Forms and surveys decision
Poll at Work
A single capable developer can build and maintain a minimal hosted poll service in about a week; PollAtWork's durable value is mostly convenience, hosting, and team features rather than proprietary moats.
Visit website↗$7/mo
$84/yr
Read off the official pricing page.
$100one-off32 h to build
$0/mo6 h/mo upkeep
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 2 seats.
Open-source builds that already do this
Every project below is open source and already does this job today. Fork one, self-host it, or take the parts you need - the build prompt further down assumes an empty file, and this is the shortcut past that. Licences differ; check the one on each card before you ship. All Poll at Work alternatives, with the arithmetic →
What a replacement has to do
- Create a poll (question + options), share a single link, collect anonymous or identified votes, show aggregated results.
What it still won’t have
- Hosted uptime, scaling and edge performance provided by PollAtWork
- Built-in team workspace, shared creators, team branding and central billing (Team features)
- Any proprietary AI assistance integration behind sign-in
- Polished UX, templates gallery and ready-made examples maintained by vendor
What remains hard
- Product polish and ongoing maintenance
First-year cost
Keep paying
Paying is—cheaper in year one.
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 2 seats.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a minimal PollAtWork clone: use React for frontend, Node.js + Express for API, and Postgres for storage; deploy backend to a single Heroku/DigitalOcean droplet and frontend to Vercel. Core features in scope: create/edit poll (question, options, settings), generate unique public poll URL, anonymous and identified voting modes, enforce single-vote rules and optional vote-changes, aggregate and display real-time results, CSV export, and link sharing. Out of scope: team workspaces, billing, SSO, built-in AI generation. Include input validation, rate-limiting for vote endpoints, basic tests (unit for API and integration for key flows), and error handling/logging. Provide Dockerfiles and a simple deploy script.
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Build verdict base78
- An open-source build was found+5
- 5 cited sources+3
- Price verified on pricing page+3
- 3/3 assessment runs agreed+4
- Evidence score93
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 5
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productPollAtWork — homepage
- official pricingPollAtWork — pricing
- official productPollAtWork — feature priority template
- open sourceLimeSurvey/LimeSurvey
- open sourceTDuckCloud/tduck-survey-form
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
