Mentimeter adds interactivity to a presenter's slides — the audience responds, results appear, the talk continues. DiBL replaces the slide deck with a facilitated experience — branching scenarios where choices have consequences, groups split and debate, and the facilitator orchestrates the flow. Mentimeter enhances a presentation. DiBL is the session. Mentimeter — used by more than 200 million people worldwide — has earned its place because it disappears into whatever session you are already running. A keynote speaker drops in a poll. A lecturer adds a word cloud. A manager includes a rating scale in their team meeting. The audience responds on their phones, results animate on screen, and the presenter carries on. It makes one-way communication feel two-way — and it does so with almost zero setup friction. DiBL works differently because it is designed for a different job. Instead of augmenting someone else's presentation, DiBL is the session itself. A facilitator opens a scenario, participants make choices on their devices, those choices trigger branching paths, groups split based on their decisions, and the facilitator brings them back together for a structured debrief. There is no PowerPoint behind it — the six content types (dilemmas, brainstorms, presentations, quizzes, simulations, surveys) are the building blocks of the experience. This is why the two tools rarely compete for the same slot in a programme — and why trainers searching for a Mentimeter alternative for corporate training often land here. Mentimeter belongs in the keynote. DiBL belongs in the workshop. And the research supports the distinction: large-scale meta-analyses across both STEM disciplines and humanities and social sciences consistently show that active, decision-driven learning outperforms passive content delivery. You build a slide deck. Some slides are content, some are interactive (polls, word clouds, Q&A). The audience sees each slide in sequence. Responses are collected and visualised, then you move on. The interaction supplements the content. Results are the endpoint — you see the distribution, the presenter comments, and the session continues. You build a learning flow. Participants face dilemmas, make choices, and those choices determine what happens next. Groups can be split by their answers, assigned roles, or given different information. The interaction drives the content. A response is a starting point — it triggers a branch, a debate, a consequence that shapes the rest of the experience. When Novonesis formed from the merger of two large companies, they needed every employee to engage with the new shared culture — not just read about it. The traditional approach might be a Mentimeter session inside a town hall: poll slides on "Which of our new values resonates most?", a word cloud, a rating scale on how confident people feel. Collect the data, share the visualisation, move on. Instead, DiBL was embedded into a manager-led workshop format. Team leaders use DiBL to guide their teams through a focused session where employees don't just respond to culture statements — they submit and share personal commitments live with their team. The facilitator controls the flow, the conversation happens in the room, and the session produces something concrete: individual commitments tied to the new culture, visible to the team. The data doesn't stop there. Each session's commitment data is immediately available as a summary the team leader can share and revisit later. And across all sessions company-wide, the aggregate data feeds into management's view of how the culture adoption is progressing — turning a one-off workshop into an ongoing input for the transformation process. This is the kind of experience that starts in the same place as a Mentimeter poll — "what do you think about our values?" — but ends somewhere a poll cannot reach: personal commitment, team accountability, and organisation-wide data that accumulates over time. Both tools turn passive audiences into active participants — the difference is what happens after the response. Mentimeter features based on publicly available product information as of early 2026. Mentimeter is faster to set up, easier to learn, and better at making any existing presentation interactive. Its on-the-fly editing — adding or rearranging questions mid-session — is genuinely useful for presenters who like to improvise. If you need audience responses inside a talk you are already giving, Mentimeter is the more practical choice. If you are looking for tools like Mentimeter but with deeper facilitation mechanics, DiBL exists for the sessions where the interaction is the point, not an addition to it. Most organisations that use both give Mentimeter to their presenters and DiBL to their trainers. DiBL also gives you full branding control — your colours, logo, and visual identity carry the experience, so participants see your organisation's brand, not a third-party tool. The only platform elements visible are the navigation footer and the URL. A speaker addressing 500 people who wants a live word cloud or poll to break up a one-way talk. Quick pulse checks during a CEO update. Scale questions, anonymous Q&A, instant visibility. A professor pausing to gauge understanding before continuing. The poll supplements the lecture. Post-session rating scales and open-ended feedback collected in real time with nice visualisations. Quickly collecting ideas from a group and displaying them as a word cloud. Low-friction, no prep. Facilitating scenarios where regulations conflict with reality. Teams split by their choices, then debate why the room divided 60/40. Moving beyond "read the values deck" to sessions where employees make personal commitments and see how their team aligns. See Novonesis above. Participants weighing competing priorities — economic growth vs environmental impact, short-term cost vs long-term risk — where there is no single right