Online polls are a great way to gauge the public's opinion on a matter. But you don't have to be a polling agency to carry out research. It's easy to make your own poll for any topic with free poll-making sites.

But which services are the best for creating online polls? Keep reading to find out.

1. Strawpoll

strawpoll

Strawpoll is one of the most well-known poll-making sites.

When you visit the site for the first time, you'll see the standard poll form which you can customize with your question and as many answers as you need. Its polls can allow for a single response or multiple-choice answers, depending on your needs.

Strawpoll also offers spam protection. You can choose to monitor for IP address duplication or browser cookie duplication. Using one of the options will improve the reliability of your poll.

When you have created your poll, you just need to share the poll's URL so people can fill it in.

Neither you nor your poll's respondents need to make an account on Strawpoll to use the site. If you wish, however, you can sign in with Twitch. By making an account, you can save drafts and easily revisit the results of any previous polls you made.

Overall, Strawpoll is a great tool for creating social media surveys.

2. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is a much more professional polling tool than Strawpoll. It is geared towards political research, event feedback, course feedback, market research, and other related fields.

However, despite the extra features, you can still make a poll with up to 10 questions for free—though you will need to make an account to get started.

If you want access to extra features, you will need to pay. Individual plans start at $32/month and run to $99/month.

The $32/month plan offers an unlimited number of surveys and questions, up to 5,000 responses per month, customizable branding, data exports, data analysis tools, A/B testing, and the ability to accept payments.

3. Poll Maker

poll maker

Poll Maker is more similar to Strawpoll; it's an easy-to-use free app that can create a shareable questionnaire in a few seconds.

The tool does have a few more options than Strawpoll. For example, once you have entered your question and list of responses, you can edit the theme (several defaults are available, as well as customization options).

You can also set a limit on how many votes per hour users can enter, secure your poll with a unique code, choose whether to allow multiple answers, show or hide the results to participants, and add a way for people the enter their own "Other" answers.

If you click on the Advanced tab, you can go even deeper. There are options to set the timezone, choose privacy levels, and even edit the buttons' text.

4. Easy Polls

easypolls

Another free web app for making polls is Easy Polls (though a premium version is also available). Once again, the tool has quite a lot of options that you can dig into and use to customize the poll for your needs.

Some of the most notable options include:

  • Button Text: You can change the text of the Vote, See Results, Total Votes, and Voters buttons.
  • Poll Width: Set the size of your questionnaire so it looks good on your site or blog.
  • Results: Choose whether to show/hide results, total vote counts, and vote percentages.
  • Extra Customization: Decide if the results should display automatically once the poll closes, choose whether to display Facebook comments and Like buttons, and take your pick from 22 different themes.

If you need more powerful options, consider the premium plan. It adds IP address filtering, location tracking, and ad-free polls. The premium options cost $0.99 per poll.

5. SurveySparrow

SurveySparrow is one of SurveyMonkey's leading competitors. It's a professional app that is primarily aimed at business users, though there is a free personal tier for individuals.

The free tier lets you receive up to 100 survey responses per month and provides up to 10 questions on each survey.

You also get custom reports filters, access to more than 1,500 app integrations via Zapier, 100 API hits per day, and the ability to limit the number of responses per user.

The cheapest paid tier costs $19/month. It adds unlimited questions and increases the response limit to 1,000 per month. Other features like closing dates, Google Sheets integrations, data exports, phone number validation, and support for widgets and QR codes also become available.

6. Google Forms

Google forms

 

For anyone who is heavily invested in the Google ecosystem of apps, it makes sense to turn to Google Forms for your polling needs.

Polls on Google Forms do require a little bit of time to set up, so they are less suitable for snap questionnaires on social media and among groups of friends. However, if you are looking for a balance between professionalism and ease-of-use, it is a great option.

The beauty of Google Forms is the number of methodologies it allows. You can choose from multiple-choice questions, checkboxes, dropdown lists, linear scales, grids, and more. You can also provide text entry fields, file uploads, as well as date and time stamps. There is even an option to embed images and videos in your survey.

All Google Forms responses will be available through your Google Drive account.

7. Zoho Survey

zoho survey

The final survey tool on our list is Zoho Surveys. Once again, this a professional-grade app that has a free tier for individual users.

It offers more than 25 types of questions and features, such as skip logic and piping. This allows you to create much more detailed surveys than what is possible on apps like Strawpoll and Easy Polls.

The tool also integrates with Zoho's other apps to allow you to manage your survey across different business areas. For example, social media outreach and email campaigns work seamlessly with the survey tool.

Once the survey has finished, Zoho provides a mountain of customizable reports and data analysis tools to help you make sense of the data you have collected.

You can even buy responses. Just set up your preferred demographics and Zoho will take care of making sure you get answers.

Choose the Right Survey Site for You

As you can see, each survey site focuses on different types of users and needs. Choosing the right app is important in order to draw the right conclusions.

Just make sure that you fully understand all the features and limitations before you launch your survey to the public.