Poised has shut down: what to use instead

What should you use instead of Poised?

Use this table, not a feature list. Poised did five different jobs, and the right replacement depends on which one you were paying for. Two of the five have no replacement here.

Every Poised claim in the table comes from its homepage and pricing page, read 2026-10-26; the Yoodli, BoldVoice, ELSA and SoulfulStories entries are dated in the sections below.

The first row is the important one. If you bought Poised for the in-call prompt, we are not a replacement for it, and neither is anything else on this page.

Is Poised really gone?

Yes. Poised's own homepage still carries the line "Poised is shutting down on 10/8/2026", and the URL still resolves (poised.com, read 2026-10-26).

The date in that banner is 8 October 2026, which has passed. A second, independent check agrees: Wellspoken's comparison page, which says it checked Poised's homepage on 23 October 2026, quotes the same banner and adds "We do not recommend starting a new subscription" (Wellspoken, read 2026-10-26).

The site still sells. That is worth saying plainly, because it is how people get caught: the pricing page continues to offer a Pro plan and a free trial, and it is not marked as closed. The marketing pages do not prove the service still works. Do not read a live checkout as a live product.

What should you do if you are mid-subscription?

Cancel before your next renewal, export what you can, and ask about a refund in writing rather than assuming one.

1. Look for your data first. Open the account and check whether you can download recordings, meeting reports or transcripts. If the download button works today, use it today.
2. Cancel through whatever billed you. If you subscribed on the web, that is Poised's own billing. If you subscribed inside an app store, cancel there. Keep the confirmation email.
3. Ask support about a refund. Nothing on Poised's homepage or pricing page states a refund policy, so there is no published rule to quote. Ask, and keep the reply.
4. Remove the integrations. Its homepage lists 800+ communication tools it works with, including Zoom, Google Meet, Slack and Microsoft Teams (poised.com, read 2026-10-26). Disconnect the calendar and meeting plugins you no longer need.

Wellspoken's migration checklist makes the same three points in more detail: check remaining data access, review billing status, remove integrations (Wellspoken, read 2026-10-26).

What did Poised actually do?

Poised was a desktop app that listened to your online meetings and gave feedback in real time on four things: conciseness, hedging words, interruptions and filler words.

Its pricing page, still live on 2026-10-26, sells Pro at $19 per month or $13 per month billed annually, with Team quoted per organisation, and a free Mac-only dictation tool called Shortcut offered "limited time only" (Poised pricing, read 2026-10-26). It ran on macOS and Windows.

Two of those four measures are worth pausing on, because they are unusual. Most speaking tools count fillers and pace. Almost none count hedging ("I think", "sort of", "just") or interruptions, where you cut across someone else. Those need a conversation with more than one voice, which is why a solo practice tool cannot reproduce them.

If you used it for interview and meeting practice

Use Yoodli. It is the closest functional match, because it rehearses a conversation rather than a monologue.

You choose or build a scenario, an AI persona plays the other side, and you get scored on delivery, clarity, pacing and effectiveness. Its own pages describe video, chat and avatar formats and custom personas built from an organisation's material (Yoodli Roleplays, read 2026-10-26). The free Starter plan includes 5 roleplays in total; Pro is $8 per month billed annually with up to 10 roleplays a week (Yoodli pricing, read 2026-10-26).

What you lose is the meeting itself. Yoodli rehearses before the call. Poised sat inside the call, and Yoodli's own team plans are built for scheduled practice, not for live prompting. The Yoodli comparison in full covers the accuracy question that applies to it too: a roleplay has no fixed facts, so it cannot mark your content wrong.

If you used it for accent and pronunciation

Use BoldVoice or ELSA. Both work at the level of the individual sound, which is the part Poised never touched.

BoldVoice is accent training built on video lessons from dialect coaches plus AI feedback on pronunciation, stress and clarity as you speak. Its homepage claims 4.8 stars and 5M+ downloads, and offers a 7-day free trial (BoldVoice, read 2026-10-26). Its pricing page returned a 404 when we checked on 2026-10-26, so check the price at checkout.

ELSA Speak is the broader app: pronunciation feedback, a 1

AI tutor for conversation practice, and exam modules for IELTS, TOEFL and TOEIC (ELSA App Store listing, read 2026-10-26). Its shop page lists 9,000+ lessons on ELSA Pro and 10,000+ lessons with 25,000+ exercises on Premium, and the shop page itself claims 90M+ app downloads and a 4.9/5 rating (ELSA, read 2026-10-26). No price is published on that page; plans are shown in the app after the 7-day trial.

What you lose with both: conciseness. Neither measures whether you took ninety seconds to reach the point, because neither is listening to a meeting. The ELSA comparison in full goes through that trade in detail.

If you used it for speaking at length

Use SoulfulStories if the job was rehearsing a talk, a class, a wedding speech or an interview answer out loud and then reviewing how it went.

The loop is close to what Poised's post-meeting feedback gave you: speak, then read a measured report. The difference is that the content is fixed. You read one of 96 true stories, retell it from memory, and get pace over time, pauses split into planned and hesitant, fillers, pitch, volume, emotional match, impact, craft and vocabulary. The report also checks whether the story's facts survived, and a failed check caps the whole score at 59 (how a retelling is scored).

That accuracy check is the one measurement Poised could not make either, because a meeting has no correct version.

What you lose: the live overlay, the meeting integration, and any count of hedging or interruptions. Ours is also web only, English only, and there is no human coach.

What do you lose whichever replacement you pick?

The overlay, and the two conversation-dependent metrics. That is the honest summary.

Nothing in this group sits on top of Zoom and nudges you mid-sentence. Yoodli rehearses a conversation but does not join one. BoldVoice and ELSA grade sounds. SoulfulStories reviews a retelling after you finish. If live coaching was the entire reason you paid, the correct move this week is to wait, or to look at newer call-coaching tools, not to buy the nearest-looking app.

The second loss is your history. Years of hedging and interruption counts do not transfer anywhere. Export what the account offers before it goes away.

How do the replacements compare?

Three columns is enough to see the shape: Poised measured live conversation, Yoodli rehearses one, and we measure a solo retelling.

More dated notes on each of these, including where each one beats us, are in the full competitor notes.