Poll Everywhere
Poll Everywhere's free plan supports ~40–50 participants. Basic paid scales to 700 with LMS integrations and reporting. Enterprise plans add SSO, SCIM, and advanced governance. The free plan never expires and needs no credit card.
Hands-on comparison
Poll Everywhere vs. Slido (2026)
Both handle enterprise polling — they diverge on Q&A depth, slide integration, and education.
Poll Everywhere and Slido share enterprise credibility and security certifications. The comparison comes down to use case fit: Slido is optimized for moderated Q&A at scale, Poll Everywhere for slide-native polling and academic workflows.
The bottom line
Slido is the stronger tool for company-wide Q&A, town halls, and WebEx-centric environments where audience upvoting and moderation are the primary goal. Poll Everywhere is the stronger choice when polling needs to run inside slide decks, LMS integration is required, or a broader range of question types beyond Q&A is needed. Poll Everywhere's moderation tooling in 2.0 is AI-native enabled and very comprehensive and modern.
Side-by-side comparison
| Feature | Poll Everywhere | Slido |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Enterprise, higher ed, PowerPoint-native polling, LMS integration | Corporate Q&A, town halls, all-hands meetings, WebEx environments |
| Free audience limit | ~40–50 participants | 3 polls per session max (very limited) |
| Paid audience limit | Up to 700 (basic paid) | Up to 200 (basic paid); more on enterprise |
| Native PowerPoint plug-in | Yes — native, stable plug-in | Yes — add-in for PowerPoint and Google Slides |
| LMS / LTI support | LTI 1.3 Advantage; Canvas Partner | None |
| Security certifications | SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001 + 27701 | SOC 2, ISO 27001 + 27701 |
| Q&A moderation | Supported; advanced moderation in Q2 roadmap | Best-in-class — upvoting, filtering, moderation |
| Anonymous participation | Supported | Supported |
| AI-assisted creation | Available; best used in preparation | Available on enterprise plans |
Which tool is right for you?
| Choose Poll Everywhere if… | Choose Slido if… |
|---|---|
| Polling needs to run natively inside PowerPoint or Google Slides as an embedded plug-in | Your primary use case is large-scale anonymous Q&A with upvoting and prioritization |
| LMS or LTI integration is required for grade passback and roster sync | Your organization is in the Cisco WebEx ecosystem and integration matters |
| You need a broader range of question types: word clouds, clickable images, open-ended, ranking | Company-wide town halls and all-hands meetings are the main use case |
| Your deployment is in higher education with Canvas, Blackboard, or Moodle integration needs | Moderation controls and governance for live Q&A are top priorities |
How each tool performs by scenario
Both tools can handle basic polling. The differences show up in specific conditions. Below is a direct comparison across the six use cases covered in our hands-on testing.
| Scenario | Poll Everywhere | Slido |
|---|---|---|
| Teaching a class | Yes — LaTeX, native slide integration, LTI grade passback, reusable questions. Strong fit for recurring lectures. | Sometimes — free tier is very limited (3 polls). Switching between Q&A and polls mid-lecture adds cognitive overhead. No LMS integration. |
| All courses at a university | Yes — LTI 1.3, Canvas Partner, SOC 2 certified. Designed for academic reporting workflows. | Yes for large institutional deployments — strong governance and moderation. But no LMS integration makes reporting manual. |
| Team meeting | Yes — PowerPoint-native reduces context switching. Works well for structured professional meetings. | Yes — integrates cleanly with WebEx, Google Slides, and PowerPoint. Best for meetings with moderated Q&A. |
| Company-wide Q&A | Yes — scales to large audiences, supports voting and ranking. Advanced AI moderation in Q2 roadmap. | Yes — this is Slido's strongest use case. Best-in-class moderation, upvoting, and filtering at enterprise scale. |
| New employee onboarding | Yes — sessions reuse across cohorts, engagement data easy to review. | Sometimes — structured Q&A format can work, but setup feels formal for casual onboarding. |
| Conference presentation | Yes — reliable at scale. Wide question format variety. | Yes — commonly used at conferences for Q&A. Design is utilitarian but functional at large scale. |
Watch our unedited first-time tests
Unedited first-time recordings of both tools — no scripts, no retakes.
