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I plan a shit-ton of events and have exclusively used Doodle for polling/scheduling for many years but after their recent updates it's become a flaming garbage pile. I even bought into their "Pro" subscription hoping some of the previous functionality would be restored with a paid account, but nope, still terrible. I've been looking for a Doodle alternative without much luck... does anyone have suggestions for a scheduling/polling app that doesn't suck? I will happily pay for a decent service provider, it doesn't need to be free.
Anecdotally, when requesting a refund for Doodle's useless upgrade they asked if I had any feedback about functionality and I ended up writing an entire dissertation (hah), so I'll share those comments here in case someone out there can use these suggestions to make an app that's actually useful -
Text polls. Doodle used to offer text polls which were extremely useful, but is now limited to specific dates and times only. Please please please return the option for a simple, text-only poll. (ie. “For the group lunch would you prefer: Bob’s Burgers or Crabby Patties”). I find myself having to use Slack, SurveyMonkey or Google Forms for what should be a very simple polling task. You’re losing customers over this lost feature, I guarantee it.
Event Host as optional attendee. As the event organizer, I do not want to be automatically included in the poll results. I frequently need to poll large numbers of attendees for group meetings, but I do not personally attend them. It is misleading to include me and throws off the final headcount.
Edit/Delete Responses. As the event organizer, I need more control over the submitted replies. Previously I was able to remove and edit attendees replies which was absolutely essential to managing group polls. Often times attendees (ie. busy Professors) send me their updated availability by email (or a off the cuff conversation) so I need the ability to reflect these changes manually in the doodle if it is to remain accurate and thus useful. Also, polled attendees have a difficult time managing their own replies since they cant update/remove an earlier entry.
Doodle specific complaints -
Scrolling the entire poll. Why, oh why, would you make it MORE difficult to see the entire poll at a glance? Please return the one-click-expansion-arrow and scrolling ability to view all polling options. I have frequent issues with invited attendees missing/overlooking options for dates beyond the first page.
Archive. I would like the option to archive past polls, rather than delete them, so that they are removed from my dashboard when no longer needed/active. This is especially useful for events where we couldn’t reach a consensus on a date, thus “book it” wouldn’t be an appropriate solution but still want to retain the polling information.
Duplicate a poll. When copying a poll it should copy over the previously selected dates and times. Currently it seems only the event title is copied which is not useful whatsoever, I can easily type the title again, but choosing carefully selected times over several months? That is tedious task and quickly copying those over to a new poll would be extremely useful.