UT Instapoll review
A focused, free polling tool for Canvas instructors who need attendance and live responses.
Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026
UT Instapoll is a free classroom-response system from the University of Texas at Austin. It is designed for faculty and students in live classes, with tools for sending polls, collecting responses, displaying aggregate results, grading selected polls, and taking attendance. Its core formats are multiple-choice, text-entry, and attendance polls, making it a practical fit for instructors who want quick participation checks without a paid plan.
The strongest case for UT Instapoll is its focused classroom workflow. Instructors can set a poll runtime and countdown timer, then present results as tables, bar charts, or pie charts. Text responses can appear in tables or word clouds, while grading modes support normal, participation, and review use cases. Attendance polling adds a specific classroom task that many general polling tools do not center. This makes UT Instapoll well suited to live instruction where response collection, discussion prompts, and attendance need to happen in one browser-based tool.
Canvas integration is the other defining consideration. UT Austin teachers can install the tool in Canvas courses, and it can report grades automatically to the Canvas gradebook. That connection is useful for instructors who already organize coursework in Canvas and want poll activity reflected there. The trade-off is scope: UT Instapoll is web-only, and its documented Canvas workflow is tied to UT Austin teaching contexts. Instructors seeking broader platform coverage, more interaction formats, or a wider ecosystem should look elsewhere. Choose UT Instapoll for free, focused live polling and attendance in a compatible Canvas classroom; avoid it when mobile apps, extensive question variety, or cross-platform deployment are priorities.
UT Instapoll pros and cons
- Where it wins
- Free live polling with multiple-choice, text, and attendance formats
- Canvas grade reporting connects selected poll results to the gradebook
- Charts, tables, word clouds, timers, and flexible grading modes
- Where it doesn't
- Web-only access limits classroom use to browser-based workflows
- Question and interaction formats are narrower than broader response systems
- Canvas installation is documented for University of Texas at Austin teachers
UT Instapoll fact sheet, pricing and score →
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