I agree, however it’s difficult to move everyone. There are so many groups - family, friends, founders, batchmates, etc. Until WhatsApp brings native polls this problem will exist.
As a developer, building a solution was way more fun than nagging people to move to a different platform. Haha.
Btw this is not really bound to WhatsApp. You can use it to share your poll everywhere.
I have seen some polls getting upto 14k votes!!!
People use it to gather data on smallest things like what is a good time for going out to who do you prefer in the local elections.
I built Polls for WhatsApp over a weekend in September 2020 out of my need to make quick decisions in WhatsApp groups. I had posted about it on HN then https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24532998 but didn’t get much engagement here
However, the product got amazing traction getting 10k-20k DAU every day throughout the past year! No penny was spent on development or marketing. That’s wild, right? :)
I kept getting many requests for additional features throughout this time. In December 2021, I decided to build and launch a Pro version in public in 5 days. However, It took 10 days to launch on 1st January. I posted my journey live here https://twitter.com/singhamardeep/status/1472879855456829441...
The free version, as before, allows you to make unlimited anonymous polls. No login is needed for poll creators or voters.
Among many, the most prominent new feature in the pro version is the ability to collect voter names and emails.
Check it out, and let me know what you think. Happy to answer any questions - technical or otherwise.
Create & share quick polls in your WhatsApp groups
- It's free. It's easy. It's fast.
- Vote right from within WhatsApp.
- Instant results.
- No app download needed.
- No login required.
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Why did I make it?
There are so many times I wish to do a quick fun poll in my family group or work groups, looking for the crucial answers to questions like:
“Dress Code? - Suit with shorts or PJs”
“Raise of hands. How many are joining me in the 2 am meeting” "Pineapple on Pizza - Yeyy or Nay"
"Orange or Black"
All the existing poll solutions were pretty tacky! I decided to give it a go myself and built ‘Polls for WhatsApp'. My aim was to keep it dead simple without any fuss. Instead of me explaining it all out, here is a quick poll for Polls made using Polls.
Why I made it? .. a little story!
Due to COVID-19 situation, most of us are working from home - taking classes, attending meetings & webinars on various video conferencing apps.
It just so happened that I was browsing for some important information (no… seriously!) while a conference call was on. The meeting got over and I happily went about working on other things, discussing with my wife who is going to make dinner & who is going to do dishes (I know… right?).
Only an hour later, I realised that I never disconnected the call & my microphone was still listening. That whole day I kept wondering, who all may have heard & what all were the things I may have said (…behind their backs!). Nevertheless, now they all know what I feel about them. I may have lost a few friends (or made a deeper connection … Radical Candor … you see).
Well, this happened thrice in 2 weeks! (Yours is about to happen … just wait!)
So …
The weekend came up and my inner geek woke up to solve it. I don’t have many more friends to lose after all. Few nights in, and ‘Houston, we have a lot of other problems in life but not this one anymore!’
1…2…3 … mic check … MicCheck is in the house!
What does MicCheck do?
MicCheck is very high tech! It shows a big beautiful red box (or a small one if you prefer) on top of your screen whenever your microphone is in use; even when the conference call app is lost in one of your 100 browser tabs or buried deep down in your war-room control centre that you have made your desktop to be.
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Would be happy to hear your thoughts and feedback.
If you have enjoyed AWS serverless, then I would strongly suggest you to check out Firebase. I myself started with AWS and have now completely switched over to Firebase now. 10x more enjoyable. Firebase just brings the right tools at one place and makes using them super easy.
Absolutely go for it. Firebase scales up well so you won’t need to redo a lot of things when your product starts getting more users. I would suggest to have a look at Nextjs or Gatby for your frontend if you are know React. But to your question, Firebase has all the tools for even large scale app.
If you sign up, then you can find all your polls along with results under My Polls even without voting yourself.