Both polling apps can lead to better decisions when it comes to team culture and proactive improvements to the workplace. They provide a starting point for remote teams who want more open discussion and team collaboration. While both work optimally with Slack, they serve the user differently.
We're big believers that doing a new poll should be a valuable and fun experience for respondents. Maybe that's why Polly continues to be one of the most popular Slack apps around. Read on to decide what you think for yourself.
Before we get into details, let's talk about why polls are a popular workplace tool.
Gallup reports a ratio of engaged to actively disengaged workers of 2.4-to-1 in the U.S. in 2021, which is pretty great. The criteria measurements examined these specific areas:
Let’s focus on the last bullet point: Employees need to feel that their opinions are heard as part of their ongoing engagement. Polling apps give voices to employees who might not otherwise get the opportunity to speak up, which promotes inclusivity. Having a clear way to measure and support your employee feedback process and engagement is reason enough alone to invest in a polling app. The question is, which one?
Simple Poll allows you to create native polls in Slack, and it can create anonymous polls and send them within any given Slack workspace. Let’s look at the specifics:
Simple Poll prices according to your needs in terms of responses, polls, and surveys — which is limited on the free plan to:
This free plan can suit a small team that uses polling sporadically. However, to develop a feedback culture that's more aligned with consistent engagement, you would need to upgrade to the premium version. This type of account offers unlimited usage for $299 per month (billed annually) for a workspace of up to 500 users.
The custom enterprise-level pricing option includes a few additional features like:
Enterprise plans are better suited to larger organizations who need onboarding and the most user support that Simple Poll can offer.
Templates offered by Simple Poll cover basic functions, but they don't allow you to create your own templates.This can be considered a downside since customizing templates is often a major timesaver.
Polly provides users with a categorized library of templates that are easy to edit and then save to your personal library for later use. Some popular categories include: HR, IT, Agile, General, Leader, and WFH. The templates are widely accessible to all Polly users.
If you're looking for optimal customization within your polls, here's where Simple Poll falls short by offering only three question types (compared with Polly's nine different formats). This doesn't provide too much flexibility for the creator and can become redundant for participants.
Your choices are limited to short-answer text, with a classic text box for replies to open-answer questions; single choice, which provides a list of options for participants to select one from; and checkboxes, which function the same as single choice but participants can select more than one answer. Polly goes beyond these formats with customizations like ranking, numerical scales, and emojis.
Simple Poll can be a helpful tool if you're asking whether the team prefers sub sandwiches or pizza during the lunch and learn, but there isn't a lot of supportive functionality for anything more.
We were mostly let down by:
So what makes Polly a strong contender for workplace polling? Below we chat about how Polly's approach differs:
Simple Poll hasn't made customization a priority with only three question types and limited templates. Polly provides a number of features for a more customized experience including anonymity for polls. So, if you're asking more sensitive questions that require discretion, Polly’s a better fit.
If you want an app to get consensus on your holiday party once a year, Simple Poll might do it. You'll want to go with Polly to build out a more evolved employee engagement process.
Beyond polls, Polly has made it easy to bring fun and connection into the remote workday with social games like Trivia, Hot Takes, and Employee Awards.
Simple Poll can't compete with Polly's web app, which transforms results into easy-on-the-eyes visuals that are accessible and shareable according to your set-up preferences. It integrates seamlessly with Google Sheets to support your dashboards and analysis.
With 30 templates available in Polly that can be easily customized, saved, and replicated, it can be quicker to click, edit, and send than to create a poll from scratch. Automation can make things quicker in both apps, but coupled with Polly's added template features, it comes out ahead.
We love that Polly supports its users with customized experiences that provide fun, fast, and frictionless engagement. Our library of helpful templates along with our results analysis and sharing features were created to foster rich insights into team satisfaction that aren't otherwise readily available.
We've created an experience that meets your team where they're working in Slack which garners higher response rates. Try sending a polly for free in Slack, and you'll see just how it works to promote inclusivity, engagement, and collaboration.