TL;DR
Cake Day and Polly are not the same kind of tool. Polly is a Slack-native polling, survey, and pulse-check platform — its sweet spot is structured feedback (eNPS, retro polls, meeting check-ins). Some teams stretch it into ad-hoc kudos or "shoutout of the week" polls, which is how it ends up on a comparison list with Cake Day.
Cake Day is a scheduled celebration tool. It posts a fresh, AI-written shoutout in your celebration channel on the day of every birthday and work anniversary, with no human in the loop.
If your job-to-be-done is "stop missing teammates' birthdays in Slack," Polly will not solve it — it has no native concept of a recurring celebration date. If your job-to-be-done is "run a weekly retro poll," Cake Day is not the tool. Some teams run both.
Quick comparison table
| Feature | Cake Day | Polly |
|---|---|---|
| Primary use case | Birthday + anniversary automation | Polls, surveys, pulse checks |
| Who triggers a post? | Bot (scheduled) | A teammate (manual) or recurring poll |
| Birthday/anniversary tracking | First-class — month/day, start date | Not native — would need a recurring poll workaround |
| AI-personalized messages | Yes — fresh per teammate | No — structured poll text |
| Free tier | 30 celebrations/year, permanent | Limited polls per month (verify current cap) |
| Pricing model | Flat-rate, by celebrations/year | Per-seat at the time of writing |
| Microsoft Teams support | No (Slack only) | Yes |
| Setup time | ~2 minutes | ~5 minutes |
Where Cake Day wins
1. Birthday and anniversary tracking is a first-class object, not a workaround
Cake Day's data model is built around celebration dates. A teammate has a birthday (month + day) and a start date. Every day at the configured post time, the bot checks who has a celebration that day and posts in the configured channel. No one has to remember anything.
In Polly, there's no native object for "a teammate's birthday." To replicate the behavior, an admin would have to author a recurring poll for each teammate's date — which is exactly the spreadsheet problem you were trying to escape.
2. AI-personalized copy beats structured templates for celebrations
Polly is designed around structured responses — that's the product. A poll has a question and answer options; a survey has fields. That structure is great for an eNPS pulse and bad for a birthday shoutout.
Cake Day generates a fresh message per teammate using the first name and the occasion. Every shoutout is different. Your team won't recognize it as a bot until they go check.
3. Privacy posture for celebration data
Cake Day stores month and day only. The database schema has no column for year of birth — by design, not by config. That's defensible to legal in one sentence: we don't collect what we can't justify.
Polly's data model isn't built around birthdays at all, so this isn't really a contest — but if you were considering rolling your own birthday tracking inside Polly's recurring polls, you'd be storing whatever an admin types into the poll text, with no schema-level guarantees.
4. Flat-rate pricing
Cake Day prices by celebrations per year, not by seat. A 50-person team and a 200-person team on the Growth plan pay the same. Polly is per-seat at the time of writing — verify on their pricing page — which means a growing roster grows the bill.
Where Polly wins
1. It's the right tool for polls and pulse checks
If you actually need polls, surveys, eNPS, retro questions, or recurring meeting check-ins, Polly is purpose-built for that and Cake Day cannot do any of it. This isn't really a competition; it's two different shelves.
2. Microsoft Teams support
Polly works in both Slack and Microsoft Teams at the time of writing. Cake Day is Slack-only and we don't plan a Teams version. If your company is on Teams (or splitting between both), Polly travels and Cake Day doesn't.
3. Mature feature surface for structured feedback
Polly has been in the Slack-and-Teams space for years and has a deep feature set for survey logic, anonymous responses, response analytics, and integrations. Cake Day is a single-purpose tool for celebrations and intentionally does not try to compete on survey breadth.
When to pick which
Choose Cake Day if:
- Your problem is "we keep missing teammates' birthdays and anniversaries."
- You want messages that feel personal, not template-driven.
- You want flat-rate pricing that doesn't grow with headcount.
- You care about minimizing celebration-data PII (no year of birth).
Choose Polly if:
- Your problem is polls, surveys, eNPS, or recurring pulse checks.
- You're on Microsoft Teams or splitting between Teams and Slack.
- You need anonymous response collection for HR or research.
Run both if: you want birthdays/anniversaries automated and a separate cadence for structured feedback. They use different Slack scopes, post in different patterns, and don't conflict.
Pricing comparison (snapshot)
Cake Day pricing as of 2026-05-07:
- Free — 30 celebrations/year, 2 admins, 1 channel, permanent
- Starter — $19/mo, 150 celebrations/year, 3 admins, separate channels
- Growth — $49/mo, 500 celebrations/year, unlimited admins, custom GIFs
- Pro — $99/mo, unlimited celebrations, custom AI prompts and branding
See Cake Day pricing for the full breakdown. Polly is per-seat at the time of writing — check their site for current rates and free-plan caps.
How to switch (or add Cake Day alongside Polly)
If you've been faking birthday tracking inside Polly with recurring polls and want to move to a real celebration tool:
- Export your dates — copy the month/day and start dates from whichever Polly poll or spreadsheet you've been using.
- Install Cake Day at cakeday.io — about two minutes via Slack OAuth.
- Pick the channel and post time — same channel you've been using is fine.
- Import the roster via CSV (Starter plan and up) or invite teammates to add their own dates with
/cakeday me. - Pause the recurring Polly polls — keep Polly for what it's actually good at.
- Run a preview —
/cakeday test @yourselfto see what a real shoutout looks like before the first live post.
Total switch time: under 30 minutes for a 100-person team.