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Alibaba Cloud vs Microsoft Azure comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Alibaba Cloud
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
8th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Azure
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
323
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Alibaba Cloud is 7.2%, down from 11.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure is 9.9%, down from 19.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Azure9.9%
Alibaba Cloud7.2%
Other82.9%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Q&A Highlights

NN
Manager, Cloud Solution at Ascend Group Co., Ltd.
Sep 19, 2023
 

Featured Reviews

Salahuddin Shaikh - PeerSpot reviewer
Site Reliability Engineer at EPAM Systems
Alibaba Cloud has evolved a lot in all specially in AI space, but still needs to improve the support offered to users.
The part where the product lacks is not because of the services it offers. The support offered by the tool is ridiculous. Whenever you raise the support ticket, someone from China comes over the phone. When I used to raise a ticket for support, some person from China came along with another English-speaking person to whom I had to explain my issues, after which the English-speaking individual used to translate it into Mandarin for the person from China. The Chinese person used to explain something in Mandarin to the English-speaking person, and it used to keep happening continuously, making it a hectic support service from Alibaba Cloud. The support was time-consuming, and it was also frustrating. As a technical person, if you are someone who is expecting something to be done as soon as possible and the support services offered to you turn out to be time-consuming and frustrating, then it won't be a great experience for the users.
Syed Abid  - PeerSpot reviewer
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
Versatile integrations and reliable customer satisfaction elevate cloud service experience
For Microsoft Azure improvement, they need to enhance their support system. The first level of support should be improved in terms of quality and response time. They need more technical support at the first level, as there are currently only one or two technical people among five to ten staff members at this level. They should ensure that the first level support is more technical because we normally provide services to technical users ourselves. When an issue arises, it usually escalates to the second or third level. When facing first level support, they may have limited knowledge and only collect screenshots to forward to their seniors. They should ensure that the first level support is aligned with L2 and L3 to better assist us, especially since we mention in the ticket that our issues are related to specific problems and require that sort of support.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It is a scalable product. So, scaling up or scaling down is possible."
"Feature-wise, it provides many features. ECS, VM, SP, bucket object storage, and databases are the most valuable."
"We use the product for storage and as a VPN."
"We use the solution's AI features for data analysis."
"The installation is easy."
"It is easy to set up."
"The cost of hosting the solution is very reasonable. It's quite inexpensive."
"It's easy to use, cheaper than other solutions, and more secure."
"The solution has high stability."
"We have implemented the ExpressRoute connection, which is an established circuit between the local provider and the Microsoft network edge."
"Microsoft Azure is a very dynamic cloud service that allows you to migrate your workload, applications, and data."
"I have found the solution to be flexible, easy to use, and the documents are straightforward to understand."
"Microsoft Azure is flexible and the performance is great."
"The solution is stable."
"We are satisfied with the technical support."
"There are a lot of valuable features in Microsoft Azure, such as Kubernetes, pipelines, and development environments."
 

