Microsoft and Google. If you have a laptop or a system, chances are that you’re using both. These 2 behemoths have revolutionized the way we see and use technology. They both offer an excellent suite of business products, with one of them being a form builder. 

Both Microsoft and Google Forms are excellent form or survey builders in their own rights. But if the discussion is about Microsoft Forms vs Google Forms, who wins? We try finding an answer to this and discuss a few more topics along the way. 

Hop along, then. On we go! 

Microsoft Forms vs. Google Forms: 9 Points Of Comparison

Even since Microsoft launched Forms in September 2018, it has garnered a massive audience looking to create online forms, surveys, quizzes and polls, quickly and hassle-free. With a clean interface and options aplenty, this form builder from Microsoft has many admirers.

Still, we would say it has features that people often miss, or are hard to find. And we’ll talk about them, too. Up first though, let’s have a quick intro about Google Forms, too. 

Google Forms tool is a part of Google’s business toolkit. Because of Google’s association, it is easy to use and extremely popular. As a feature of Google Sheets, it was initially just a way to collect responses. In 2016, more useful and powerful features were added, and now it’s a separate product.

So, is Microsoft Forms better than Google Forms? Who wins in the Microsoft Forms vs Google Forms question? These 9 points of comparison will find that out!

• Pricing & Plans
• Designing Process
• Templates
• Themes!
• Team Collaboration
• Analytics
• Mobile App
• Video & Images
• Support Team

#1. Pricing & Plans

Our first point is to make sure an online survey tool is affordable, regardless of how great it is. Unless it fits your budget, it’s no use.

Microsoft Forms 

• Microsoft Forms is a part of the Office 365 suite that comes with a 1-month free trial for up to 25 users. 
• Unlike other tools in their free trial, Microsoft has no restrictions on what you can use and the features you can try.
• After the free trial period, the Office 365 suite for business starts from $6 per user per month. 
• Once you’ve got this or other premium plans, Microsoft Forms is completely free to use. 

Google Forms

• Google Forms reigns supreme here.
• Like other Google suite products, all Google Forms features are free forever with no premium plans. Although, the Google Forms logo remains on all created forms.
• Using Google Forms, you can create forms, questions, and responses for free.
• Furthermore, did we mention that it is not constantly bombarded with ads?

#2. Designing Process

The next point of comparison is the kind of form designing process and experience Microsoft and Google Forms offer. Let’s see; 

Microsoft Forms 

• The Microsoft team has really put in efforts to make its form builder’s interface as simple as possible. And they’ve succeeded! 
• From choosing the question type to selecting how the options will look, Microsoft Forms oozes fluidity and simplicity. 
• The effort required to add elements to the survey is also extremely easy with form features like ‘logic branching’ to fulfill your exact requirements. 
• You get to include points for quizzes, turn on shuffle options for answers, and use restrictions to suit your survey needs. 
• Preview the form at any time while building it and choose to receive an email of each response to stay on top of things. 

Google Forms

• In Google Forms, the form designing process is clutter-free and quick. There are essential question types like multiple-choice, linear scale, and checkboxes right at the top of the question type section.
• The ‘file upload’ option, which is not there in Microsoft Forms, is also present. 
• The overall form designing options are more in Google Forms compared to Microsoft Forms. But that allows quick-form creation to happen in the latter.  
• The overall experience of designing a form here is smooth but not as smooth as in Microsoft’s form builder. 

#3. Templates 

The next round in the Microsoft Forms vs Google Forms matchup is templates. 

Microsoft Forms

• This is where Microsoft Forms falls behind, as at the time of writing, this form builder offers just 3 template types – Forms, Quizzes, and Party invitations.  
• Users can edit these templates to customize them according to their needs. 
• If you’ve designed a form to look a certain way, a little bit of time and effort is required. 

Google Forms

• Google Forms offers 20 different templates for different purposes. You’ll find these in the events, invites, and feedback form categories.
• Compared to three, 20 is a fairly good number for templates. Plus, the preset templates here lead to faster and more attractive form creation.
• But in a world driven by visual appeal, both Google nor Microsoft Forms don’t offer enough templates to choose from. Still, if we’re talking about just these two, Google Forms clearly wins!

#4. Themes 

After comparing the designing process and templates, the available themes in both these form builders is our next point of evaluation. 

Microsoft Forms

• What Microsoft Forms struggles with in Templates, it makes up for with  its themes.
• It offers a lot of visually appealing, graphic themes to use in forms. 
• Plus, Microsoft Forms lets you apply a theme to the whole form to jazz up its overall look. So cool! 

Google Forms

• The exact opposite happens here. 
• While Google Forms offer better, more vibrant templates, its approach to Themes seems a bit dated. 
• You’re pretty much restricted to pastel color sets, and only the image gets applied to the upper portion. Ahhh, not good. 

#5. Team Collaboration

In every online survey tool, team collaboration features are crucial. Why? Because a survey campaign involves a lot of stakeholders and collaboration features make it easy for them to contribute. Time to see in whose favor the Microsoft Forms vs Google Forms conversation is tipping;

Microsoft Forms 

• With this online survey tool, you can add collaborators and only permit to Edit.
• You cannot give team members a ‘view-only’ option, and neither does it support comments on your prepared form. 
• This makes it hard for team members to stay on the same page. Hence, we’re not too impressed with Microsoft Form’s team collaboration features. 

