Slido

Slido (a Cisco company) is the dominant audience-engagement platform for live events, meetings, and panels, and it's increasingly the default tool podcasters reach for when running live-Q&A episodes, on-stage podcast recordings, or virtual listener AMAs. The free Basic plan supports 100 participants per session with polls and basic Q&A — enough for indie shows running occasional live events.

The Engage plan at $150/year unlocks more polls and quizzes, Q&A moderation, custom branding, and exportable reports. Professional unlocks 1,000 participants, unlimited polls and quizzes, and moderated Q&A.

Enterprise pushes to 5,000+ participants at $1,800/year. Killer feature: Q&A upvoting — audience members submit questions, the rest of the audience votes, and the most-upvoted questions float to the top, which means hosts address what the room actually wants answered instead of the loudest person.

Native integrations with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Webex mean you can run Slido as an overlay during virtual events without switching tabs. For podcast use — live show pre-recording with audience Q&A, virtual AMAs, panel-format recordings — Slido is the established choice.

Downsides: paid plans are annual-only (no monthly), Q&A moderation is paywalled (which matters because un-moderated Q&A can go sideways), and enterprise pricing scales aggressively. First-time purchases include a 30-day money-back guarantee on annual plans, which softens the commitment.