Slido's upvoting feature surfaces the questions your students actually care about, not just the ones from the most vocal participants. It's a live polling and Q&A tool that integrates directly with Zoom and Google Slides — meaning your students never leave the meeting or presentation to participate. The Q&A and polling run together in one place, which makes it particularly useful for course sessions where you want both structured check-ins and open discussion.
What you’ll walk away with:
- Live polls embedded directly in your Zoom sidebar — no tab-switching for students
- A Q&A feature where students upvote questions, surfacing what matters most
- Reusable event templates you can duplicate across cohorts
- Session data showing which concepts need reinforcement
Why Slido works for live course sessions
Most polling tools require students to open a separate browser tab, type in a code, and toggle back and forth between the meeting and the polling interface. That friction is small but real — you lose a few people every time you ask them to switch contexts. Slido's native Zoom integration eliminates this entirely. Polls appear in the Zoom sidebar. Students click a button, submit their response, and stay in the meeting.
The Q&A feature is what sets Slido apart from most competitors. Students can submit questions at any point during the session, and other students can upvote them. By the time you pause for questions, the most pressing topics have already risen to the top. This is more effective than the standard "Does anyone have questions?" moment at the end of a session, which typically produces silence followed by one brave person asking something general.
Slido is owned by Cisco, which acquired it in 2020 to strengthen its Webex ecosystem. That corporate backing means the Zoom and Google Slides integrations are well-maintained and regularly updated. Slido's feature overview details the full range of poll types, Q&A moderation options, and analytics available across plans.
Step-by-step: Running live polls with Slido
Create a Slido event
Sign up at slido.com (free, no credit card required) and click "Create Event." Name it after your session — "Module 5: Live Q&A and Check-In" is more useful than "My Event" when you're running weekly sessions. Set the date and time to match your scheduled call. Each event gets a unique code that students will use to join.
Add poll questions and enable Q&A
Inside your event, click "Add Poll" to create questions. Slido supports multiple choice, word clouds, ratings, open text, and ranking. For a typical course session, start with one or two polls — a multiple choice question to check understanding, and an open text question to surface what students want to discuss. Enable the Q&A feature (it's on by default) so students can submit questions throughout the session.
Connect Slido to Zoom or Google Slides
For Zoom: install the Slido app from the Zoom App Marketplace (one-time setup). Once installed, open any Zoom meeting, click "Apps" in the toolbar, and select Slido. Link your event, and polls will appear in the sidebar for all participants. For Google Slides: install the Slido add-on, then insert polls directly into specific slides in your deck. When you reach that slide during the presentation, the poll activates automatically.
Activate polls during the session
When you're ready to poll, activate the question from the Slido panel. In Zoom, students see it appear in their sidebar immediately — no code entry needed if you connected the event beforehand. Give students about fifteen seconds to respond. The results update live on your screen, and you can choose whether to share them with the group or review them privately first.
Review the Q&A queue and respond
Throughout the session, students can submit questions via the Q&A tab. Other students upvote the questions they also want answered. When you pause for discussion, sort by "Most popular" and address the top-voted questions first. This approach is more democratic than calling on raised hands — quieter students get their questions heard because others can amplify them with an upvote. You can also mark questions as answered or archive them to keep the queue manageable.
Course creator tips
Use the Q&A feature from minute one
Tell students at the start of every session: "If a question comes to mind at any point, drop it in the Slido Q&A — don't wait until the end." This collects questions while they're fresh. By the time you get to the discussion portion, you have a ranked list of what students actually want to talk about, not just what they remember in the moment.
Pair a poll with a discussion, not a lecture
A poll result on its own is just data. The value comes from what you do with it. If 60% of students choose the same answer on a multiple choice question, ask someone from the minority to explain their reasoning. If a word cloud shows "confused" appearing frequently, stop and address it before moving on. The poll gives you a reason to shift the session in real time — use it.
Reuse events across cohorts
If you run the same course multiple times, duplicate your Slido events rather than building them from scratch. The poll questions carry over, but the responses reset. This saves setup time and lets you compare results across cohorts — if Cohort 3 struggles with the same concept as Cohort 1, you know it's a curriculum issue, not a student issue.
Limitations
Free plan has session size and poll limits
Slido's free plan allows 100 participants per event and up to 5 poll questions. For small-group courses and coaching programs, this is typically sufficient. If you run larger sessions or need unlimited polls, paid plans start at $12 per month (billed annually). The jump from free to paid is steeper than some competitors, so evaluate whether the Zoom integration alone justifies the cost for your use case.
Overlaps with Mentimeter
Slido overlaps significantly with Mentimeter, which offers more visual poll types (word clouds, scales with more display options) and a different free-tier structure (2 questions per presentation but unlimited presentations). If your sessions are heavily poll-driven and you want creative visual formats, Mentimeter may be the better fit. Slido's advantage is the combined Q&A-plus-polling workflow and the native Zoom integration — if your sessions are discussion-heavy, that combination is hard to beat.
Google Slides integration only works with Google Slides
The Google Slides integration only works with Google Slides — not PowerPoint, Keynote, or Canva presentations. If your course materials live outside Google's ecosystem, you'll need to use the browser-based Slido panel instead, which still works but loses the automatic activation tied to specific slides.
Frequently asked questions
Is Slido free to use for course sessions?
Slido offers a free plan that supports up to 100 participants per event with 5 poll questions. For most small-group courses, this is enough. If you need unlimited polls or more than 200 participants, paid plans start at $12 per month (billed annually). Cisco acquired Slido in 2020, so the paid tiers now bundle with some Webex features as well.
How does Slido compare to Mentimeter for live course sessions?
Slido and Mentimeter both handle live polling well, but they emphasize different things. Slido combines Q&A and polling in one session — students can upvote each other's questions, which surfaces the most important topics automatically. Mentimeter focuses more on visual response types like word clouds and scales. If your sessions are discussion-heavy and you want students asking questions alongside polls, Slido is the stronger fit. If you want more visual, creative poll formats, Mentimeter has the edge.
Can I use Slido directly inside Zoom without screen sharing a browser?
Yes. Slido has a native Zoom integration that embeds polls and Q&A directly into the Zoom sidebar. You install it once from the Zoom App Marketplace, then activate it from within any Zoom meeting. Students see the polls in their own Zoom sidebar — no separate browser tab needed. This is one of Slido's strongest advantages over other polling tools.
Related guides
- How to Run Live Polls Using Mentimeter — more visual poll types with word clouds and scales
- How to Run Live Course Sessions Using Zoom — set up the live session that Slido integrates with
- How to Create Gamified Quizzes Using Kahoot — game-based quizzes for review sessions
- How to Create Your First Online Course — complete guide from idea to launch
From polls to a complete course experience
Live polling is most effective when it's part of a course structure that students return to week after week — not a standalone novelty. The sessions where engagement stays high are the ones where polls connect to the content students just studied, the Q&A feeds into what you teach next, and everything lives in one coherent place rather than scattered across five different tools.
Ruzuku gives you that single place: host your lessons, schedule live sessions, and build the community that keeps students engaged between calls. No transaction fees, no patchwork of disconnected tools. Start building your course on Ruzuku for free.