Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Microsoft Forms VS Hotjar

Compare Microsoft Forms VS Hotjar and see what are their differences

Microsoft Forms logo Microsoft Forms

Simplistic surveys by Microsoft.

Hotjar logo Hotjar

The #1 Leader in Heatmaps, Recordings, Surveys & More. Sign up for a 15-day free trial and start learning from real user behavior today!
  • Microsoft Forms Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-27
  • Hotjar Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-23

Hotjar's product experience insights make it easy to understand what users are really doing on your site.

  • Visualize behavior on your site with Heatmaps

  • Eliminate guesswork with user Recordings

  • Understand the reasons behind behavior with Surveys and Incoming Feedback

Hotjar

Website
hotjar.com
$ Details
freemium โ‚ฌ39.0 / Monthly (Starting at: 3,000 Recordings per month with unlimited Heatmaps)
Release Date
2014 June
Startup details
Country
Malta

Microsoft Forms features and specs

  • Integration with Microsoft 365
    Microsoft Forms seamlessly integrates with other Microsoft 365 apps such as Excel, SharePoint, and Teams, enhancing collaboration and data management.
  • Ease of Use
    The platform offers a user-friendly interface that simplifies form creation and distribution, making it accessible even to non-technical users.
  • Real-time Collaboration
    Multiple users can collaborate on form creation and data analysis in real-time, fostering teamwork and increasing productivity.
  • Customization Options
    It offers various customization options, including themes, question types, and response validation, allowing users to tailor forms to specific needs.
  • Analytics and Reporting
    Built-in analytics tools provide insights and visualizations directly within Microsoft Forms, aiding in data-driven decision-making.

Possible disadvantages of Microsoft Forms

  • Limited Advanced Features
    Compared to other specialized survey tools, Microsoft Forms lacks some advanced features such as complex branching, advanced logic, and extensive third-party integrations.
  • Design Flexibility
    The platform has limited design customization options, making it less suitable for users looking to create highly branded or unique forms.
  • Response Limits
    Free and some standard Microsoft 365 plans have response limits, which can be restrictive for organizations conducting large-scale surveys.
  • Export Limitations
    Exporting data to other formats or systems can be cumbersome, especially when dealing with large datasets or requiring specific data formats.
  • Dependency on Microsoft Ecosystem
    While integration with Microsoft 365 is a strength, it can also be a limitation for users or organizations that rely on non-Microsoft tools and services.

Hotjar features and specs

  • Heatmaps
    Visually represent where users click, move, and scroll on your site. With this context, you'll learn how users really behave.
  • Recordings
    Live playbacks of users on your site.
  • Surveys
    Bring the voice-of-customer to your decision making.
  • Incoming Feedback
    A real-time suggestion box on your site, that lets users express frustration or delight about individual parts of your site.

Analysis of Microsoft Forms

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Microsoft Forms is generally well-regarded as a user-friendly tool for creating and managing online forms.

Why this product is good

  • Microsoft Forms is considered good due to its ease of use, integration with other Microsoft 365 applications, real-time collaboration features, and robust data analysis capabilities. It provides an intuitive interface for creating surveys, quizzes, and polls and offers automatic data export to Excel for further analysis. Additionally, it ensures data security and privacy, adherent to Microsoft's compliance guidelines.

Recommended for

  • Educational institutions requiring tools for quizzes and feedback collection
  • Businesses looking for an integrated solution for customer surveys and employee feedback
  • Teams that already use Microsoft 365 and need seamless integration with other applications
  • Users who require real-time data analysis and collaboration on form responses

Analysis of Hotjar

Overall verdict

  • Overall, Hotjar is considered a good tool for businesses looking to gain deeper insights into user behavior and enhance their websites based on real user data. It offers a combination of qualitative and quantitative analytics which adds a significant advantage for understanding key user interaction points.

Why this product is good

  • Hotjar is a popular analytics tool that provides heatmaps, session recordings, and surveys to help businesses understand user behavior on their websites. It is praised for its ease of use, intuitive interface, and comprehensive features that offer valuable insights into how users interact with a site. Additionally, it enables businesses to collect direct feedback from users, helping to identify areas for improvement and optimize user experience.

Recommended for

    Hotjar is recommended for small to medium-sized businesses, eCommerce sites, and startups looking to improve their website's user experience. It is also suitable for UX/UI designers and product managers who want detailed analytics without the complexity of larger enterprise-level tools. However, larger organizations may want to consider more robust analytics platforms that can handle and analyze larger volumes of data.

Microsoft Forms videos

Review of Microsoft Forms Pro 2019 โ€ข Office 365 Survey Solution

More videos:

  • Review - Introducing Microsoft Forms Pro
  • Review - Microsoft Forms Pro | Business Applications April 2019 Release

Hotjar videos

What is Hotjar?

More videos:

  • Review - Invision prize Hotjar's straightforward, shareable insights
  • Tutorial - Why you should be using Hotjar Analytics
  • Tutorial - Google Analytics vs. Hotjar - Which one should you use?

