vote.direct vs ElectionBuddy

Both charge a flat fee per election, and which is cheaper depends on your size: vote.direct is free up to 25 voters, then $4.99 to 50 voters and $19.99 for a 200-voter election, against ElectionBuddy's $29 for anything from 21 to 350 voters (free below 21), so ElectionBuddy is the cheaper option between roughly 200 and 350 voters and vote.direct is free or cheaper at most other sizes. Verification is the other difference: every paid vote.direct election includes SMS and can add government ID at $3.00 per voter, and ElectionBuddy publishes neither.

At most sizes, yes. Both charge a flat fee per election and both run small elections free: ElectionBuddy up to 20 voters, vote.direct up to 25. Above that, vote.direct is $4.99 to 50 voters and $19.99 for a 200-voter election, against ElectionVote's $29 for anything from 21 to 350, so ElectionBuddy is cheaper between about 200 and 350 voters and more expensive at most sizes in between and above. Prices checked on ElectionBuddy's pricing page in August 2026.

No. ElectionBuddy supports email and access-code verification, but does not offer government-issued ID checks. vote.direct offers a $3.00 per voter government ID add-on, which scans a real ID document to confirm voter identity — the level of assurance that matters for contested boards, recall votes, and elections likely to be challenged.

You cannot migrate a live election, but you can switch platforms between elections. vote.direct requires no long-term contract or subscription, so you can try it for your next election with nothing to cancel. Export your voter list, build the ballot on vote.direct, and send the invitations.

Yes. Both platforms provide audit trails. vote.direct additionally records which verification method proved each voter's identity, issues timestamped voter certificates, and exports a compliance record built for an inspector of elections or a court file.

ElectionBuddy has been in the market longer and has run elections for thousands of organizations. vote.direct is newer, which shows up as government ID verification, mailed ballots tallied alongside online votes, published pricing, and a faster setup — features the older platforms have not adopted.

No subscription is required on vote.direct: it is flat-rate per election — free up to 25 voters, then from $4.99 — and you are charged once, when you publish. ElectionBuddy offers plan-based and per-election pricing, but most features require a plan. For one or two elections a year, paying per election is materially cheaper.

vote.direct publishes this comparison and sells one of the products in it, so read it as a vendor making its case rather than as independent research. Everything below about a competitor was read off that company's own public pricing and documentation pages in August 2026, and where a competitor is the better choice this page says so and says why. Competitors change their pricing and features without notice. If you work at one of these companies, or you are a customer who finds something here that is out of date or wrong, email [email protected] and it will be corrected.

vote.direct has 6 public third-party reviews: one on Capterra and 5 on Trustpilot, all of them 5 out of 5. Trustpilot's profile displays a TrustScore of 4.1 rather than 5.0, even though its own histogram reads 100% five-star, because a TrustScore is a weighted average that starts a new profile near 3.7 and only moves to the real mean as reviews accumulate. Both numbers are honest; that one is theirs and we do not get to change it. 6 reviews is not a track record either, and no board should choose a voting platform on the strength of it. ElectionBuddy, Simply Voting, and OpaVote have all been running elections far longer and have the independent reviews to show for it. If review volume is your deciding factor, they win it outright and this page will not talk you out of that. What we can do is show you every review we have in full, including the parts that are critical of us, and link them so you can confirm we did not edit them. Both halves of that come from the same fact: vote.direct is small and founder-run. It is why there are only 6 public reviews, and it is why you can get the founder on the phone. A large organization buying on vendor track record should weigh the first. A volunteer board that needs a real person when a vote is live on a Sunday should weigh the second. Which matters more is a judgment this page cannot make for you.

What vote.direct has instead of a review history is direct access. The support number, (512) 222-8191, reaches the founder, Oday Brahem, who is also the engineer who builds the product. Call it, text it, or email, any day of the week including weekends, and the reply comes from the person who can change the software rather than from a first-line queue that has to escalate to find out whether something is possible.

vote.direct is operated by Syft8, Inc. and is 100% owned by its founder, Oday Brahem, with no outside investors. Who owns a voting platform is worth knowing before you trust it with an election, so this one is on the record: the person who owns the company is the person who builds the software and answers (512) 222-8191. The founder has a name and a checkable record: Oday Brahem, based in Vancouver, BC, Canada, spent eight years in regulated enterprise software at Collabware and VersaFile — QA engineering on a product serving US federal customers under FedRAMP High controls, then customer success, then sales engineering — and served as an intelligence operator in the Canadian Armed Forces reserves. He builds vote.direct and answers its support line himself: there is no call center and no outsourced support team, so the person who picks up is the owner and the engineer. Background with sources: https://vote.direct/about/oday-brahem

If vote.direct does not yet offer a capability and you cannot find it elsewhere in the market, call or text the founder. When the requirement fits secure, compliant elections, the same team that hears it will work with you to understand it, design and build the capability, and support its rollout. We want to earn your business by closing that gap, not by asking you to settle for a fixed feature list. Scope, timing, and cost are agreed before custom work begins.