| Area | Govforms | Microsoft Forms |
|---|---|---|
| Who it’s for | Built for UK government and public sector teams delivering citizen‑facing services. | Built for organisations using Microsoft 365 who need quick surveys, quizzes and simple data capture, mainly for internal or light‑touch external use. |
| Design & UX | Native GOV.UK & MOJ Design System journeys (start pages, task lists, check answers) out‑of‑the‑box. | Microsoft 365 look‑and‑feel with standard question types and basic branching. GOV.UK and MOJ patterns (start pages, task lists, check answers) must be approximated or recreated elsewhere. |
| Security & hosting | UK‑hosted platform with controls aligned to UK public‑sector expectations and cookie‑free analytics. | Hosted within the Microsoft 365 cloud with enterprise‑grade compliance managed at tenant level. Not tailored specifically to GOV.UK service patterns or UK‑government‑specific hosting expectations for citizen services. |
| Environments & change | Prototype → QA → Production with one‑click deploy, rollback and full change history. | A single live form per link. Testing is typically managed via duplicated forms, separate links or restricted audiences rather than dedicated prototype/QA environments with controlled promotion and rollback. |
| Integrations | Microsoft‑first: SharePoint libraries & lists, Dataverse, Power Automate, REST APIs and GOV.UK Notify. | Strong inside Microsoft 365: responses into Excel or SharePoint, triggers into Power Automate and visibility in Teams. Less control over low‑level payloads, headers and retry logic than a full service builder with configurable backend actions. |
| Analytics & audit | Built‑in, cookie‑free performance analytics and audit trails for every service by default. | Summary charts and exports per form, with deeper analysis usually handled through Excel, Power BI or other tools. No native, GOV.UK‑style journey analytics or per‑step service performance dashboards out‑of‑the‑box. |
| Pricing mindset | Free while you design; simple per‑transaction pricing plus predictable UK support fees once live. | Included in most Microsoft 365 licences. Costs are tied to tenant‑wide Microsoft 365 and any additional Power Platform licensing rather than per‑service or per‑transaction charges. |
| Support & expertise | UK‑based live‑service support, with optional GDS‑aligned service design, UX and content help. | Supported as part of Microsoft 365 with generic product documentation and enterprise support, plus partners focused on wider Microsoft 365 and Power Platform adoption rather than GOV.UK‑specific service design. |
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