Poll Everywhere options: the limits behind every response
Poll Everywhere puts its tightest limit on volume: the free plan caps a poll at 40 responses. Among the Poll Everywhere options, the per-person response limit and the submission count for open-ended activities come next, and paid tiers raise the audience ceiling.
Written by BuyPollVotes editorial desk | Last checked
How many responses an audience can submit
Every one of the Poll Everywhere options that shapes volume lives at the activity level, not in some account-wide dashboard. On the free plan the ceiling is 40 responses per poll, the vendor's own frequently asked questions state that plainly, and the presenter controls how many times each participant can respond to a poll. Which of the Poll Everywhere options applies depends on the plan and on the switches the presenter turned on before sharing. Count the difference: forty people answering once fills a free activity, and so does one person answering forty times if the settings allowed it.
The per-person control is the quieter of the two. It decides how many times each participant can respond to a poll, and it changes what the tally measures. With it set to one, a repeat answer is shut out. Set it higher, and the same person can answer again, still inside the same overall cap.
Paid versions of the service can go further and require each participant to create an account or log in before they can respond at all, a setting the help pages describe for certain paid tiers. An account administrator can also restrict every activity on the account to registered participants only. Both controls shrink anonymity but tighten the count.
- Paid tiers raise the audience ceiling to 700 responses per activity, and Enterprise carries no fixed published figure at all.
- A per-person limit and the total audience cap are different controls: one listener cannot fill an activity on their own, however many times the settings let them answer.
- Counting is per person on a 2.0 response link too, because someone who has already answered is already counted as one unique responder when they come back.
- What the help pages never state is the exact response limit for Enterprise, so that figure is not published rather than hidden.
Write one prompt that takes several answers
How a multi select question fits into the Poll Everywhere options already documented comes down to wording. The vendor does not use that label in the rows behind this page. What it documents instead is the shape of an open-ended activity: a single submission, any number of submissions, or a limit to a fixed number. That is a design decision the presenter makes before the audience ever sees the prompt.
Poll Everywhere 2.0 attaches a timer to open-ended activities as well, adjustable from 0 to 300 seconds, with 0 meaning no timer at all. The help pages also document an account-wide switch: an administrator can restrict all activities on the account so only registered participants get in.
One honest gap sits here. A higher per-person count permits several answers from the same person; it does not promise that those answers pick three different options. The vendor does not name a multi select question, so the submission count is what does the work.
- Multiple submissions can be capped at any number you choose, not only switched on or off.
- With a single submission chosen, one person cannot answer twice at all.
- The auto-lock timer for open-ended activities runs from 0 to 300 seconds, where 0 means no timer.
The audience route onto the page
Joining happens on the vendor's response page, and the route is short: participants go to pe.app, enter the presenter's join code, and hit Join. The active poll then loads immediately, no hunting through menus.
- The active poll loads immediately after the join code goes in.
- A 2.0 response link remembers who has already answered, so returning participants keep participating as the same unique responder.
When an answer counts as real
Account rules decide what counts as a real answer, and they matter most to anyone running a poll contest on the service. The terms demand a living human behind the account, and they forbid reverse engineering or any programmatic use of the site beyond its official API. Manufactured answers sit outside the rules, not inside a loophole.
And when someone crosses the line, the vendor states what follows: it can block accounts whose use it considers excessive, and it reserves the right to suspend or terminate an account for violating the terms.
- The vendor can block accounts whose use it considers excessive, and says it will shut off behavior it calls toxic.
- Terms violations give the company the right to suspend or terminate an account at any time, at its own discretion.
- Interference, in the terms' own list of examples, includes overloading and flooding the service.
- What the rules never publish is the exact line where use stops being ordinary and starts being excessive.
What the audience sees on the page
The response page is where the audience meets the activity, and the caps sit on the text. A title or prompt carries a 255-character limit, a cap university teaching guides document as well, and answer options take up to 255 characters each.
Q&A responses run to 300 characters. On certain paid versions the same page asks participants to sign up or log in before they can respond, so the account prompt and the question share the screen.
- Activity titles and prompts carry a 255-character limit, which university teaching guides document as well.
- Answer options hold up to 255 characters each, and Q&A responses allow up to 300.
| Plan | Responses per poll | Participant accounts |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 40 | Not required on the documented route |
| Present | 700 | Certain paid versions can require sign-up |
| Engage | 700 | Same documented account option applies |
| Enterprise | Not published | Not published as a fixed rule |
How to do it
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Enter the join code
Go to pe.app, type in the presenter's join code, and hit Join. The active poll loads immediately, so there is no menu to dig through and no account step on the standard route.
