Show HN: Polls for WhatsApp Groups | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Polls for WhatsApp Groups

polls.fr

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.

That looks great!

I have a question though - why not switch to a more appropriate platform? When with a bunch of friends we were sick from WhatsApp's lack of features, we moved to Telegram which has polls and a few other goodies. It seems less effort that actually developing a polls for WhatsApp thing, although i can absolutely see how that would be fun to do. Good luck with the Pro version!

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.

Good. It uses cookies so that one can't simply vote any number of times. Certainly useful.

Have a button to share results over whatsapp.

Thanks. It does have a direct ‘Share on WhatsApp’ button.

Is there any particular reason for choosing a .fr domain name for this project ?

According to Wikipedia [0] the .fr ccTLD is limited to European Union residents (+ Switzerland, Norway...) and might possibly mean you have to comply with legal requirements (GDPR, mandatory information display: cookies / T&Cs... [1]) (IANAL)

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.fr#Requirements

[1]: https://www.service-public.fr/professionnels-entreprises/vos...

How to see the results?

If you don’t want to sign up then you can see results after voting yourself.

If you sign up, then you can find all your polls along with results under My Polls even without voting yourself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com