Polldaddy – Collect Data With Interactive Polls

Polldaddy is a web-based platform that publishers can use to quickly create polls, surveys, and quizzes that are easy to share via blogs or social media. Built by the team behind WordPress.com, Polldaddy’s polling widgets integrate seamlessly into blogs, email, Facebook, and Twitter.

What is the question you’re trying to answer? Figure that out, and you’re ready to jump right into the Polldaddy platform. Use Polldaddy’s survey editor to create a custom survey or poll, choosing between 14 different question types (like multiple choice and free text) depending on the type of data you’re hoping to collect. Utilize advanced features like question branching and skip logic to dig deeper into the minds of your survey participants. You can expand the reach of your survey by publishing it in multiple languages, or limit the scope by creating password or IP address restrictions for participants.

When your survey is complete, you can publish it on your website, or collect responses from your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch. Keep a close eye on incoming results in real-time, and export the final data in Excel, PDF, or XML format. You can even sign up to receive email, RSS, or HTTP POSTnotifications each time a new response comes in.

Practical Uses:

• Gather demographic information about your blog readers
• Give your students a pop quiz
• Send customer satisfaction surveys to clients
• Find out what your friends would like to eat at your upcoming birthday party

Insider Tips:

• Add YouTube videos or Flickr images to your survey
• Block users from certain IP addresses from taking your poll
• Automatically close your survey after a certain date
• Polldaddy offers built-in WordPress support

What we liked:

• Users can collect survey responses on their iPads
• Polldaddy lets users customize the look of their surveys by changing the font size or color
• Data can be analyzed using a number of custom filters
• Polldaddy’s surveys can easily be published on Facebook or Twitter

What we didn’t like:

• Users have to upgrade to a Professional plan to get access to detailed data reports

Alternatives:

• eSurveysPro – http://www.esurveyspro.com
• SurveyMonkey – http://www.surveymonkey.com
• Zoomerang – http://www.zoomerang.com

Company Info:

• Launched: October 2006
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: Sligo, Ireland
• Founded by: Patrick Lenehan and David Lenehan
• Web site: http://polldaddy.com

Costs:

• Free plan
• Professional plan is $200 per year
• Corporate plan is $899 per year