Audience Response System Rental, Run For You by Padgett

Rent a complete audience response system and a technician who runs it on site, so your live polling works the first time and every time.

When you search for an audience response system rental, you usually have one real question behind it: will this work in front of a live room? Padgett Communications answers that question by renting you more than hardware. Every rental comes with a technician on site who sets up, tests, and runs the system for you. You bring the audience. We bring the keypads, the software, and the person who makes the polling work.

We have done audience response, and only audience response, since 1994. That is more than 30 years focused on one thing: getting live results off a room full of keypads and onto the screen without a hitch. In that time we have run more than 10,000 events for associations, corporations, and Fortune 500 companies across the United States and around the world. Learn more about what an audience response system is if you are new to the technology.

What an Audience Response System Rental Includes

Every Padgett rental is a full package, not a box of equipment left at the door:

• Wireless keypads for your audience, tested before the doors open
• A base station and the polling software, set up and connected to your presentation
• A trained technician on site to run the system live and handle anything that comes up
• Pre-event planning to match the right setup to your meeting
• Rehearsal and coordination with your program and AV team

The difference between a rental that works and one that goes sideways is rarely the hardware. It is having someone in the room who has done this thousands of times. That person is included every time you rent from us, and you can read more about our on-site management approach.

What You Can Do with a Rental

An audience response system fits a wide range of live events. Rent one to:

• Run market research or gather live feedback. Ask the room a question and see the answers chart on screen in seconds.
• Train employees and test retention. Turn a lecture into a two-way session and measure what people actually absorbed.
• Hold a board election or association vote. Capture secure, anonymous ballots and produce verified results on the spot. See our elections and voting solutions.
• Collect honest input on a sensitive topic. Anonymous keypad responses get you candor that a show of hands never will.
• Add an interactive game. Keep a room engaged with live competition and instant scoring.

Whatever the use, the core experience is the same: people answer on a handheld keypad, and the results appear on screen right away.

Clicker Rentals and How Clicker Polling Works

Many people call an audience response system a “clicker” system, and that is exactly what a Padgett rental gives you: a handheld clicker for every attendee. The setup is simple from the audience’s side. Each person holds a clicker, a question appears on screen, and they press a key to answer. Behind the scenes, the clickers send responses over a dedicated radio channel to a base station connected to the presenter’s computer. The software tallies the votes and can chart them live for the room or store them for reporting afterward. Nothing depends on venue Wi-Fi, and there is no app to install.

The Keypad You’ll Be Renting

Every rental is built around the Padgett Plus, our wireless voting keypad. It is a rugged, single-purpose device that does one job reliably: register a vote and send it to the base station over a secure, dedicated radio channel. It handles simple multiple-choice questions and more involved prompts alike, with login capability when a session needs to track responses to individual participants and run more detailed analysis.

Because it runs on dedicated RF rather than Wi-Fi or cellular, there is no app to install and nothing to drop mid-session. We hold roughly 14,000 keypads in inventory, so we can equip an audience of almost any size and still bring backups.

What It Costs to Rent

Audience response rental pricing depends on a few things: how many keypads you need, how many days you need them, and how much on-site support your event calls for. Because every event is different, we quote each one individually and itemize it, so you see exactly what you are paying for with no hidden costs.

To start a quote, tell us your event date, your expected audience size, and what you want the polling to do. We will come back with a clear, detailed price for your event.

Why Rent from Padgett

Renting hardware is easy. Making sure it works flawlessly in front of a live audience is the hard part, and it is the part we handle. Here is what sets a Padgett rental apart:

• We run it, you don’t. A technician operates the system on site so you can focus on your event, not the software.
• One focus since 1994. Audience response is all we do, and we have done it for more than 30 years.
• Trusted at the highest level. Our clients include Fortune 500 companies and organizations that cannot afford a failed vote.
• Dedicated, reliable hardware. No apps, no Wi-Fi dependence, no dropped connections mid-session.
• Backups for everything. Extra keypads, extra receivers, and a plan for the unexpected come standard.

See how a Padgett event comes together on our how it works page, then reach out for a detailed, itemized quote.

Rentals We’ve Run

The best way to understand what a staffed rental gives you is to see it at work. Here are three recent events, each a different kind of challenge.

A national sorority’s biennial convention

When a national sorority holds its biennial convention, thousands of delegates gather for several days of registration followed by days of voting on bylaws and leadership. For one such event, we equipped more than 3,500 voting delegates and handled the full logistics of getting a device into the right hands and back again. We scanned event badges and keypads by barcode so every device was accounted for from checkout to return, and our team worked the room in advance to place equipment where the signal would be strongest. The client told us the distribution and collection ran noticeably faster than they were used to for an event of that size, which for a multi-day convention is the difference between sessions that start on time and sessions that don’t.

A national church denomination’s triennial convention

A national church body holds a triennial convention where more than 3,000 voting delegates debate and adopt resolutions and elect officers, all under Robert’s Rules of Order. The hard part of a meeting like this is not the vote, it is managing who speaks. We set up staffed speaker-queue stations with TalkTrack at each floor microphone so the chair could recognize delegates in order, alternate for and against a motion, and keep the debate moving without anyone policing the microphones. Voting ran on the keypads with no wireless interference across every bylaw and election ballot. The chair was able to run the floor smoothly, and the business sessions moved faster than in past years.

A Fortune 500 technology company’s annual meeting

Not every rental is a formal vote. For a large technology company’s annual gathering, we ran an upbeat, game-show-style trivia session over lunch, mixing music and friendly internal competition with real learning objectives. Questions reinforced the material from the morning’s sessions and gathered targeted feedback, all while the room was having fun. It became something attendees look forward to each year, with prizes and team rivalries that carry from one event to the next, and it turned the downtime between lectures into time that actually reinforced what people were there to learn.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to run the software myself?
No. Unlike a self-service rental, every Padgett rental includes a technician who runs the system for you on site. You are never left to operate it alone.

How many people can an audience response system handle?
We hold roughly 14,000 keypads and regularly equip audiences from a few dozen to several thousand. Tell us your headcount and we will scale to it.

Do the keypads need Wi-Fi or an app?
No. The Padgett Plus keypad runs on a secure, dedicated radio channel. There is nothing to install and nothing that depends on venue internet.

Can I rent for a board election or a secure vote?
Yes. The system captures anonymous, verifiable results, which makes it well suited to elections, board votes, and association balloting.

How far in advance should I book?
Sooner is better, especially in busy meeting seasons, but reach out any time and we will tell you what is possible for your date.

Where do you provide rentals?
Across the United States and internationally. We travel to your event.