Choosing a tool
When is Slido enough, and when do you need a whole event hub?
Slido is enough when the audience is already in one room, already knows the running order, and the only thing you need is questions and polls. You need a full event hub when attendees have to make choices: which session, which room, who to meet, what is on after lunch. The dividing line is choice, not audience size.
Slido is genuinely good at its job
Worth saying plainly, because this is published by a competitor: Slido does live Q&A and polling very well. If that is the job, it is a completely reasonable purchase and you should not let anyone talk you out of it.
It is the right call for an all-hands, a single-track seminar, a workshop, a webinar, an AGM with one agenda, or a training day. In every one of those the audience is in one room, the running order is on a slide, and nobody needs to decide where to go next.
Where it stops being enough
The moment your event asks attendees to make choices, a Q&A tool is answering a different question than the one they have. Watch for these:
- More than one track. Now people need a programme they can filter, and a personal agenda.
- More than one day. Day tabs, and something that remembers what someone starred yesterday.
- More than one room. Directions, a floor map, and the answer to "where is KÅwhai Room".
- Sponsors who were sold visibility. They need somewhere to be seen, and you need to prove they were.
- Networking as a selling point. An opt-in contact book, which a polling tool has no reason to offer.
- A programme that changes. Someone drops out at 8:55 and every phone needs to know.
The tell is the registration desk. If people queue up to ask which room something is in, or where lunch is, they needed a programme in their hand and did not have one.
The maths, plainly
The costs are close enough that this is a decision about fit, not budget.
| Option | What it covers | Roughly, in NZD |
|---|---|---|
| Slido, one-time event | Q&A and polls, up to 1,000 or 5,000 participants | $400 to $1,700 |
| Schedule app plus Slido | Programme in one tool, Q&A in another, two invoices | $1,400 and up |
| Foyer Lite | Whole hub plus live Q&A, you build it | $950 + GST |
| Foyer Full Service | Whole hub, polls, word clouds, big screen, built for you | $1,400 + GST |
Slido figures from its published one-time event plans, checked 8 August 2026, converted approximately from USD.
So the real question is not which is cheaper. It is whether you want one tool and one invoice covering the programme as well, or a very good Q&A tool and a separate answer for everything else.
A straight recommendation
If your event is one room, one track, one day, and you only need questions and polls, buy Slido. You will not regret it and Foyer is not a better answer for that shape of event.
If attendees have to choose between sessions, find rooms, or meet each other, you need the hub, and at that point paying for two tools stops making sense. Foyer includes the live layer, so the Q&A you would have bought separately is already there.
Want this shaped to your event?
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