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Microsoft Forms and Hotjar)
Surveys
100 100%
0% 0
Web Analytics
0 0%
100% 100
Form Builder
100 100%
0% 0
Heatmaps
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Microsoft Forms and Hotjar. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Microsoft Forms and Hotjar

Microsoft Forms Reviews

  1. โœ“ Adrian | Mobile Forms - Digital Inspections - Enterprise Checklists - Data collection
    ยท Marketing at Mobile Forms ยท
    My home inspection form software review of microsoft forms builder

    This is my review of microsoft forms builder used as a home inspection software.

    As a home inspector, I was trying to use Microsoft forms builder as a gathering information tool through surveys as it is an essential part of understanding the needs and preferences of customers and employees, as well as property investors and homeowners.

    There is evidence that customer satisfaction surveys increase customer engagement by differentiating your brand and showing that you care about yourself. Similarly, employee surveys are essential to measuring internal engagement within organizations. This underscores the need for robust tools that effectively report survey/survey responses in a measurable way so that results can facilitate decision-making. That's where MS Forms comes in. With an easy-to-use interface, Forms lets you create short surveys or develop surveys for free as part of the Office 365 suite of applications. While there are other third-party alternatives, such as SurveyMonkey, that have survey and query capabilities, Forms is free under the Office 365 subscription.

    The advantage of Forms is that it offers more seamless integration with other Microsoft applications. In the past, Microsoft had InfoPath, which had the same goal but was more complex to design and start.

    One of the features of Forms to note is Dynamic Customer Voice 365. It's a business feedback management application built into Forms that allows easy tracking of customer measurements by introducing real-time survey data into customer records. It comes with project management capabilities that allow you to gather multiple surveys with similar metrics to simplify analysis, so you can understand how customers see your services. Important: You'll need a paid license to access Dynamic 365 Customer Voice, but it's available for a free 30-day trial.

    From a management perspective, Forms enables business leaders to understand the needs and productivity of employees quickly and effectively. For example, ITW's management team used forms to check with employees during the pandemic. It has been invaluable in providing information and measures on productivity, well-being and assessing employees' remote work needs (e.g., need for office equipment and stationery). This form builder allows any device to connect and contribute to a continuous live survey, with results dynamically visible on the backend, so employees can respond to surveys at a company-wide virtual meeting. The management team can then visualize these responses as they arrive and respond live, creating a more conversational feeling, even in a remote environment.

    Engaged employees are 27% more likely to report "excellent" performance. (Source: Gallup) Microsoft Planner Productivity monitoring and task management are an integral part of inter-team organizational alignment; there is evidence that a work environment where employees feel connected when working on projects increases engagement and productivity. Microsoft Planner is a comprehensive task and work management solution that allows teams to stay connected throughout a project, manage their time and organize. The planner allows you to set up due date notifications so that team members receive reminders about the due date, which maintains connectivity and increases responsibility for tasks. In addition, one of the planner's new features allows you to announce tasks in Teams so users can discuss them in the Team channel.

    Other apps I have reviewed like Monday.com or Smartsheet</a" may provide similar features, but being part of the Microsoft 365 suite, Planner can easily be integrated with other applications on the platform. And of course, the value you get from a free app in Planner far exceeds the cost of payment for any third-party application.

    All in all, personally, I think I have wasted enough time on non specialized form builders until I stumbled upon nSpek. It truly changes the game of home inspections for a... home inspector :D

    You can check out more reviews of inspection software I was able to find, so that you can dive much deeper into the whole software comparison as a property manager.

    ๐Ÿ Competitors: nSpek, ProntoForms, Google Forms

27 Best Typeform Alternatives In 2022 (Free & Paid)
When it comes to choosing a Typeform alternative, you might be looking for the one that can be easily integrated with Excel. Microsoft Forms can do this, and itโ€™s a tremendous online form tool too.
The 11 Best Online Form Builder Apps in 2019
Adding questions to Microsoft Forms is fast and simple: add a question, choose the answer format, and type in your questions and response options. And while Microsoft Forms doesn't offer some of the response types you'll find in Google Formsโ€”it doesn't allow respondents to upload files, for exampleโ€”it does have response types you won't find in Google Forms, like Net Promoter...
Source: zapier.com

Hotjar Reviews

  1. Kris Leviss
    ยท Founder at KrisLess ยท
    Love it

    I've been using Hotjar for a few months, and it's been a perfect tool for understanding how users interact with my website. The heatmaps and session recordings are especially helpful for identifying problem areas, and the feedback polls give me direct insights from visitors. The platform is easy to navigate, but Iโ€™ve noticed the session recordings can be a bit glitchy at times, and the free version is quite limited. Despite these small issues, Hotjar has definitely helped me improve user experience and optimize my siteโ€™s performance.

    ๐Ÿ‘ Pros:    Intuitive user interface|Good session recordings|Useful feedback tools
    ๐Ÿ‘Ž Cons:    Free plan is limited|Occasional recording glitches|Data processing can be slow
  2. Prema Toppo
    ยท SEO Specialist at TechUp Labs ยท
    Must have tool

    Hotjar has been our go-to for optimizing UI, reducing bounce rates, and refining CTAs. Its powerful insights have been instrumental in enhancing user experience. A staple tool for data-driven decisions!

