Rallly

What Rallly does

Rallly replaces the classic Doodle poll. The organizer gives the meeting a title, picks candidate dates on a calendar (or draws time slots in a week view), and shares the link. Participants open it and mark each option Yes, If need be or No; they do not need an account. Times are converted to each viewer’s time zone unless the organizer locks them. An availability grid shows everyone’s answers at once, and people can leave comments on the poll.

When enough people have answered, the organizer clicks Finalize. Rallly lists the options from most to least popular, lets you choose who to notify, emails calendar invites, closes the poll and, if a video provider is connected, creates the meeting link at that moment. Supported providers are Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Webex (from version 4.16.0).

Rallly is about finding a date for a group. It does not publish a personal booking page where strangers can grab a slot; for that, see Cal.diy or Tymeslot.

Licensing and self-hosting license keys

The code is under AGPLv3 or any later version, and the repository has no proprietary directory. The project’s licensing page adds a commercial layer for self-hosters: a single-user instance is free, and if you run a multi-user setup “we ask that you purchase a license key”. Tiers cover up to 5, up to 50 and more than 50 registered users. Guest voters do not count.

User limits work on an honor system: an instance over its limit keeps working and shows a reminder. Spaces, the team workspaces added in version 4.3.0, have member seat limits per tier, and the free tier cannot invite space members. Activating a key requires the server to reach licensing.rallly.co.

Self-hosting Rallly

The current self-hosted edition is installed with the Rallly CLI, which downloads a Docker Compose stack to /opt/rallly, asks for your domain and SMTP details and generates secrets. The stack bundles Traefik for automatic Let’s Encrypt certificates, the app, PostgreSQL and Garage for S3-compatible file storage; you can swap any of them for your own proxy, managed Postgres or an S3 service. The documented requirements are a server with at least 2 GB of RAM, Docker 19.03+ with Compose v2, ports 80 and 443, a domain and an SMTP provider (the docs advise a transactional email service rather than your own mail server).

Admins can close registration, restrict sign-up to listed email addresses and enable SSO through Google, Microsoft Entra ID or any OpenID Connect provider. Each video provider needs an OAuth app that you register yourself.

The self-hosted edition differs from the cloud in a few ways: there is no limit on open polls, but the Rallly REST API is served only by Rallly Cloud, and billing and quota code is compiled out.

Hosted version

Rallly Cloud at rallly.co lets guests create a poll without signing up, with one open poll at a time. The free Hobby plan allows three open polls and the paid Pro plan removes the limit. On non-Pro accounts, polls are deleted once all their dates are past and there has been no activity for 30 days.

Limitations

According to its FAQ, Rallly cannot set a voting deadline or cap the number of participants per option. The API is cloud-only, and multi-user self-hosting comes with a license request, even if it is not enforced. If you already run Nextcloud, Nextcloud Polls adds anonymous modes, hidden results and vote limits without another server.

Who it suits

Rallly fits clubs, associations, schools and teams that organize meetings with people outside their organization and want a clean, ad-free poll that anyone can answer from a link. It is the closest open source match to Doodle’s group polls; the Doodle alternatives page compares it with the other options.