A Microsoft Forms alternative for answers you can act on
If your team lives in Microsoft 365, Forms is already paid for and works well for internal questions, quizzes and polls. Acquainto is for the outside case: a lead, a client or a quote request whose vague answer would otherwise mean a call.
The short answer
- Microsoft Forms is the better tool for questions inside your organization, and anywhere the answers belong in Excel.
- Acquainto is the better tool when the person answering is a customer, and an incomplete answer costs you a follow-up.
Where Microsoft Forms is better than Acquainto
- Price. Forms is free with a personal Microsoft account and included in Microsoft 365 business plans. Acquainto is a paid product after a trial.
- Volume. A form on a work account can take up to five million responses. Acquainto plans count completed conversations a month.
- Microsoft 365. Responses go straight to Excel, and Power Automate can act on each one. Acquainto delivers by webhook, so connecting it is yours to do.
- Compliance. Microsoft states Forms meets GDPR, FERPA and BAA standards. Acquainto has no such attestation yet.
- Languages. Microsoft lists 83 languages and locales. Acquainto supports twelve.
What Acquainto does differently
Branching in Forms decides which question comes next. It cannot tell that “sometime next year” or “a few rooms” is not an answer you can quote from. Copilot helps whoever builds the form and reads the results; the person answering still faces a fixed form. Acquainto works at the moment of the answer:
- It asks again when an answer is incomplete, and offers a choice where precision matters.
- You describe what you need to find out in plain language, the way you would brief a colleague.
- The person answering reviews every answer before it is sent, and is told who gets them before the first question.
- One clean value per question comes back by webhook, ready for your own systems.
Microsoft Forms and Acquainto side by side
| Microsoft Forms | Acquainto | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free with a personal Microsoft account; included in Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard and Premium, and Office 365 E1, E3 and E5 (source: Microsoft Forms, checked October 11, 2026) | Solo: $24 a month billed annually, 75 completed conversations a month |
| Responses | Up to 5,000,000 per form on work accounts; 200 on a free personal account, 1,000 on a paid one (source: Microsoft Forms, checked October 11, 2026) | Counted in completed conversations a month: 75 on Solo |
| Follow-up questions | Branching set up by the form’s creator: "You can only branch to a consecutive question and not a preceding one" (source: Microsoft Forms, checked October 11, 2026) | The whole exchange is a conversation: it asks again when any answer is incomplete, and offers a choice where precision matters |
| AI | Copilot in Forms, with a Copilot license: helps the form’s creator draft it and "analyze your form results into an insights summary" (source: Microsoft Forms, checked October 11, 2026) | For the person answering: the AI runs the conversation itself, on every plan |
| Where answers go | Export to Excel; Power Automate can add each new response as a row (source: Microsoft Forms, checked October 11, 2026) | Webhook delivery to your own systems, one clean value per question |
| Compliance | GDPR; "Microsoft Forms meets FERPA and BAA protection standards" (source: Microsoft Forms, checked October 11, 2026) | No SOC 2, ISO 27001 or HIPAA attestation. Customer data is held in the United States |
| Languages | 83 languages and locales listed (source: Microsoft Forms, checked October 11, 2026) | Twelve, machine-translated from the language you write in |
Facts about Microsoft Forms come from Microsoft Forms’s own pages, on the date shown in each row. Prices and plans change; if one of these is out of date, tell us at support@acquainto.com and we will correct it.
Which should you choose?
Choose Microsoft Forms if:
- you already pay for Microsoft 365 and the people answering are colleagues, students or members;
- you want answers in Excel, or automated with Power Automate, without writing anything;
- you collect very large volumes, or need more than twelve languages.
Choose Acquainto if:
- the people answering are prospects or clients, and each submission is work for your team;
- a vague answer today means a call or an email before you can quote or start;
- you want the follow-up to happen inside the conversation.
For a worked example, see how to qualify a quote request without a phone call. To try it, see how it works or compare plans.