Since we launched in 2008, we have been joined by a number of notable new products in the web based audience and classroom response system space, copying and improving on the technology we invented.  This is great for users and we celebrate the attention being paid to audience engagement.

Given this increasing complexity, we saw that it was time to create what we believe to be the most complete Web-based Audience Response System Comparison Chart.

Why do we risk looking bad? 

You’ll see that we don’t win on every feature, and we are no longer always the cheapest.  So why, you might ask, do we put this out there?  We do it because we believe the following:

• Customers should have all the facts in hand when considering a purchase of a product they’ll be using in front of a crowd of people. Even if they don’t choose us, they’ll appreciate our help.
• Competition makes us stronger and pushes us to work harder for your business – and that is ultimately better for our users.
• Quite frankly, when you use facts to compare us against the other guys, most of the time we will come out ahead.

Some historical context 

When we founded Poll Everywhere back in 2007, finding factual comparisons among different classroom and audience response systems was impossible.

To solve that problem we created our own hardware comparison chart that compares Poll Everywhere to the major hardware audience response system vendors on the market.   While we can’t guarantee we’re the most unbiased source in the world, we do our darnedest to be as objective and fact-based as possible.

Most of our competitors were gracious, received this chart well and even helped us correct the chart when necessary.  However, one competitor didn’t want customers to have any facts about their product placed in comparison with Poll Everywhere.  They may not have liked how they fared in a head-to-head comparison with a system that cost 1/10th as much.

Enjoy.  And let us know what you think in the comments.

P.S.  We’re human. If we missed anything, it was purely by accident. Removing bias is really hard  — we tend to see all other products through Poll Everywhere colored glasses, even if we’re trying not to. You can mention it in the comments here; or email us at hello+vs@polleverywhere.com.  We’ll do a revision within 60 days. If anyone bullies us again legally, we’ll tell you about it. Here’s to transparency!