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Come back through the link
On a Poll Everywhere 2.0 response link, a participant who has already answered can return and continue participating, because the system already counts them as one unique responder.
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Answer within the count the presenter set
How many times each participant can respond is a control the presenter sets on the activity. If the poll takes a single submission, one answer is all a participant gets; with multiple submissions, later answers still land inside the same overall cap.
Common questions
How many responses can an audience submit to a poll?
The free plan caps a poll at 40 responses, which is the lowest fixed audience number the vendor publishes. Its Present and Engage tiers raise that ceiling to 700, and Enterprise carries no fixed published figure. Per-person counting is separate: the account administrator can restrict activities to registered participants only, and presenters cap repeat responses.
How do I create a multi-select question in Poll Everywhere?
The vendor does not name a multi select question in its documented options. The documented route is an open-ended activity configured for multiple submissions, so each participant can answer more than once. Answer options then hold up to 255 characters each, a ceiling university teaching guides confirm for polls built with text choices.
How long will my poll remain active?
Poll Everywhere takes no fixed expiry date out of its own pages, and its rules do not name one. An activity stays open until the presenter locks it to stop submissions, or until an auto-lock timer, set from 0 to 300 seconds on open-ended activities, shuts it automatically.
How can I request a Presenter license?
A Presenter license is a request you make through the vendor itself rather than a switch on the site. Its help pages handle licensing outside the mechanics documented here, so the exact route is not printed in the sourced rows behind this page.
Why can't I access some features of my Presenter license?
Features unlock with the plan, not the person. On free accounts the audience sits at 40 responses and some paid features cannot be switched on at all; certain paid versions can require participants to register or log in before responding, and an administrator can restrict an account's activities to registered participants only.
Can I give my TA access to the Poll Everywhere activities for a class?
The vendor's own pages handle sharing, and those rows do not document a teaching-assistant handover step by step. What the documented rules do say is that an account administrator can restrict every activity on the account to registered participants only, and sharing features sit on the higher tiers.
Can I customize the URL of my Poll Everywhere response page?
No, not as a documented Poll Everywhere option. The vendor describes joining through pe.app with the presenter's join code, and the active poll loads immediately once that code goes in, so nothing in the help pages offers a presenter-editable address for the response page.
Where these facts come from
- support.polleverywhere.com. support.polleverywhere.com/pe1/how-to-edit-an-activity-.
- support.polleverywhere.com. support.polleverywhere.com/pe1/how-to-edit-an-activity-.
- support.polleverywhere.com. support.polleverywhere.com/pe2/setting-poll-defaults-.
- polleverywhere.com. polleverywhere.com/product/faq.
- monash.edu. monash.edu/learning-teaching/teachhq/learning-technologies/polling-tools/how-to/use-poll-everywhere.
This page carries no prices, fee amounts, or refund figures, and it quotes no plan table with currency in it, even where the vendor's help pages publish one. The documented rules never say how many responses count as excessive use, how long an activity stays active, or whether the response page's address can be customized, so those gaps stay gaps here.
X prohibits coordinating with or compensating others to inflate engagement metrics, and it names Polls among the features covered. The Pet Industry Business Awards name the consequence in their own contest: a business may be investigated, lose votes or be disqualified on reasonable evidence of purchased votes. No seller can stop an organiser from doing that.
Slido says it is alerted when an event gets an unusually high number of votes in a very short time, and Crowdsignal says its built-in measures detect patterns of potentially abusive voting. Ordinary participation arrives spread across the voting window, from different people at different moments. Nothing on this site is a method for getting a vote past a check, and a vote that a tool blocks does not count.
Organiser rules differ: the RSPCA Pet of the Year Awards allow extra votes through donations on their official mechanism, while OpenTable Australia treats a vote cast in exchange for money or a reward as null and void. Both are contest rules, not statutes, and whether payment is lawful where you live is a question for a lawyer. Orders are refused for any contest whose rules ban paid votes, and for political ballots.
Votes ordered for a poll that never appear on its count are refunded after the poll closes. A refund never covers an organiser's decision: Localsearch may void all votes for a disqualified nominee, and Mentimeter says a user whose access it cancels under its Acceptable Use Policy is owed no refund or compensation. No result is promised.