HN Explorer

Why are there no good online voting/election tools that are also free?

5 points by sthlm ↗ HN
(Alternative question: If there are, can you point them out?)

I'm looking for a voting/election tool to conduct a large variety of surveys. The type of survey may be anything from less serious ("pancakes or cookies at the party?") to more serious/official/anonymous (elections). Surveys are typically small: there are few questions with possible answers being mostly yes/no or a list of candidate names (elections). The number of participants in the surveys might become large (<10 to >1000). Fancy features (e.g. statistics, user behaviour, ...) are not required. For the more serious surveys/elections, reliability is a key requirement.

There are a large variety of survey tools online available, which I would categorize like this:

1. Professional: They offer a range of plans (usually a basic plan/trial is free) and are rich in features; they typically work well. PROBLEM: Usually expensive; their low-end (free/cheap) plans are often limited in users (e.g. free for <30 participants).

2. Hobby: These are limited in features but free; they don't always work well. PROBLEM: Unreliable. It's hard to get people to vote as it is. People receiving multiple invitations to vote is problematic. People receiving no invitation to vote is unacceptable in some cases (e.g. elections).

I'm a firm enemy of NIH, so it would be preferable if some alternative could be found.

8 comments

[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 42.1 ms ] thread
nudge
Why would there be such a thing? Would you create a service with that kind of value (and actual running costs) and give it away for free?
jcol
Too many people these days think they are entitled to everything for free, especially on the internet. I dabble in angel investing and you wouldn't believe how many people think they are entitled an investment because they think they have "the next big thing" -- if they are so sure, bootstrap it and prove it!
sthlm
I apologize, I probably should have been more clear about this point. I do not at all believe that I am in any way entitled to things for free. I myself am in computer science and contributed to OSS and get annoyed by people frequently thinking that software/services have no value just because they are getting used to having things for free.

That being said, I did consider that there are many (more or less successful) business models centered around services that are (partially) free for end-users (e.g. social networks, email, ...). I have not yet founded any startup myself, so I don't want to lean myself out of the window and claim that something like that would be successful for business this.

We (the group of people wanting to conduct the polls) are students. It's not like there wouldn't be a budget for something like this; but a lot of the good services have high per-poll or monthly rates.

So my question was not why someone isn't doing a lot of work to provide me with a quality service, but more: Why isn't there anything between [free + basically broken] and [amazing + highly priced]. Why is there nothing in between? Is there no market for a middle segment? This I believe to be a valid question.

jcol
That is a much better question. Although I can't tell you why in this specific scenario, I can tell you that middle markets can be tough because they're not the cheapest or the most expensive, which are two common selling points.
calebhicks
Because investing the time to create a secure, usable voting system takes time, energy, and financial resources.

Few people are willing to do that much work for no financial reward.

trickjarrett
This is an app idea I've turned over a hundred times but never dove into.