Comparison
Signedup or an intranet form
Microsoft Forms, a SharePoint list, or whatever your intranet offers. It is already paid for and already approved, which is most of the argument for it.
A form records an event. A list is a relationship.
This is the whole distinction, and everything else follows from it. When somebody completes a form on your intranet, the system stores what they said at that moment. It is an event: a row with a timestamp. If their circumstances change the next week, there is no mechanism by which the row learns about it, because forms are not built to be returned to. They are built to be submitted.
A preference centre inverts that. The link they used to join is the same link they use to change their mind, and it stays valid for as long as they are on the list. The record is not a snapshot of one afternoon; it is the current answer, maintained by the only person who reliably knows it.
Once you see the difference, the familiar problems stop being separate problems. The list goes stale because nobody can update it. Unsubscribes arrive as emails to you because there is nowhere to press. The consent history is missing because a form recorded one submission rather than a sequence of decisions. None of that is a shortcoming of the form software - it is a form doing exactly what a form does.
Side by side
The first four rows are where it wins, and they are the rows that usually decide.
| An intranet form | Signedup | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Included in what you already license | From £29 a month |
| Approval needed | None. IT already approved it | A card, or a purchase order |
| Sign-in | Single sign-on, already working | A single-use link. No account |
| Data stays inside your tenant | Yes | No. It is held by us, in the UK or the EU |
| What it captures | A submission, on the day it was made | A record the person keeps current |
| Can somebody change their answer later | Only by submitting the form again, creating a second row | Yes, from any message you send |
| Can somebody leave | By emailing whoever owns the list | One click, recorded, permanent |
| History of what somebody agreed to | The submissions, without which form version they saw | Every change, against the form version shown |
| Reaching staff with no work account | Usually not - sign-on is the barrier | A printable poster with a code |
| Who maintains the list afterwards | You, from the exported spreadsheet | The people on it |
An intranet form compared with Signedup
Cost
- An intranet form
- Included in what you already license
- Signedup
- From £29 a month
Approval needed
- An intranet form
- None. IT already approved it
- Signedup
- A card, or a purchase order
Sign-in
- An intranet form
- Single sign-on, already working
- Signedup
- A single-use link. No account
Data stays inside your tenant
- An intranet form
- Yes
- Signedup
- No. It is held by us, in the UK or the EU
What it captures
- An intranet form
- A submission, on the day it was made
- Signedup
- A record the person keeps current
Can somebody change their answer later
- An intranet form
- Only by submitting the form again, creating a second row
- Signedup
- Yes, from any message you send
Can somebody leave
- An intranet form
- By emailing whoever owns the list
- Signedup
- One click, recorded, permanent
History of what somebody agreed to
- An intranet form
- The submissions, without which form version they saw
- Signedup
- Every change, against the form version shown
Reaching staff with no work account
- An intranet form
- Usually not - sign-on is the barrier
- Signedup
- A printable poster with a code
Who maintains the list afterwards
- An intranet form
- You, from the exported spreadsheet
- Signedup
- The people on it
The objection worth taking seriously
The strongest argument for the intranet form is not cost. It is that the data never leaves your tenant, and that is a real advantage which this product does not match. If your organisation has a policy against employee data sitting with a third party, that policy is the end of the conversation and no comparison table changes it.
Where it is worth pushing back is on the assumption that the alternative is riskier by default. The relevant questions are the ones your own review would ask of any supplier: where the data is held, who can reach it, how long it is kept, and whether the people on the list can see and remove their own record. Those are answered on our security page and in the data processing agreement, both written before anybody asked.
The second objection - that single sign-on is easier than a link - is true for staff with a work account and exactly backwards for those without one. A significant part of most workforces has no corporate login at all, and for them single sign-on is not convenience but exclusion.
Questions people ask
Can I not just re-send the form every quarter?
You can, and some teams do. It gets you a fresh snapshot four times a year at the cost of asking everybody the same questions again, and it produces duplicate rows to reconcile rather than corrected ones. It also only reaches the people who respond, so the records that go stale fastest - the people who have stopped paying attention - are exactly the ones it misses.
Our intranet form feeds a SharePoint list. Is that not the same thing?
It is closer, because the list persists. The gap is still that the person the row describes cannot open it: editing usually requires permissions they do not have, and giving several hundred colleagues write access to a shared list creates a different problem. The record exists, but not for them.
Does this replace our intranet?
No, and it is not trying to. Signedup holds the list of who wants to hear about what. Your intranet remains where people go to read things, and your form remains the right tool for anything you are asking once.
What about the data leaving our tenant?
It is a fair objection and the honest answer is that it does. Everything at rest is held in the United Kingdom or the European Union, the people on your lists can export or delete their own records without asking anybody, and our sub-processors are named individually rather than described. If your policy forbids third-party storage of employee data regardless, this is not the product for you.
Can we import what the form has already collected?
Yes. Export it as a spreadsheet and map the columns to your questions. Imported people are marked as imported rather than confirmed, so you can see at a glance which part of your list has actually chosen to be there and which part arrived from a file.
Other comparisons
Signedup or a spreadsheet
The most common alternative, and where its one structural weakness is.
Signedup or an Outlook or Microsoft 365 distribution list
Accurate about employment, silent on preference.
Signedup or Mailchimp or another marketing email tool
Sending tools solve the other half. How the two work together.
Signedup or a full internal comms platform
When a full platform is right, and when it is more than the job requires.
Try it against a list you already have
30 days, no card, and an export button from the first day.