Microsoft Forms alternative and alternatives to Microsoft Forms for surveys
Asked is a Microsoft Forms alternative for teams whose surveys produce more open comments than anyone has time to read. People answer by typing, speaking or recording a short video, and AI turns every answer into transcripts, themes and quotes you can share. Plans are priced per workspace with seats included, from $49 a month or $24 billed yearly.
Who should switch from Microsoft Forms and who should stay
Microsoft Forms is already paid for in most Microsoft 365 companies, and for internal polls, sign-up sheets, training quizzes and quick votes it is hard to beat. Keep it for that work.
Look for an alternative to Microsoft Forms when a survey has to explain something: why customers churn, why a new hire left after four months, what people really think of a product change. Forms collects typed answers and opens them in Excel, and then someone on your team reads 600 rows by hand. Asked collects the answer by voice or video when typing would cut it short, and reads the answers for you. Plenty of Microsoft 365 shops run both, Forms for internal admin and Asked for customer and employee listening.
Where Microsoft Forms is the better fit
Forms comes with Microsoft 365 work and school accounts, so there is no new vendor, no procurement review and no extra invoice. You can restrict a form to people in your organization, collect their names automatically, and open results straight into Excel. It connects with Power Automate and shows up inside Teams, which suits HR and IT teams that already live there.
The limits are generous for most uses. According to Microsoft's published Forms limits, a work or school account can collect up to 5,000,000 responses per form, with up to 200 questions per form and 400 forms per user. Personal accounts are capped at 200 responses free or 1,000 on a paid personal plan. Quizzes with automatic grading are built in, which matters for training teams.
So the question is rarely whether Forms can hold the responses. It is whether anyone gets value out of the open text once they arrive.
What Asked adds on top of a form builder
- Voice and video answers in every open question. Respondents record in the browser on a phone or laptop, with no app and no login, and can still type if they prefer.
- Automatic transcripts for every voice and video answer, so spoken feedback is searchable and quotable.
- Themes with sentiment across all answers, each theme linked to the exact quotes behind it.
- A one-page AI summary per survey that a manager can read before a meeting.
- An optional AI follow-up that asks one more question based on what the person just said.
- Custom branding and a custom survey domain for customer-facing surveys, so the link does not look like an internal Microsoft form.
- Seats included per workspace: 1 on Starter, 5 on Growth, 15 on Business and 50 on Enterprise. Respondents never count as seats.
Microsoft Forms and Asked compared
| Capability | Asked | Microsoft Forms |
|---|---|---|
| Main job | Customer, employee and research surveys | Internal forms, polls, quizzes and simple surveys |
| How you pay | $49 to $799 a month per workspace, half that billed yearly | Included with Microsoft 365 work and school accounts |
| Voice and video answers | Native in every open question | Respondents type or choose, authors can add an image or video to a question |
| Automatic transcripts | Yes, every plan | No answer recordings to transcribe |
| AI themes, sentiment and quotes | Yes, every plan | Summary charts, then open text in Excel |
| AI follow-up question | Yes, optional per question | No |
| Quizzes with grading | No | Yes |
| Restrict to people in your organization | Share by link, QR code or embed | Yes, with Microsoft sign-in |
| Microsoft 365 integration | No, webhooks on Business and Enterprise plus CSV and PDF export | Excel, Teams and Power Automate |
| Branding for customer surveys | Custom branding on Growth, custom domain on Business | Themes and a logo inside the Forms design |
| Single sign-on | SSO with SAML on Enterprise | Microsoft account sign-in |
Microsoft and Asked both change plans and features, so check current details before you decide.
Who picks Asked as an alternative to Microsoft Forms
- CX and product teams sending surveys to customers outside the company, who want a branded link and the reasons behind every score. Our customer feedback tool page shows that setup.
- HR teams running engagement pulses where a short voice answer says more than a 1 to 5 rating. See employee engagement survey software.
- People Ops leads replacing an exit form that most leavers skip with a three-question voice survey, using our exit survey software.
- Managers who export Forms results to Excel every quarter and never finish reading the comments. AI survey analysis groups them into themes for you.
- Teams that already compared form builders such as the Jotform alternative or the SurveyMonkey alternative and want answers recorded by voice or video.
Export your Microsoft Forms responses to Excel
Open the form, go to Responses and choose Open results in Excel. Save that file as your baseline so any score you track over time keeps its history.
Type the goal of the survey you are replacing
Write one line, such as "find out why customers cancel in the first 90 days". The Asked builder drafts the questions with answer types chosen for you, and you edit the wording.
Turn on voice and video for the open questions
Allow voice and video where you want the full story, and copy your rating questions word for word from the old form so the numbers stay comparable.
Share the link and read the first themes
Send the link by email, post a QR code or embed the survey on your site. The theme report and summary fill in as answers arrive, with quotes ready to paste into a deck.
Asked pricing for teams moving off Microsoft Forms
Forms costs nothing extra if you already have Microsoft 365, so Asked has to earn its price in hours saved. Starter is $49 a month or $24 billed yearly, with 5 active surveys, 500 responses a month and 1 seat. Growth is $129 a month or $64 billed yearly, with 25 surveys, 2,500 responses, 5 seats and custom branding. Business is $299 a month or $149 billed yearly, with 100 surveys, 10,000 responses, 15 seats, a custom survey domain, webhooks and an audit log. Enterprise adds SSO with SAML and 50 seats. Transcripts and AI analysis are in every plan. Full limits are on survey software pricing.
FAQ
For internal polls and quizzes, Microsoft Forms is usually good enough and already paid for. For customer and employee feedback where open answers matter, Asked is a better fit because people can answer by voice or video and AI groups every answer into themes and quotes. For payment or approval forms, Jotform is a common pick.
Microsoft Forms has no voice or video answers, limited branding for customer-facing surveys, and open text answers end up in the Forms summary or an Excel export for someone to read. Microsoft also sets hard limits: 200 questions per form, 400 forms per user, 4,000 characters per answer and 200 responses on a free personal account.
Microsoft Forms is included at no extra cost with Microsoft 365 work and school accounts, and anyone with a free personal Microsoft account can use it with a cap of 200 responses per form. A paid personal Microsoft 365 plan raises that cap to 1,000 responses per form.
No, respondents in Microsoft Forms answer by typing or choosing options, and the form author can only add an image or video to a question. To collect recorded answers you need a tool built for it. In Asked, every open question accepts a voice or video answer recorded in the browser, and each one is transcribed automatically.
You can export Microsoft Forms responses to Excel at any time from the Responses tab. Asked does not import old Forms responses as survey answers, so keep the Excel file as your baseline, rebuild the survey in Asked from a one-line goal, and keep score questions worded the same so results compare.
Turn your next Microsoft Forms survey into answers you can act on
Type the goal of your survey and see the draft Asked writes for you in seconds.