Most “best poll tool” roundups rank the features the person making the poll sees: dashboards, embeds, integrations, export buttons. Almost none of them ask the question that actually decides whether your group reaches an answer: what is it like to be one of the people voting? That is the whole game. The best poll tool is the one your friends will actually open and finish.
So when I went looking at StrawPoll alternatives, I scored them on the four things a voter feels, not the things a creator clicks: can everyone vote without signing up, what is voting actually like, can the group see results live, and does it shove ads in front of the people you invited. Here is the honest field.
Full disclosure
This is the Decide blog, so yes, we are one of the six, and I am biased. I have tried hard to be fair to the rest. Every claim below is checkable in each tool’s free tier as of June 2026, and I have noted where things were genuinely hard to pin down.
The whole field on one screen
On a phone, each tool becomes its own card, so you never have to pinch-zoom a table.
| Tool | No login to vote | Vote style | Live results | Ads & data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Decide | Yes | Swipe, multi-pick, ranked | Yes | No ads, never sells data |
| StrawPoll | Yes | Single, multi, ranked (IRV/STAR) | Yes | Ads to voters on free |
| Doodle | Yes | Date/time availability | Yes | Ads on free tier |
| Google Forms | Yes* | Form fields, no ranked | Creator only | No ads, Google account |
| Rallly | Yes | Date/time availability | Yes | No ads, open source |
| When2meet | Yes | Availability grid | Yes | Shows an ad |
Two honest footnotes. Google Forms is no-login unless the creator limits it to one response or an organization, which then forces a Google sign-in. And Doodle still lets invitees respond without an account, but several 2025 reviews note it has been nudging participants toward signing up, so check before you rely on it.
The first split: are you choosing, or scheduling?
The single most useful thing in that table is hiding in the “vote style” column. Three of these tools do not decide between options at all. Doodle, Rallly, and When2meet are schedulers. They find a time everyone is free, with an availability grid, and they are genuinely good at it. But they cannot answer “which restaurant” or “which name” or “which movie.” Different job.
Google Forms can collect choices, but it is a survey builder. There is no shared live result for the group (only the creator sees the summary), and no real ranked choice. Deciding as a group means one person reading a spreadsheet and reporting back, which is the exact bottleneck a group poll is supposed to remove.
That leaves two tools actually built to settle a group choice fast: StrawPoll and Decide. So the real comparison is between those two.
Decide vs StrawPoll, head to head
StrawPoll is the tool most people are choosing between, so here is the honest version. Credit where due: StrawPoll is genuinely capable. It does no-signup voting, real ranked-choice methods (instant-runoff, STAR, Ranked Pairs), and live results, all on the free tier. If you want voting-theory firepower, it has more knobs than we do.
Where Decide wins
- No ads, ever. StrawPoll’s free tier shows ads to the people you invited to vote.
- We never sell voter data, and the voter is identified by one private cookie, nothing else.
- Swiping through options is faster on a phone than ticking radio buttons, and it is built mobile-first.
- Each option carries real detail: a photo, a link, a price, so people vote informed.
Where StrawPoll still fits
- You want to embed a public poll directly on a web page.
- You specifically want exotic voting math like STAR or Ranked Pairs.
- You do not mind ads on the free tier in exchange for unlimited polls.
The best poll tool is the one your group will actually open. On a phone, that usually means fewer taps and no ad in the way.
So which one should you use?
No single tool wins every job. Pick by the decision in front of you:
- Choosing between options (food, movies, team names, where to go): Decide or StrawPoll. If it is on a phone and you would rather your voters not see ads, that is the gap we built Decide to fill.
- Finding a time everyone is free: When2meet or Rallly. Scheduling is their entire job and they do it better than a generic poll. Rallly is also open source if you want to self-host.
- A structured survey with long answers: Google Forms. Overkill for a quick group call, but the right tool for a real form.
- A public poll embedded on a website: StrawPoll. Clean embeds, instant results.
For us the no-ads, never-sell-your-data line is not a feature we might revisit later when the spreadsheet gets tight. It is a permanent commitment, and voting stays free and login-free because of it. Paid plans cover the infrastructure; your voters never pay with their attention. If you want the deeper version of how to actually run the vote once you have picked a tool, the group-decision playbook and the ranked-choice-vs-simple-poll guide go there.
There is no best poll tool, just the right one for the job in front of you. For settling a group choice on a phone, without making your friends scroll past an ad to cast a vote, that is the one we built.
