Frequently Asked Questions

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General

SMS Text Messaging

Pricing

Account Management

Technical

Troubleshooting



General

What is Poll Everywhere?

On the surface, Poll Everywhere is a simple text message voting application that works well for live audiences. People vote by sending text messages to options displayed on-screen. The poll that is embedded within the presentation or web page will update in real time. Advanced uses include txt2screen, texting questions to a presenter, web voting, and SMS interactivity in print, radio, and TV.

How do I vote?

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 "opened" by the presenter on the edit poll page. In general, you send a text message to the number 41411 that looks like this: cast 1234

How does it work?

As a poll is displayed to an audience, they cast votes by sending text messages to our short code number (41411) indicating the option they wish to select. Their mobile carrier (e.g., Sprint, 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.

Can I use my own custom keywords for a poll?

Yes, they are available, but not with our default text message voting service. Call us for details on pricing at +1 (773) 382-0377.

What is a poll? Is it the same as a "question" I ask my audience? What is the difference between the different types of polls?

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.

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, TV, radio, print, or long-term exhibition voting), so live-display of results doesn't make sense.

What are the numbers by each option on a poll?

The numbers are pre-assigned to each option so that votes get routed to the correct option. This allows us to host many 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, you can check out custom keywords.

Can users vote over the web?

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 voting by appending "?redirect=http://www.yourwebsite.com/" to the end of your Poll Everywhere URL as such:

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

How fast do responses show up?

Typically a vote will be displayed in the results within 2-5 seconds. The delay depends on the voter's cellular carrier and how long it takes to route an SMS text 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.

How many votes (which plan) do I need?

Most polls are setup to allow a person to vote only once. If that's the case, then generally you should purchase a plan with an "audience size" greater than or equal to the number of people that will vote. The "audience size" is the maximum number of votes that can be received by any given poll. For polls that require more than 10,000 participants, just give us a call at +1 (773) 382-0377.

What are some good questions to ask?

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 religious group hosting a retreat or service event, the polls can serve as an anonymous response medium for the group which could be beneficial for sensitive questions that might be difficult to answer aloud or by a show of hands.

How will my audience know how to vote?

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 many more polls at a faster pace.

If you want to improve poll participation, it is helpful to project your 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.

How can I share my poll with remote participants?

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. Widgets can be used to allow people to vote from your web site and display the results afterward.

How can I share the results of the poll in real time or afterwards?

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. Alternately, you can use the Poll Everywhere web 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.

Is my poll publicly viewable?

Your poll and its summarized results are private unless you share the poll URL with others or embed the poll widget in another website. The creator of the poll must be logged in to view the detailed individual results and correlate answers between polls.

How do I change the look and feel of my poll?

In the lower left corner of the poll, click "Options." A panel will appear with several options to change the colors, font sizes, and more.

Can I make the poll full screen?

Definitely. Just select the "Fullscreen" link in the lower left. A temporary message will appear reminding you to hit the Escape button to return to normal size. If you view the poll in PowerPoint, however, you may not need to take advantage of the full screen option since the poll will probably occupy most of the space on the current slide, depending on how you've sized the poll object.

How can I identify voters by name, phone number, or other ID?

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.
Two polls are compared. Multiple answers from one person appear on the same line.

SMS Text Messaging

What countries does Poll Everywhere cover for text message response?

Here is a list of countries by continent that we fully cover:

  • Asia, Africa, & the Middle East: China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, India, Japan, Korea (South), Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Qatar
  • Australia
  • Europe: Italy, Greece, France, Belgium, Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Turkey, United Kingdom
  • South America: Brazil
  • North America: United States, Canada
Also download a PDF of our complete international coverage

Why do the voters have to send their votes to that weird phone number ("41411")?

That number is not a normal telephone number. 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.

What is the difference between 41411, 99503, and other longer numbers my audience may be instructed to send text messages to?

Today, Poll Everywhere operates in the United States using a service called Textmarks. Textmarks uses the short code 41411 (What is a short code?) In the future, we plan to switch to our own short code, 99503. Polls for US-based users will then instruct participants to text their responses to 99503 instead of 41411. When 99503 is provisioned, this FAQ will be changed to this document, which includes disclosures and describes the behavior of STOP and HELP keywords. We will always conform to MMA Best Practices.

Will participants who text message to Poll Everywhere ever receive SMS spam or unwanted text messages later?

No, participants will never receive any kind of spam. They may receive a text message confirmation of the option they chose, which is configurable by the person who creates a poll (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.

Pricing

How much does it cost?

Our basic plan is free. It allows up to 30 votes per poll. The free plan includes all our best features: PowerPoint polls, web voting, downloadable results, and more. Check out our paid plans if you need more votes per poll or advanced features. K-12 Teachers: We tried to make our free plan useful for you. If you teach the same subject multiple times per day, remember that you can download the results and also clear the results for any poll to reuse it with a different class. Poll Everywhere is free for schools who have not made Adequate Yearly Progress. Email us to set up a school-wide account for all teachers.