answer. New hires navigating their first difficult customer interaction — making choices, seeing consequences, and debriefing with the team on what they would do differently. Multi-round experiences where managers make decisions with competing priorities, track accumulated consequences, and debrief as a group. Want to see how a facilitated scenario compares to a presentation with polls? If you are evaluating Mentimeter, you have probably also come across Slido. Now part of Cisco Webex, Slido covers the same ground: live polls, Q&A, word clouds, and quizzes embedded in presentations. It also integrates natively with Microsoft Teams, which makes it a natural fit for organisations already in that ecosystem. The comparison to DiBL is the same as with Mentimeter. Slido adds interaction to a talk — the audience responds, results are displayed, the presenter moves on. It does not support branching scenarios, group role assignment, variable tracking, or facilitator-controlled learning flows. If you are choosing between Mentimeter and Slido, the deciding factor is usually ecosystem and pricing. If you are choosing between either of them and DiBL, the question is whether you need to enhance a presentation or build a standalone learning experience. Is DiBL a replacement for Mentimeter? Not directly. Mentimeter is a presentation add-on — it makes talks interactive with polls, word clouds, and Q&A. DiBL is a standalone facilitation platform for building learning experiences with branching scenarios, group dynamics, and accumulated consequences. Some organisations use Mentimeter for keynotes and all-hands, and DiBL for training workshops. They serve different sessions. Can DiBL do polls and word clouds like Mentimeter? DiBL includes surveys, brainstorms, and quizzes — but they work differently. In Mentimeter, a poll is a standalone slide. In DiBL, a poll can trigger a branch, split participants into groups, or feed into a variable that accumulates across the session. The building blocks overlap, but what you can do with them is quite different. Does Mentimeter support branching or scenarios? No. Mentimeter follows a linear slide sequence — each question or content slide follows the previous one in order. There is no branching logic, no consequence tracking, and no way for audience responses to change the direction of the session. This is intentional: Mentimeter is optimised for simplicity and presentation flow. Which is easier to learn? Mentimeter is easier to start with. You can create a poll or word cloud in under a minute, and the audience joins with a simple code. DiBL's basic activities — a quiz, a brainstorm, a survey — are similarly quick to set up, especially with the built-in page templates that cover common formats out of the box. But DiBL's full power — branching scenarios, variable tracking, group role assignment — requires more time for didactical and design investment. The trade-off is that DiBL enables experiences Mentimeter cannot create. Can I use DiBL for self-paced learning too? Yes. DiBL supports both facilitated live sessions and self-paced delivery of the same content. A scenario designed for a workshop can also be published as a standalone self-paced experience. Build your first branching scenario in minutes, or book a walkthrough to see how DiBL works with your training content.
Mentimeter makes talks interactive.
What if the session is the learning?
By Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen, PhD · 25 years in learning design and educational technology · April 2026
The low-down
The presentation add-on vs the standalone experience
Two different design philosophies
Mentimeter's approach
DiBL's approach
Case example
From a culture poll to a team commitment: Novonesis
Feature-by-feature comparison
Mentimeter
DiBL
Core model
Slide deck with embedded audience response — polls, word clouds, Q&A alongside content slides
Facilitated learning flow with branching scenarios and multiple content types
After a response
Results displayed, presenter moves to next slide
Choices trigger branches, group splits, consequences, and facilitator-led discussion
Branching
Not supported — linear slide sequence
Full branching with variables, conditional paths, and accumulated consequences
Group dynamics
Everyone answers the same questions individually
Groups can be split by answers, assigned different roles, or given asymmetric information
Facilitator control
Pace control, hide/reveal results. Flexible on-the-fly editing
Group management, reveal timing, discussion triggers, response highlighting, real-time flow control
Content creation
Very fast — add a poll in seconds. Huge template library. Easy to improvise during a live session
Quick for basic activities. Branching scenarios require more time for didactical and design investment
Session role
Supplements a talk — 5–15 min of interaction inside a 30–60 min presentation
Is the session — 10 min to 2+ hours of continuous facilitated experience
Branding
Mentimeter branding visible throughout. Limited customisation on free/basic plans
Full branding control — your colours, logo, imagery, and tone carry the experience. Only the navigation footer and URL remain platform-styled
Self-paced option
Mentimeter surveys can be shared async
Same content publishable as facilitated or self-paced
Best for
Keynotes, all-hands meetings, lectures, event feedback, quick pulse checks
Training workshops, leadership development, compliance, change management, facilitated learning
Where Mentimeter wins
Where each tool fits
Mentimeter is the better choice for...
Conference keynotes
All-hands updates
Lecture check-ins
Event feedback
Team brainstorms
DiBL is the better choice for...
Ethics and compliance workshops
Culture and values onboarding
Sustainability and policy trade-offs
Customer service scenario training
Leadership and stakeholder simulations
A note on Slido
Common questions
Move from polling to facilitated learning
