We've never been completely happy with how we have implemented these durations, and we are tweaking it a bit to hopefully make it better and less confusing for our customers. Here is a table that summarizes the changes:
| Before | Now | |
|---|---|---|
| Free Duration | 2 | 1 |
| Paid Duration | 12 | 10 |
| Change on Voting Start | None | Duration resets to start of election or poll |
We'll explain this in more detail. Free duration is for people who have never made a payment to OpaVote, and paid duration is for people who have made at least one payment. By making a single payment of $10, all of your elections qualify for paid duration. Further, the $10 you paid can be applied to increase the limits on an election. Pretty good deal for $10.
The key change is that durations now reset when you start voting.
Before, your election would last 12 weeks, but if you started voting 11 weeks after creating your election, you would only have 1 week left. Some of our customers found this confusing and frustrating.
Now, your election can last 10 weeks, but if you start voting after 9 weeks, you now have 10 more weeks to finish your election!
Although we've slightly decreased the durations, we hope that resetting the duration when you start voting more than makes up for it.
If you need your election duration to last longer than what we've described above, then the next step is to extend your election by a year, and we charge another $50 for this per election. For now, if you need this extra duration, send us an email and we'll take care of it. In the near future, we'll have buttons on the management console to allow you to do this your self.
These changes are not retroactive so any elections that existed before today won't have their durations change. One exception is that if you created an election before today and now start voting, then your election will be under the new duration rules after you start voting (10 weeks from voting start). The expiration date on the console will always be accurate. If this causes a problem for you, let us know and we'll fix it.
All of the above applies to both our Elections and Polls. Since Counts don't have a voting stage, the duration will be based on the creation of the Count and won't ever reset.
We hope you like this change, and please feel free to provide us feedback on this change or about any other aspects of our services.