Poll Everywhere
Video transcript – Poll Everywhere
0:00 Okay, it's time for Poll Everywhere. I'm on a casual Friday here — not the same day as the other recordings. I'm already familiar with this product, so it's not really fair for me to do a blind run-through, but I'll do my best to do a stream-of-consciousness walkthrough.
0:20 We're starting out after sign-up and login. We're going to ask about turtles again — that's our running theme. We'll go for a Competition, which is the gamified version with leaderboards.
1:09 We could make a series of polls as well. These questions are AI-generated — trivia about the Ninja Turtles theme song. Not quite what we wanted, but we can run through it. You could edit the questions or adjust the AI prompt to improve output.
2:00 For the purpose of comparison I'm going to go ahead and present, and I'm joining with another device. Responding as "the helpful zebra." Let's see — Donatello — and the helpful zebra is in the lead.
2:48 My mistake — I started on the final slide. Let me jump back. Okay, so now we have the competition loaded. Leo. Zebra is ahead. Points are allotted based on response time. The radar visualization looks good.
3:37 You get confetti and a leaderboard at the end. There are a lot of little things you can do in a competition — showing who's connected, for example. You can also export polls to PowerPoint, view questions and correct responses, and pull reporting.
4:48 Let's look at billing quickly. We're on the Teams trial for the first 30 days, then we drop to Intro — 40-person audience size, some AI prompts per month, unlimited questions. Higher tiers increase audience size, reporting capabilities, AI access, and branding. Pricing feels fairly competitive with the others we've tested.
5:36 That's Poll Everywhere.
Slido
Video transcript – Slido
0:00 Alright, so Slido — the last one we're doing. We've done quite a few. We signed up, we're saving for work, and I'm not sure if I'll be managing this license.
0:20 What do I want to achieve? Form. Let's make something. We'll call it TurtlesLikeTheOthers. A few days duration — that's fine.
0:40 We've got an AI option — good. Let's see if we can make these interactions come together. Okay, a series of polls is showing as one poll, but I think this part's correct. We can add one more. Good options here.
1:44 Go ahead and present. We get a loading screen. Let's get joined up. Slido's loading on the other device.
2:06 I need to send my response. Okay, that changes the order here. We're sorted. We get the join instructions. Selected the wrong thing — let's say Best Villain, Bebop, send.
2:39 Sorts this out. We can hide results, change polls, enable Q&A, show the Q&A. That's cool. I have to switch to this tab to see it — that makes sense. That's Slido. Goes back to the poll — TurtleVillain.
3:17 Let's check the upgrade options. On free we can have three polls but 100 participants — Vevox might be a little more generous on the free plan. The paid tier gets you 200 participants. Goes up to 5,000 at the top. One-time or annual billing.
4:10 That's Slido. Pretty well integrated with WebEx in particular — it's a Cisco product now. We've now done Menti, WooClap, Kahoot, SlidesWith, Poll Everywhere, Vevox, and Slido.
Pricing and limits
Slido
Slido's free plan is limited to 3 polls per session — effectively exploratory only. Basic paid reaches 200 participants with moderation controls. Enterprise unlocks WebEx deep integration, advanced governance, and larger audiences.
What usually triggers a procurement conversation
Both tools require enterprise procurement for SSO, SCIM, and very large audiences. Slido typically requires enterprise licensing for advanced moderation features. Poll Everywhere requires it for advanced admin and governance controls.
Switching between Poll Everywhere and Slido
Moving from Slido to Poll Everywhere
Slido users moving to Poll Everywhere gain LMS integration and a broader range of question types. The main adjustment is that Poll Everywhere's moderation for open Q&A is less developed than Slido's — advanced moderation is on the Q2 roadmap. Content does not import between the two platforms.
Moving from Poll Everywhere to Slido
Poll Everywhere users moving to Slido gain best-in-class Q&A moderation and WebEx integration. The tradeoffs are losing native PowerPoint plug-in behavior, LMS connectivity, and the wider question format range.
See how Poll Everywhere compares to Slido in your setting
Get started with Poll Everywhere — no credit card required.