SheetLink Forms vs Microsoft Forms
Both end with your data in Excel in your Microsoft account. The fork is the form itself: Microsoft Forms lives on forms.office.com and comes to your site in an iframe, while SheetLink Forms lets your own branded form, on your own domain, deliver into the same Excel workbook.
SheetLink Forms
SheetLink Forms turns a form you build - your HTML, your CSS, your domain - into rows in an Excel table. Each form gets a permanent endpoint at sheetlinkforms.com/f/your-token; connect Microsoft 365 (a work account or a personal account with OneDrive), pick a workbook and table, and accepted submissions are inserted as live rows via Microsoft Graph, with the table's columns defining the shape and field names mapping to headers automatically. Screening quarantines suspicious submissions for one-click review, delivery retries at 5, 30, and 120 minutes with a log, and the optional embed attaches UTMs and ad click IDs to every row. Free during beta (invite required), no per-submission fees, ever. See the Excel Online destination and the HTML form to Excel guide.
Microsoft Forms
Microsoft Forms is the survey and quiz builder bundled with Microsoft 365 (with a free tier for personal accounts): a drag-and-drop editor, themes, branching, real-time response charts, and native aggregation of responses into Excel. For internal surveys, quizzes, event sign-ups, and quick polls inside an organization, it is free, fast, and already deployed. The constraints show at the website edge: forms live on forms.office.com rather than your domain, embedding on your site is an iframe without CSS control over what is inside it, and whether people outside your organization can respond at all is governed by tenant-wide admin settings that many organizations keep locked down. None of that is a flaw for its intended job - it is just a different job than being your website's lead form.
Side by side
| SheetLink Forms | Microsoft Forms | |
|---|---|---|
| Whose form is it? | Yours. Any HTML form on your page, styled with your CSS, on your domain - SheetLink is the invisible pipe from submit button to Excel table. No iframe, no third-party page in the journey. | Microsoft's. You build in the Forms editor and share a forms.office.com link or embed the Microsoft-rendered form in an iframe. Themes and images are configurable within Microsoft's frame; your site's CSS cannot reach inside it. |
| Custom domain | The form is simply part of your page, so the URL bar shows your domain from first field to thank-you state - which is what visitors arriving from an ad or a pricing page expect to see. | Forms are served from forms.office.com. There is no custom-domain option; a standalone form means sending visitors to a Microsoft URL. |
| External and anonymous responses | Public by default with layered screening in front - honeypot, rate limits, content heuristics, optional Turnstile - and an origin allowlist when you want to lock the form to your own sites. | Whether anonymous outsiders can respond is a tenant-level setting controlled by your Microsoft 365 admin, and many organizations keep external collection disabled. For an internal audience that is a feature; for a public lead form it can be a hard blocker you do not control. |
| Excel delivery | Rows are inserted into an Excel table you pick in your OneDrive workbook via Microsoft Graph - live rows, not an export. The table's columns define the row shape, and your form's field names map to headers automatically. | Genuinely strong here. Response aggregation into Excel is native and zero-setup - responses collect into a workbook with no wiring at all. If the form experience itself is acceptable, the Excel side needs no help from anyone. |
| Spam screening | Layered screening with quarantine as the default outcome: suspicious submissions wait for one-click review in the dashboard rather than being silently dropped. Only the honeypot marks spam outright. | The primary control is restricting who can respond - sign-in requirements and tenant settings. For forms opened to anonymous responses, Microsoft's public documentation centers on access control rather than per-submission spam screening. |
| Ad attribution and click IDs | The sl.js embed captures utm_* plus gclid, wbraid, gbraid, fbclid, and msclkid from your pages, persists them across the visit, and writes them into the row - possible precisely because the form lives on your site. | Structurally hard: the form runs inside Microsoft's frame, so your page's URL parameters and scripts cannot reach it. Attribution generally stops at the iframe boundary. |
| Price | Free during beta (invite required). Planned post-beta pricing (planned, not final): a free tier around 50 submissions/month and an unmetered paid plan around $15-19/month. | Microsoft Forms wins here. Included with Microsoft 365 subscriptions, with a free tier for personal Microsoft accounts. For internal use the marginal cost is zero. |
Choose Microsoft Forms when...
Pick Microsoft Forms for anything aimed inward: employee surveys, quizzes, training feedback, event RSVPs, internal request intake. It is free with the subscription you already have, the Excel aggregation is native and effortless, respondents authenticate with the accounts they already use, and the drag-and-drop builder means no HTML at all. For that job, adding a third-party endpoint would be pure overhead - use the tool that is already there.
Choose SheetLink Forms when...
Pick SheetLink Forms when the form faces the public web: a lead form on your marketing site, a signup form on a landing page you run ads to, anywhere the visitor should stay on your domain and see your design. Your own form posts to your endpoint, and submissions still end up exactly where a Microsoft shop wants them - as live rows in an Excel table in your OneDrive workbook, with click IDs attached and spam quarantined instead of trusted to a filter. Watch the live demo, then join the waitlist.
FAQ
Can I embed Microsoft Forms on my own website?
Yes, via an iframe embed - the form still renders from forms.office.com inside a fixed frame on your page. Your site's CSS cannot style the fields, fonts, or layout inside the frame, and the visitor is interacting with a Microsoft-hosted document. Whether that matters depends entirely on how much the form's look and feel is part of your page's job.
Why does my Microsoft Form ask outside visitors to sign in?
Because the form or the tenant is limiting responses to people in your organization. Anonymous collection is governed by settings your Microsoft 365 administrator controls tenant-wide, and many organizations keep external response collection disabled by policy. If you do not control that setting, your public lead form has a dependency you cannot fix yourself.
With SheetLink Forms, does the data still end up in my Microsoft account?
Yes. You connect Microsoft 365 with OAuth (a work account or a personal account with OneDrive), pick the workbook and table, and rows are inserted via Microsoft Graph into that workbook - your file, your account, your permissions. SheetLink is the delivery pipe, not the storage. Details on the Excel Online destination page.
Does SheetLink Forms give me response charts like Microsoft Forms does?
No - the Excel table is the output, and analysis happens in the tools built for it: Excel itself, PivotTables, or Power BI reading the workbook. If dashboarding is the goal, the guide on wiring form submissions into a live Power BI dashboard covers the full path.
Which is better for internal company surveys?
Microsoft Forms, clearly. It is free with your subscription, respondents are already signed in, responses aggregate to Excel natively, and nobody cares that an internal survey lives on forms.office.com. SheetLink Forms earns its keep on the public web, where domain, design, attribution, and spam screening actually matter.
How hard is it to switch a page from an embedded Microsoft Form to my own form?
You replace the iframe with a plain HTML form posting to your endpoint:
<form action="https://sheetlinkforms.com/f/your-token" method="POST"> <input name="_slhp" tabindex="-1" autocomplete="off" style="position:absolute;left:-9999px"></form>
Name your inputs after your Excel table's column headers and mapping is automatic - matching is case and punctuation insensitive. The HTML form to Excel guide has the complete markup and troubleshooting.
Comparison facts reference Microsoft Forms's public documentation and pricing pages and were checked at publish time; tell us if something is out of date.