Forms and surveys decision
Slido
A competent developer can build a useful, smaller Slido replacement for internal meetings (polls, live Q&A, realtime updates) using existing OSS form/survey projects, but replicating Slido's enterprise-grade integrations, compliance packaging, scale, and AI features would be difficult and time-consuming.
Visit website↗Not priced
No pricing page we fetched carried a figure, so there is nothing to compare against. The build side is still real.
$100one-off46 h to build
$105/mo6 h/mo upkeep
No published price to break even against.
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 Slido alternatives, with the arithmetic →
What a replacement has to do
- Create a live poll or Q&A session -> participants join (no login) -> submit/vote in real time -> host views live results/dashboard -> export results
What it still won’t have
- Enterprise-grade SSO, dedicated success managers and advanced user management
- Polished, long-built integrations with many conferencing tools
- Scale and reliability of an established service used by hundreds of thousands
- Proprietary analytics and product polish (UX, moderation workflows, branding options)
- Bundled proprietary AI features (Slido AI) and enterprise compliance packaging
What remains hard
- Brand trust
Trusted by 750K customers worldwide
- Compliance and regulation
We follow recognized security and compliance standards and provide SSO, dedicated Success Managers, user management features and more.
First-year cost
No published price
Slido does not publish a price we could read, so there is nothing to compare against. What building costs is below.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
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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 Slido-like service using Node.js (Express), Socket.IO for realtime, Postgres for storage, and React for the admin and participant UIs. Core features in scope: (1) create events and polls/quizzes in the admin UI, (2) participant join page by short event code (no login) to submit votes/questions and upvote, (3) realtime sync of votes/questions via WebSocket, (4) moderation queue for Q&A and host dashboard with live results, (5) CSV/Excel export of results, (6) simple embed iframe and a basic PowerPoint/Zoom button. Out of scope: enterprise SSO, dedicated account management, advanced analytics dashboards, and large-scale multi-tenant optimizations. Provide error handling for network failures and DB errors, unit and integration tests for API and realtime flows, and deployment scripts (Docker + Kubernetes manifest or single-machine Docker Compose).
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Partly verdict base52
- An open-source build was found+5
- 5 cited sources+3
- Hard moats found in the evidence-3
- Evidence score57
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 productSlido home
- official pricingSlido pricing
- official docsSlido features
- open sourceSurveyJS
- open sourceLimeSurvey
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