If someone votes on a poll, are they charged in any way by Poll Everywhere or the cell phone carrier?

Poll Everywhere does not charge anyone for voting on a poll. However, individual wireless carriers may charge standard text message charges, which vary depending on the wireless carrier and any messaging package selected (typically $0.01 to $0.20 per message, but check with mobile carriers for current pricing.).

I am going to be asking a lot of questions to people over time. Will it be costly for them to participate?

Short answer: No. There is standard cellular text messaging costs involved for participants to send text messages but this cost is nominal even if they lack a text messaging plan. For cases where a participant may be voting heavily over a long period of time, we recommend participants add an unlimited text messaging plan through the cellular provider. For example, students in a lecture hall who will be voting many times over the school year would benefit from an unlimited text messaging plan through their cellular carrier. We've also found that many cellular plans already include basic text messaging for free and in some cases unlimited text messaging at no additional cost.

Another great alternative is for frequent participants who have smartphones to bypass SMS text message charges by using either web voting or our smartphone web voting feature.

How can I get more votes or host larger polls?

On our website, click the Our Plans link from the top navigation. Select one of our voting package plans. From there you will be taken to a secure, encrypted site to complete the credit card checkout process.

Account Management

How do I share my account with friends or other people in my organization?

Through our multi-user plans, it is possible to add other people to your account. This allows you to share the resources of a single account with many people. For example, if you have an entire school and want to share Poll Everywhere with all faculty or staff, you can add them as users. Each plan we offer provides a maximum number of users that you may add to a single account. See our plans for the details on maximum users per plan and price information.

How do I add a user to my account if they are already in Poll Everywhere's system?

This occurs when you attempt to invite someone with an email that is already registered in our system. When this occurs, you will not be able to create an invitation for that person to join your account. If you and the invitee know that adding them as a user of your account is desired arrangement, please email us for help and we can manually make the switch for you.

Technical

Can I embed a poll in my PowerPoint presentation?

Yes, when viewing your poll, click the PowerPoint link for instructions. If you use PowerPoint 2007, you can download a small .pptx file containing your poll. The poll inside this slide can be copied into other presentations, used multiple times in a presentation, and resized like other PowerPoint objects.

Can I get the results of my poll in a spreadsheet?

Yes! When viewing the results, there is a link on the right to download a spreadsheet version. This file is in Comma-Separated Values format (.CSV) format, which can be opened by any spreadsheet application like Microsoft Excel, Apple Numbers, or Google Spreadsheets.

Will Poll Everywhere work without an Internet connection?

Your poll can receive votes even when you do not have a live internet connection but to display the poll or view results in real time, the presenting computer must have an internet connection. Your voting audience will need to have a mobile phone signal to vote.

How can I build voting applications with the Poll Everywhere Voting API?

If you want to build new poll visualizations or integrate real-time voting into your applications, email us to inquire about our RESTful API.

Can I use my own short code?

Yes, if you have your own short code and want to use it, please call us at +1 (773) 382-0377.

Is there support for PowerPoint (or Keynote) on Mac OS X?

Although there is no direct support today for embedding polls from Poll Everywhere into Office for mac 2004 or 2008 or Apple's Keynote, you can still display your poll from the web on a projector in a browser or switch into fullscreen mode to occupy the entire screen. Direct support for these applications may emerge in future updates to Poll Everywhere.

Is there support for OpenOffice presentations on any operating system?

Although there is no direct support for the presentation software that comes with OpenOffice, you can still display your poll from a web browser on a projector or switch your poll into fullscreen mode to occupy the entire screen. Also, although OpenOffice can read and write Microsoft PowerPoint files, it cannot currently display our polls even when they are present inside of a Microsoft PowerPoint file. Support for OpenOffice may emerge in future updates to Poll Everywhere.

Troubleshooting

PowerPoint: The poll does not load after following the instructions

First, be sure that you're in PowerPoint's fullscreen presentation mode (shortcut key: F5). Polls do not display in PowerPoint's slide editing view. If you're having other difficulties, please see our blog post for the solution

My poll is not responding to text messages

First, make sure your poll is opened and the options and instructions to vote are being displayed. You also need to have votes in your account in order to receive votes. If you have reached the maximum number of votes allowed per poll, you will need to either clear the results of your poll or purchase a higher vote plan.

I can't see the graphical poll on the web

Make sure Adobe Flash 9 is installed. Additionally, you must ensure that Adobe Flash Player v9.0.45.0 or higher is installed. Adobe Flash Player versions before v9.0.45.0 may not work. For example, there is a known issue with Internet Explorer 6 and v9.0.16.0 of the Adobe Flash Player.

Does Poll Everywhere work in countries outside of the United States?

Yes but it depends on what type of voting you want to do. SMS voting through Poll Everywhere is only supported in the United States. Web-based and mobile web-based voting is available globally. For smartphone web voting, participants need only a phone with a data plan and can vote with their phone's built in web browser by casting their when visiting Poll4.com