Indie Polls

Compared

Tally Alternative: Indie Polls vs Tally for Product Surveys

A form you send someone to, against a question that finds them where they already are.

Tally is a lovely piece of software and this page will not pretend otherwise. If your job is to build a form (an application, a registration, an order with a payment attached) and put it behind a link, Tally does it with less friction than almost anything else, and its free core is unusually generous for the category. Plenty of people should read this page and then go and use Tally.

Indie Polls is not a form builder, and the honest comparison is not feature-for-feature; it is a comparison of two motions. Tally's is: build the form, publish it, share the link, wait for people to open it. Indie Polls' is: decide who should be asked, then have the question appear where they already are. The embed is a single script tag with no iframe and no build step, and the same survey can be a slide-in, a centred modal, a bottom banner or a block inside the page, or nothing at all until the visitor clicks your own button, which `data-trigger-id` wires up.

That changes who answers. Anything answered through a link is answered by the slice of your audience motivated enough to follow a link, which is a narrower and more opinionated group than your users at large. A survey targeted at a page, a trait, a device or an event reaches the quiet majority who would never have opened the email. Indie Polls does also have a hosted page with its own link for when the link motion is what you want, so that case is covered; the reverse is not the shape Tally is built for.

Tally is ahead on form mechanics, and the gap deserves naming precisely rather than skating over. Hidden fields, answer piping and calculated values are three things Tally has and Indie Polls has none of, and they are exactly what you need if a form must carry a value in from the URL, repeat an earlier answer back, or work a number out from the answers. Payments, e-signatures and file uploads are likewise Tally's territory and not this one's. So are a custom domain and a long list of supported languages, both of which Indie Polls lacks today.

What Indie Polls spends its effort on instead is everything after the answer arrives. NPS, CSAT, stars and Likert are scored and charted as scales rather than counted as options. Results break down by the traits your own page passed in, so "detractors are mostly on the old plan" is a filter rather than a hunch. Open text comes back as themes instead of a list to scroll. And one chart carries every survey you have run over three, six or twelve months, which is the difference between collecting submissions and running a measurement programme.

Where they differ

Compared on the things that do not change every quarter. Both tools move their prices; read both pricing pages for those.

Dimension Tally Indie Polls
What it is A form builder, answered through a link or an embed A survey tool that appears inside your product, plus a hosted page of its own
The motion Publish the form, share the link Choose who should be asked, and let the question find them
Opening it Someone follows the link or reaches the embed Automatically by rule, or from your own button or link
Deciding who sees it Anyone with the link Rules on domain, path, visitor traits, device, and an event your page fires
Form mechanics Hidden fields, answer piping, calculations, payments, e-signatures, file uploads None of these. If the form has to compute or collect money, this is the wrong tool
Scored scales Rating and ranking questions NPS, CSAT, stars and Likert, scored and charted as scales
Flow control Conditional logic Branching, plus A/B testing one question two ways
Stopping at enough Form closing rules A response quota, then a redirect to a page of your own
Asking the same person again Not the problem a form solves One account-wide window across every survey
After the answers Responses, exports and integrations Trait breakdowns, AI themes over open text, trends across every survey
Custom domain and languages Both Neither yet
Price shape A free core, then flat plans per workspace No free plan: a seven-day trial of Max, then Pro or Max

Choose Tally if

Tally calls itself the simplest way to create forms: a Notion-like editor, a famously free core with unlimited forms and submissions, and form mechanics that go a long way (logic, calculations, answer piping, hidden fields, payments, e-signatures, file uploads, custom CSS, a custom domain and a long list of languages).

  • You are building a form rather than running a survey: an application, a registration, an order.
  • You need hidden fields, answer piping or calculated values, and Indie Polls has none of them.
  • You need to take a payment, an e-signature or a file upload as part of the submission.
  • Free matters more to you right now than targeting and analysis, which is a perfectly rational place to be, and Tally's free core is the real thing, not a trial.

Choose Indie Polls if

Ten question types, a widget in four shapes, targeting by page, trait, device and event, and the analysis afterwards.

  • You want the question to reach people who would never click a link to a form.
  • You want to choose who is asked: this page, this plan, this device, after this event.
  • You are measuring something over time (NPS, CSAT, satisfaction) rather than collecting submissions.
  • You want the open text read back to you as themes, and every survey on one trend chart.

Moving from Tally

Most people do not switch from Tally to Indie Polls so much as stop using a form for a job it was never meant to do. The tell is a Tally form whose link has been pasted into a banner on your own site, or into an email that says "tell us how we are doing". That is an in-product survey wearing a form's clothes, and it is the one to move.

Keep the rest in Tally. Anything with a payment, a signature, a file upload, a calculation or a hidden field carrying a value through from the URL has no equivalent here, and there is no version of this page where moving it is good advice. Running both tools is a normal end state, not a failure to consolidate.

For the surveys you do move, rebuild rather than export: the question types are close enough that retyping is quicker, and it is the moment to turn that five-option satisfaction question into a real CSAT scale that scores itself. Then pick the shape (a banner for something ambient, a slide-in for something timed, your own button for something the visitor should opt into) and write the targeting rules. Old submissions stay in Tally; export them there.

Common questions

Does Indie Polls have hidden fields or answer piping?
No to both, and no to calculated fields. If your form needs to carry a value in from the URL, repeat an earlier answer back in a later question, or work out a number from the answers, Tally does all three and this does none of them.
Can Indie Polls take a payment, a signature or a file upload?
No, none of the three. A survey here collects answers to its ten question types and nothing else.
Can I still just send someone a link?
Yes. Every survey has a hosted page with its own link, intro and outro screens, an optional name or email, a progress bar and a bot challenge on submission. The link motion is fully supported. It is simply not the only one.
Is there a free plan?
No. There is a seven-day trial of Max with no credit card, then two paid plans. Tally's free core is a genuine advantage if free is what you need, and it would be silly to argue with it.
What is the strongest reason to use Indie Polls over Tally?
Reach and measurement. A form waits to be opened; a targeted widget asks the people you chose, on the page you chose, once. And the answers come back scored, sliceable by the traits your page passed in, and plotted against every other survey you have run.
What does the Indie Polls trial include?
Seven days on Max, which is the whole product: branching, A/B tests, widget targeting by trait, device and event, segment breakdowns, cross-survey trends, AI generation and insights, Slack, Zapier, signed webhooks, the MCP server, custom CSS and white label. No credit card to start it. Afterwards Pro covers the survey workflow with a monthly response allowance and two seats, and Max lifts the response cap and unlocks the rest.
Can I bring my existing responses with me, and get them out again?
Out, yes: every response exports to CSV on Max, and Slack, Zapier and signed webhooks push each one to your own systems the moment it is submitted, with a delivery log and retries behind them. In, no: there is no importer for another tool's response history. A switch starts a fresh set of results rather than moving the old ones, so the usual approach is to keep the old tool's export where it is and start the new survey clean.

See it before you decide

Seven days on Max, so nothing on this page is held back. No credit card required.

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