Cons

"From a performance point of view, Huawei and Azure are faster. Alibaba isn't as good."
"Alibaba Cloud's initial setup is somewhat complex."
"The user experience must be improved."
"Regarding security issues, Alibaba Cloud is more complex and better suited for developers and R&D teams. On the other hand, Google Cloud is more convenient for new users."
"The flexibility of the solution could be improved."
"The solution needs to improve its graphical user interface."
"From the improvement point of view, there are lots of issues that we are facing. In all the areas, it seems like it is not mature. For example, a customer wants to provision some VM that has many configurations. If I want to show the price to the customer, it is very challenging. The SDK that Alibaba has provided is very limited. We can have the pricing for VM, but we cannot have pricing for RDS databases or some other services. This is a big concern area for us. They should put more effort into the SDKs or APIs that they provide, for example, pricing APIs or pricing SDK. They do not provide support for most of the services they provide. For example, if I want to get the price of MongoDB, that SDK is not available from Alibaba. Similarly, robust API support is required for S3, which is OSS or Object Storage, so that we can read the data in a faster manner, for example, in chunks. We have raised many issues with the Alibaba support team, and they have been fixing the issues after we report them."
"The solution name is not favorable in some markets and could cause us some problems gaining customers."
"They can add more documentation about the solution."
"I would like to see more databases on the cloud, what they call today Big Data should be there."
"The solution should be more intuitive and provide better support. We often do not receive frequent updates or comprehensive support, even as partners."
"They should optimize their pricing so that we can use more features. I would also like to see more auditing and more security for the Blob storage feature. From a technical point, it has very good features for Microsoft products, but for non-Microsoft products, it may have some limitations. I have mostly worked with Windows-based integration, and now I am trying to use it for open-source systems. It is good but not as easy as Microsoft products."
"Technical support needs to be better."
"Potential improvements to the price calculator tool"
"I would like to see it more easily accessible."
"You eventually end up with a large collection of 'bits' all working together, I find it hard to be able to create a logical 'box' and put all the 'bits' that need to be in that box / application into the one place."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't know the exact cost. It is cheaper than AWS."
"The cost of Alibaba Cloud is lower than that of AWS, but I feel that its price is on the higher end of the spectrum. Alibaba Cloud charges its users a price in dollars"
"The solution's pricing is the same as AWS'."
"I noticed on the pricing that it's quite expensive. It is the price you pay for making a practical choice for enterprise-level companies since it has so many features and it fits an enterprise-level company just like our company right now."
"Pricing for Alibaba Cloud is a little bit cheaper. It has reasonable pricing."
"The product is not that expensive."
"The price of Alibaba Cloud is good. If I was to use Microsoft Azure I would have to pay 30 percent more."
"I'm not sure about the exact pricing, but let's just say if it cost a dollar for Amazon AWS, it was closer to 70 to 80 cents for Alibaba Cloud."
"The solution does require a license."
"Price is good and many free features available"
"There are added costs to the company or for scaling for most premium products."
"Price could always be cheaper. Its licensing and usage aren't always cheap. We pay monthly."
"Currently, we do not have anything reserved. There are no reservations that we have built into the Azure environment, so all of our licensing is on a consumption basis. As things spin up, those licenses spin up."
"The solution's licensing costs are yearly."
"We pay our bill in a monthly or 6 monthly billing cycle. The cost depends on how much you use during the period."
"Pricing is comparable but from a cost perspective, this solution is the cheapest."
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Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
Aug 14, 2013
Amazon vs Rackspace vs Microsoft vs Google: Cloud Hosting Services Comparison
Amazon Web Services, Rackspace OpenStack, Microsoft Windows Azure and Google are the major cloud hosting and storage service providers. Athough Amazon is top of them and is oldest in cloud market, Rackspace, Microsoft and Google are giving tough competition to each other and to Amazon also for…
 

Answers from the Community

NN
Manager, Cloud Solution at Ascend Group Co., Ltd.
Sep 19, 2023
Sep 19, 2023
I believe that with Microsoft Azure you will have a bigger advantage due to the amount of partners that there are in the market. If you need support from Partner one and you don't get it, it's easy to switch to another partner to get help. Further to this Microsoft Azure now has datacentres worldwide which makes it easier to deploy anywhere.
2 out of 3 answers
DJIBRINE AGADJI - PeerSpot reviewer
Ingénieur systèmes et réseaux at e-services
Sep 1, 2023
Microsoft Azure
Sathish-Holla - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Consultant at a real estate/law firm with 51-200 employees
Sep 4, 2023
I believe Microsoft Azure is good as many companies are going by Azure, and moreover, Azure is best because many services that Microsoft corporates are used in the market.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business140
Midsize Enterprise54
Large Enterprise149
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alibaba Cloud?
On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten.
What needs improvement with Alibaba Cloud?
Alibaba Cloud needs to improve emails. Its pricing can also be lower. Regarding security issues, Alibaba Cloud is more complex and better suited for developers and R&D teams. On the other hand,...
What is your primary use case for Alibaba Cloud?
I was using Alibaba Cloud for the deployment of one of the products that my previous company was developing for a client in the KSA, where I had utilized servers, storage accounts, email services, ...
Which is preferable - IBM Public Cloud or Microsoft Azure?
IBM Public Cloud is IBM’s Platform-as-a-Service. It aims to provide organizations with a secure cloud environment to manage data and applications. One of the features we like is the cloud activity ...
Which is better - SAP Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure?
One of the best features of SAP Cloud Platform is that it is web-based and you can log in from anywhere in the world. SAP Cloud Platform is suitable for companies of any size; it works well with bo...
How does Microsoft Azure compare to Google Firebase?
I would recommend Google Firebase instead of Microsoft Azure, simply for the array of features that it has to offer. In particular, the Firebase library grants you access to a shared data structure...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Schneider Electric, BorderX Lab, Royal Philips, Catchpoint, Conversant, Blogmint
BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.
Find out what your peers are saying about Alibaba Cloud vs. Microsoft Azure and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
883,448 professionals have used our research since 2012.