Google Forms 

• In Google Forms also, collaboration features aren’t impressive. Sure, you can add collaborators, but like Microsoft forms, the only permission it gives is to Edit.
• No comment support or view-only option is present here either. Even when you add collaborators, there’s no notification or record of changes made in the form.
• All this, again makes it hard for team members to stay on the same page. 
• So, this round of Microsoft Forms vs Google Forms ends in a stalemate. 

#6. Analytics 

Even if you’re collecting quality, targeted data, it’s of no use without proper analysis. Let’s carry out this crucial point of comparison, then;  

Microsoft Forms

• Owing to Microsoft’s excellent suite of products, you can carry out in-depth analytics with Microsoft Forms. 
• Your team gets to import all the collected data directly to Excel to conduct formula-based analytics and create crucial charts. 

Google Forms

• Google Forms does not have analytics features. But Google has a powerful suite of products that do this job. 
• You’ll have to send the survey data to Google Sheets to prepare custom charts and graphs.
• Pivot tables and the explore option can be used for in-depth analysis. And for better visualizations, send the data to Google Data studio and see the magic!

#7. Mobile App

For 2023 and beyond, a mobile app is a must-have functionality for online survey tools. 

Microsoft Forms

• Microsoft Forms doesn’t offer a mobile app, either in Android or iOS.
• You can only access this form builder through its web interface. 

Google Forms

• The case is the same for Google Forms, too. No mobile app functionality for it. 
• This unusual considering that Google has an app for Sheets, Spreadsheet, and Gmail.
• A lot of users would love to build Google Forms directly from their mobile devices.

#8. Video & Images

The effectiveness of a form also depends on the type of video or images you can use. Let’s compare both the form builders on this aspect:

Microsoft Forms

• Microsoft Forms allow adding videos and images only as a part of questions – not in between them or as a separate section.
• While it may serve the purpose for many, for crafting something a little more personalized, it’s a serious limitation.

Google Forms

• If you often include videos and photos in your surveys and polls, Google Forms is the tool you should use.  
• It will let you add images as part of the questions. Also, you can add videos as a separate section. 
• So, if you want your form to end with a thank you note and a video, it’s possible with Google Forms and not with Microsoft’s form builder.

#9. Support Team

Imagine this. 

If you’re running a carefully designed survey campaign but the surveys just won’t open. In that case, the survey software’s support team could be your savior. Do Microsoft and Google Forms offer a support team like this? Let’s see; 

Microsoft Forms 

• Microsoft Forms offers a ‘Help’ section with detailed descriptions and solutions to frequent problems. 
• Other than that, you can raise a ticket from your Office 365 dashboard to the support team. In most cases, the replies are pretty quick and helpful. 

Google Forms

• Google Forms lets you raise a ticket only through email. 
• On-call support is not available unless you’re using Google’s Business suite – for which there’s a monthly price. 
• So, Google Forms is not the tool to help you with your feedback immediately. Microsoft Forms isn’t also completely reliable, but still better than Google’s form builder. 

SurveySparrow: The Best Google & Microsoft Forms Alternative! 

Ranked as the #1 survey software by softwareworld.co, SurveySparrow has flown a long way since 2017 – from a simple survey software to an omnichannel feedback solution. But you may be wondering why SurveySparrow is the best Microsoft and Google Forms alternative. Well, let us surprise you with these features; 

• SurveySparrow delivers real value to your business by increasing your survey response rates by up to 40%. Respondents love its conversational survey flow and design.  
• It has more advanced features than both Google and Microsoft Forms combined and is a cloud-based survey software accessible from any device.
• No coding? No worries if you’re using SurveySparrow. Just enter some information into your forms and send them out! That’s it!
• A conversational interface along with multiple question types, custom logic (Skip & Display) & variables to give your surveys a real feel. 
• Go classic, chat, NPS, 360° feedback, or offline using SurveySparrow. 
• Get creative with 500+ templates, video backgrounds, multi-language surveys, answer randomization, question morphing, and multi-file upload. Damn, too much quality! 
• This Google Forms alternative makes the form match your brand with custom rebranding (Logo, CSS, Domain, Email, SSL). 
• Expand your audience reach with SMS, email, embed, weblink, MS Teams, Slack, QR Codes, and chatbot for the website or SurveySparrow Offline survey app. Spoiled for choices, eh?
• Give manual effort a miss with survey redirect, 4,500+ integrations, webhooks, API, and real-time reporting along with feedback management, response tracking, survey reminders, case management, and recurring surveys. The best Microsoft Forms alternative indeed! 
• The best part – Entry price starts from only $0 per month, and a 14-day free trial on all SurveySparrow plans. Yup… we’ve got your attention

Who Is The Winner? 

With its versatile tools and features, all for free, Google Forms is a surveyor’s dream. From uploading documents to creating cool invitation templates, you can do pretty much everything using Google Forms, and for free! Yes, it’s not the best tool for a big, goal-oriented survey campaign, and with doesn’t have a mobile app to use. Still, based on our points of comparison, this form builder from Google is better than Microsoft Forms. 

Make no mistake, Microsoft Forms is a good tool with a very simple-to-use interface but doesn’t offer a compelling enough case when stacked against Google Forms. The features, however, are making their way. So, exciting times ahead for people using or willing to use Microsoft Forms. 

A lot is left to be desired in both these form builders. But you already know the best Google and Microsoft Forms alternative! Yes, SurveySparrow’s team is waiting to have a cool chat with you. Danke!  

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