In this article:
What is Audience Size?
‘Audience size’ is the maximum number of responses that can be received per activity. Limits are determined by your Poll Everywhere plan - For example:
- Intro Plan → 40 responses per activity
- Engage Plan → 700 responses per activity
- Learn more about our plans here.
Tip: Purchase a plan with an “audience size” greater than the number of people who will respond.
How Responses Are Counted
Audience size is calculated by each independent response submitted to an individual activity. Hitting the response limit is not determined by how many participants you have in your audience. For example:
- A Q&A activity where one participant submits 2 questions → Counts as 2 responses toward your audience size limit.
- A Survey with 8 questions → Each question has its response limit (e.g., a 40-response limit applies per question, not the entire survey).
Note: For Survey and Competition activities, they allow more than 1 question to be presented. The response per poll is limited to each individual question in the Survey or Competition - not the whole activity. For example, if the Survey has 8 questions listed, then each of the 5 questions would have 40 responses as the limit.
Most of our activities allow participants to respond only once unless you choose to override the default. You can set a response limit on your participants in the Configure panel on the right side of your activity slide. Read more here.
What Happens When You Reach the Limit?
- Once the response limit is hit, the poll locks and stops collecting responses.
Let's say you're on a plan that includes a 40 maximum audience size. The 41st response (assuming you haven't cleared responses) submitted will show the participant who submitted it a message saying:
- Participants who attempt to respond after the limit will see:
"This poll is full and cannot accept more responses."
- This message cannot be disabled—we want to ensure participants are aware if their response was not received.
Purchasing a plan with a larger audience size will not give you access to responses that were submitted over your previous limit. Once a poll is locked due to a response limit, additional responses are not accepted and therefore cannot be retrieved retroactively. If you wish to collect responses on the same activity with your upgraded plan, simply deactivate and then reactivate the same activity to start collecting more responses.
Final Tips
- Plan Ahead: Choose a plan with an audience size that fits your needs.
- Monitor Responses: Keep an eye on response counts to avoid disruptions.
- Customize Response Limits: Configure settings to control how many responses each participant can submit.