  3. Feeling disappointed

    I don't like the service. It is very slow and very expensive. Not recommended it to others.

    ๐Ÿ Competitors: WatchThemLive

7 Best Product Discovery Tools for High-Growth B2B SaaS Teams (2026)
Hotjar is a behavioral analytics tool that provides heatmaps and session recordings. In the discovery process, it acts as the "eyes," showing where users get stuck, click out of frustration, or ignore a new feature entirely, providing the "why" behind the data.
Source: www.laneapp.co
10 Best Mixpanel Alternatives for Product Analytics in 2024
Hotjar is an all-in-one feedback and analytics software suite to optimize your website and make data-driven decisions. Hotjar Observe is the suiteโ€™s most popular Mixpanel alternativeโ€”pair it with Hotjar Ask, Hotjar Engage, and Hotjar Funnels for all the tools you need to succeed. ๐Ÿ˜Ž
Source: clickup.com
7 best Mixpanel alternatives to understand your users
๐Ÿ’ก Pro tip: you don't need to choose between Hotjar and Mixpanel. With the Hotjar-Mixpanel integration, you not only identify what's happening on your website (e.g. users frequently add certain items to their cart), but you'll also understand why it's happening (e.g. Hotjar's heatmaps and recordings show users are attracted to a particular promotional banner).
Source: www.hotjar.com
The best Hotjar alternatives & competitors, compared
Sprig is a decent replacement for Hotjar, especially if you find Hotjar's survey tools lacking. It's support for mobile apps is another key differentiator.
Source: posthog.com
11 Hotjar alternatives and competitors in 2024
Hotjar features primarily focus on how users interact with your website rather than gaining in-depth insights that can explain why they interact that way. As a strictly-quantitative data tool, Hotjar only gives you half the answers. While you can run user surveys with Hotjar, the tool lacks many other research methodsโ€”such as card sorting, tree testing, user interviews, and...
Source: maze.co

Social recommendations and mentions

Microsoft Forms might be a bit more popular than Hotjar. We know about 16 links to it since March 2021 and only 13 links to Hotjar. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Microsoft Forms mentions (16)

  • MS Forms: Employee to send form and recieve results on his email depending on which employee emails the form (dynamic)
    When you use the word โ€˜formโ€™ in a Microsoft context, readers including myself may assume you are talking about Microsoft forms on https://forms.office.com. Source: about 3 years ago
  • How does your company do its IT Onboarding?
    Make a Microsoft Forms that they have to fill out. Set it to email you when it's completed. Tell people that they have to fill it out properly or they can't have access to anything. The last thing they had before I got here was on PAPER... ISYN. Source: over 3 years ago
  • Microsoft Forms are constantly refreshing and logging out
    You can get to forms.office.com but when you open any form to edit it just constantly refreshes and then kicks you back to a login screen. Source: about 3 years ago
  • How To Create A Fillable Form In Sharepoint Office 365?
    Or just use Microsoft Forms, available at https://forms.office.com. Source: over 3 years ago
  • Easiest Way to Collect Data from Many People at an Organization
    Could you send out a forms link and then collate the data? Source: over 3 years ago
View more

Hotjar mentions (13)

  • The Best 100 Free UI/UX Resources for Every Designer & Developer
    Hotjar Hotjar.com Heatmaps, session recordings, and feedback polls (free basic plan). - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • A list of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS offerings that have free tiers of interest to devops and infradev
    Hotjar โ€” Website Analytics and Reports . Free Plan allows 2000 pageviews/day. One hundred snapshots/day (max capacity: 300). Three snapshot heatmaps can be stored for 365 days. Unlimited Team Members. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • What do I do after ProductHunt?
    So you can use heatmapping software such as Crazy Egg and Hotjar to see how your end users use your website. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Lots of Traffic but no sales
    If you have installed a heat map like hotjar.com then I will tell you that I used that for a month and found 5 or so dead ends where users were not getting to the cart or clicking on things that where not informative enough to lead to the next action. Source: about 3 years ago
  • Anyone willing to provide feedback on my newly created website?
    Install hotjar.com - it's free. It's a heatmap that tracks how people navigate around your site. Why this matters? You can see where people drop off on your site (specifically, what content they see/don't see). Then, you can make informed decisions on what content is landing and what needs to change. Source: over 3 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Microsoft Forms and Hotjar, you can also consider the following products

Typeform - Create beautiful, next-generation online forms with Typeform, the form & survey builder that makes asking questions easy & human on any device. Try it FREE!

Smartlook - Qualitative analytics for websites and mobile apps Start understanding the 'whys' of your users' behaviors with clear, visual insights. With session recordings and event tracking, you get the complete picture.

Google Forms - Simple web forms from Google.

Google Analytics - Improve your website to increase conversions, improve the user experience, and make more money using Google Analytics. Measure, understand and quantify engagement on your site with customized and in-depth reports.

Survey Monkey - Create and publish online surveys in minutes, and view results graphically and in real time. SurveyMonkey provides free online questionnaire and survey software.

FullStory - Meet FullStory, the app that captures all your customer experience data in one powerful platform.