Hi - I'm Jeff, one of the Poll Everywhere cofounders.

About a week ago, we developed a feature that archives results into a timeline instead of just clearing them away forever. We knew this would be especially useful for educators who would like to reuse their polls with multiple classes and yet retain the previous answers, or for measuring knowledge before-and-after. In the future, we'll add the ability to visually compare these various runs of a poll on a graph.

We like educators for a variety of reasons, so in the past we've told teachers they can clear their results and reuse their polls with other classes. Technically, they have more than the 32 participants allowed on the free plan, but we decided to kind of look the other way mostly for mutual convenience.  One thing is certain, the more participants on any given question, the more you're benefitting from our service.

In the process of preparing this results history / archival feature, we analyzed our usage and found that the users that do this can be REALLY expensive for us.

I know we've all been conditioned to expect a free product from every web company out there, but the trend is not going this way. More and more web companies are transitioning to a "30 day free trial" model.  We've considered it many times, because if the percentage of people who remain regular users and never actually upgrade continues, we might not be able to sustain the incredible cost of text messages for our many free users. It probably costs Google less than $1 per year to provide Gmail to one person. They advertise to you, which is something we will never do. You also can't call or email anyone for help (sometimes if you pray and wait long enough, someone from Google might respond). In contrast, considering that we pay the mobile phone companies several cents for each text message, a disturbing proportion of free users (overwhelmingly educators) cost us over $50/user/year in texting fees, and that's before we spend any time on customer support. Can you see why we're on the fence regarding whether that's really sustainable business?  The truth is that most free products that educators love do not have back end costs anywhere near ours. It's something to really think about.

In fact, if you wonder why we have free K-12 plans at all, it's because I was a high school teacher and CIO of a school district. I felt clickers were valuable but outrageously expensive. Sometimes I have to re-convince the other people here at Poll Everywhere to keep our free plan limits at 32 participants instead of say, 10. It doesn't help my case when we see whining dramatics like this:

"This is so frustrating and upsetting. I am a teacher who JUST started using Poll Everywhere two weeks ago in my classroom after learning about it at a technology integration day. My students loved it the ONE time we used it, when Clear Results still worked. My district will NOT PURCHASE a membership; they don't believe in supporting this sort of technology; we are on our own to find and use this stuff. Your rate for one teacher is MUCH TOO HIGH for me to pay out of my own pocket! How frustrating that I cannot compile results any longer without forking over such a steep fee. And to think that I was considering this to be a very advantageous tool to use in my classroom! I can use it but not compile results for separate classes. How unfair of you, and how greedy."

"NOT PURCHASE" in capital letters? "Unfair" and "greedy"? Perhaps this was an emotionally driven response from a moment of frustration, but try purchasing the cheapest set of 32 clickers for $1500 out of your own pocket. By comparison, we're currently priced at $129/year. In 11 years you break even, and your clickers won't be getting any smarter during that time, but you'll still be lugging them around and replacing their batteries. This is like lusting after a Ferrari while calling the $12,000 Kia makers "greedy."  Be proactive, and start educating your district on the benefits of student response. Apply for a grant. Solicit parent or corporate sponsors. Or simply say, "It's not as good as it used to be, but at least you provide something useful for free." It's time for a reality check, since we're teetering on the brink of whether to provide any free service all. Web companies such as Blinksale, GoToMeeting, CrazyEgg, Jott, and many others have chosen to eliminate their free plans (or switch to free trials).

So let's start over. First, we didn't give you any notice that clearing polls was going premium. We didn't grandfather any previous users. And most importantly, the inability to reset a poll turns out to be a major inconvenience to all users when they try it out for the first time, then want to reuse that poll to demo to others at their church or company.  Therefore, we're turning "clear results" back on for all users. Also, we are keeping perpetually free plans for educators around, at least for now. We're considering other EDU pricing models, and I know first hand how tight school technology budgets are.  When we announce new pricing, I hope we see you vote with your school budget wallets. Sorry for the flip-flopping. If you upgraded to either the $15/mo or $129/yr plan in the last week solely in order to regain the ability to clear polls, please email us and we'll refund you.

We received a fair amount of feedback on our Get Satisfaction page (http://getsatisfaction.com/polleverywhere) and also via email. We do listen and respond to our customers -- every inquiry that needs a response gets a response. Thank you to those who engaged us respectfully. We're also wondering if you'd like a dedicated bulletin board style user forum on PollEverywhere.com. Please leave comments if you feel you'd use it more than you use our existing Get Satisfaction forum.

