Public poll vs private team poll: the features that separate them
The most important question to ask about any online poll maker: can I control who votes? If the answer is no, it's a public tool, not a team tool, regardless of what the marketing says.
Audience control is the foundational requirement for a private team poll, and it determines nearly everything else. A tool that can't restrict voting to invited participants can't guarantee anonymity (because you don't know who's in the pool), can't send reminders (because you don't have an invite list), and can't produce a result that represents your team specifically. Vote restriction, the ability to send the poll to named participants and close it to everyone else, is the line between a team tool and a public tool.
Beyond audience control, the five features that separate a team-grade poll from a public one are: result timing (hidden until the poll closes, to prevent live anchoring), option descriptions (full context, not just labels), anonymous mode for candid input, automatic reminders to non-voters, and a decision archive that persists after the poll ends. Public poll makers typically offer one or two of these; tools built for team decisions offer all five.
A practical framework for choosing: use public poll makers for gathering broad opinions from an undefined audience, website feedback, community votes, social media polls. Use a team decision tool for any choice that a specific group of people will act on, needs to be documented, or involves sensitive enough topics that honesty requires anonymity.