond with the following message: This phone number will never receive confirmation messages from Poll Everywhere (99503). Reply START to re-enable, or HELP for more info.

Text HELP to 99503. If you have not sent us a STOP message, we will respond with the following message: HELP: Text a KEYWORD to participate. We only send replies. Txt STOP to cancel replies. Std rate txt charges only. More info: PollEverywhere.com or (800-388-2039)

If you have sent us a STOP message, we will respond with the following message: Your phone number is set to not receive any messages from Poll Everywhere (99503). Reply START to re-enable. Std rate TXT charges only.

The first time any mobile phone participates in a Poll Everywhere poll, the following additional information is sent: Powered by Poll Everywhere. Zero spam: Your phone# is never shared. Std rate TXT charges only. Reply HELP or see PollEverywhere.com for more info.