Cryptpad Forms or Framaforms are good for simple surveys. For more complex surveys there is Limesurvey.

I’m not a big fan of Mastodon either (started with it, but now prefer Friendica and Lemmy), for me personally it’s not a good fit. But hashtags on Mastodon are at least a way to follow not just individual users but also topics (and this only works if they are hashtagged). With Friendica, Sharkey and others, you can define your own individual channels / antennas for certain topics, so hashtags and individual accounts are not so important. And for Lemmy, they’re not important at all. But as a Lemmy user, I can still put up with it when I see a hashtag (that gives others an advantage). What’s so bad about seeing it?

Every Fediverse content looks a little different, depending on which access software or app you use to view it. It seems that there are also Lemmy apps that display hashtags a little too exaggerated, while in others and in the web-gui it is ok. (in an earlier version of the guide it also said that you shouldn’t use hashtags/tags esp. in the headline because it didn’t work properly back then).

But maybe I should include a note in the instructions that hashtags should be used sparingly or placed at the end?

If you want to host your own instance, there are also managed hosting offers for Friendica, e.g. by Weingärtner-IT (from 4€/month) or Spacehost (20€).

To get to know Friendica, however, I would recommend simply creating an account and testing it out, first.