Also, we'd appreciate it if you'd leave some comments here and tell us what your other education software costs, and if you cover it out of pocket or your school pays for it.

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"Not only is it unfair to require students to spend $40 (now $80 in my case) on a little piece of plastic, to have a full letter grade riding on the system actually working consistently is absurd."

From: http://www.lsureveille.com/opinion/press-x-to-not-die-your-classroom-really-wants-you-to-be-a-millionaire-1.2148840

This is what we've been telling people all along. Stop paying for proprietary clicker devices and start using the technology that's already available, standard, and ubiquitous. Poll Everywhere bases its philosophy on this principle and we think you (and your meeting attendees or your students or whomever) should too.

When you stop clicking via clickers, you'll start texting/tweeting/submitting via Poll Everywhere.

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We’re all about having HiP events… 

Here at Poll Everywhere, we want to start off the year right, and in doing so, we wanted to take the time to look back and acknowledge some of the very cool events our clients have been having.  November marked an awesome month for us.  (Aside from the bliss of having second and third helpings of turkey and mashed potatoes) we were able to assist a leading PC manufacturer take their sales kick off, strategy and teaming event to a new level.  2,500 people from all over the world, a collection of top sales people and HP executives gathered in Las Vegas expecting to be wowed and pumped for the New Year.  Forget the stodgy conferences with stale pastries and tepid coffee, instead think sleek jumbo screens and the lean, mean, swimming machine Michael Phelps to get your engines roaring.  

We encourage our customers to think outside the box, and do something creative for their events.  HP wanted something a little more custom for their event and decided to utilize group polling to register their employees into teams.  Group polling is not a regular feature we offer, but anytime our clients want a custom job, we’re more than happy to oblige.  For HP, we were able to tailor their needs to produce the best possible option for their teaming event.  

Suffice it to say the 3 day event went off without a hitch, and we were happy to see our product be displayed in a very “bright lights, big city” type of way.  But more than that, it was exciting to see firsthand, people from more than 50 countries texting in their respective votes with cell phones from all over the world.  It was a large gathering of 2,500 people, but we were able to make mobile phones a medium for each and every person to have a voice at that conference.

 Poll Everywhere brings people together for a greater cause, whether it’s for education, awareness or business, and we hope we can do the same for you.  

 

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We see creative media come from our users and here's another one from Oliver Dreon posted on YouTube:

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We love it when we have something exciting to share. We are very thankful for our loyal supporters who love our product and spread the word. We listen to the suggestions sent to us and continually work to accommodate the needs of those who use our product on a regular basis. It’s our goal to make presenting as easy and seamless as possible. As a thank you, and to make your next event a little easier, we are introducing our newest baby, the Events feature.

We have often received comments from people who ask about using short keywords, like "1, 2, 3" for their multiple choice polls at events. Since these are in such high demand, we designate these as premium keywords and try to play keyword traffic cop. We’re happy to tell you that this will no longer be the case if you use our events feature. Events let our users pare down the keywords to very short one or two characters.

Here’s a little "How to…" for our Event’s Feature:

Check the polls you want to use in your Presentation and group them together, and name the Group by clicking the Edit Button.

While you are still in Edit Mode, there should be a line that says "Change this group into an Event (?)" Click on that button and click "Ok" when it prompts you to do so.

Type a keyword for your Event. We will let you know if the Event keyword has already been taken.

After you have given your Event a name click on any one of your polls under that Event. You will see instructions on the top of your poll that will say "If you haven’t joined this session, text "EVENTKEYWORD" to 99503.

You will notice that your multiple choice question keywords will have changed to "1, 2, 3…"

When you run your event, instruct your audience members to join the event by texting the event keyword to 99503. After they have joined the Event they will be able to use those short keywords to vote. Another new feature – if the poll allows multiple votes from one person, you can separate you answers with a space and we’ll receive both!

We’re really excited about this feature as it allows our power users to make participation even easier for their audience. A short one or two digit keyword is much easier to text in than a 5 digit. We hope you try this new feature at your next event and if you have any feedback for us, please be sure to email us at

questions@polleverywhere.com. Happy Presenting!

 

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We loved the engagement and interactivity of your product. Our students were appreciative of our efforts using your software. We do not let the students use cell phones during the school day - they actually have to pay $25 if it is seen by a teacher. That said, they really appreciated the opportunity to use them, and we appreciated the fact that they were being used for an educational purpose.

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