Polldaddy Vs. WP-Polls

Apr30
by on April 30, 2010 at 8:38 pm and modified on July 25, 2014. at 9:28 am
Posted In: Wordpress

If you’re interested in having a polling system on your site like I am then you would probably want to know what you’re getting yourself into.  This comparison is based on my own requirement for a poll.  As always, make your own determination.

Polldaddy

Pros:

  • A bunch of different skins pre-made.

Cons:

  • No widget available, have to paste in script code in a text widget (or use inside a post with shortcode), which gets stripped out if using MultiSite if using the text widget and your not the system admin status.  This limits to where you can use it on your site.
  • Increases external calls and dom elements.
  • Hardcoded CSS elements, and a large amount of classes in classes.
  • If your servers connection to the polldaddy server goes down, polldaddy is down and increases load times.
  • Cannot add links to options for references.

WP-Polls

Pros:

  • Can set it to only allow logged in users vote.   Integration ftw.
  • Widget available to handle which poll you want to use, multiple polls can be made by adding more widgets.
  • CSS Elements are thorough enough for anyone to create their own skins.
  • Local elements including database connection keeps your load times lower since your not waiting for another server to respond.

Cons:

  • No preset skins available, have to create your own.
  • Cannot add links to references within the options to pick as your choice.

References (YSlow):
Polldaddy
WP-Polls

Taking the reference files for Frumph.NET with Yslow Frumph.NET has:

With WP-Polls

  • 10 External JS
  • 5 External Stylesheets
  • 8 External backgrounds
  • 38 HTTP Request, 33 Cached.

With Polldaddy:

  • 12 External JS
  • 4 External Stylesheets
  • 11 External BGs
  • Increases DNS Lookups by 4
  • Increase DOM Elements to pass over 1000 giving warning.
  • 44 HTTP Request, 32 cached.

As you can see using Polldaddy even though using an outside external server will increase your page load time by a bit as well as the render time of your site.

One of the arguments is that if you use Polldaddy that it can handle a larger load of users using.  Unfortunate that this requires you to use ‘their site’ as the poll location.  You lose the page view sending someone to another site along with any resemblence of having that poll being really attached to whatever your site’s content is.

If a site is getting that much traffic to make a difference with the load on the SQL server for WP-Polls then that site probably already has better then shared hosting and it can handle it.

– Phil (Frumph)

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