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Alibaba Cloud vs Microsoft Azure comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

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
7.0
Number of Reviews
313
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Alibaba Cloud is 12.5%, up from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure is 19.1%, up from 18.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Q&A Highlights

NN
Sep 19, 2023
 

Featured Reviews

Aderonke  Adeyegbe - PeerSpot reviewer
Good storage, great for smaller companies, and has impressive support
We're all aware that the pandemic accelerated digital transformation, and we believe that Alibaba, due to its pedigree, has what it takes to take small businesses to the cloud. It's a game-changer, for sure. The storage is very useful. It is easy to set up. Technical support is good. It is quite stable.
Nicolas Chabrier - PeerSpot reviewer
Promotes clear, logical structures preventing impractical configurations and offers seamless integration
The only thing is regarding the management of multi-cloud environments. That's not really possible. So basically, it's wonderful if you manage Microsoft clearly and if you manage Microsoft Azure, but if you need to consume external services and have a global overview of all your consumption, it's not the case. Google, for instance, has tools that help you manage multiple environments, which makes sense because Google is really the cloud provider. So that's why they need to be compliant with the others. But for sure, Microsoft's approach is different, and it's wonderful when you're one hundred percent on Azure. But if you'd like to have something more of a multi-cloud strategy, that's a bit of a gap where they could improve.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We use the solution to run VMs."
"The installation is easy."
"We use the product for storage and as a VPN."
"Flexibility and costs were probably the most important thing for us. The cost was one of the big factors for choosing Alibaba Cloud relative to other cloud solutions, especially in Asia"
"I rate Alibaba Cloud's scalability an eight out of ten."
"Alibaba support is responsive. When we create tickets in the Alibaba portal, they usually respond online or call me in five minutes."
"What's good about Alibaba Cloud is its database service. It's also good in the virtual machine area."
"The cost of hosting the solution is very reasonable. It's quite inexpensive."
"The most valuable features of the solution are ease of use and the enhancements are continually being updated."
"Easy to deploy services"
"It is a very straightforward solution that provides a wide range of services."
"The tool has proven to be valuable for our organization by enhancing the availability and reliability of services. Our website and several applications hosted on it now benefit from improved availability features and increased reliability."
"It's stable, easy to use, reliable, and cheap."
"It is easy to use and flexible."
"Microsoft Azure has a large scope, it can do many things."
"Data analytics is one of the efficient features as well."
 

Cons

"A big area for improvement in Alibaba Cloud is its support. Another area for improvement in Alibaba Cloud is SDK-based service because sometimes, the SDKs don't work correctly. Support for API-based services also needs improvement in Alibaba Cloud because, at the moment, it's not that stable."
"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 needs to improve its graphical user interface."
"Alibaba Cloud's initial setup is somewhat complex."
"Alibaba Cloud has some problems related to latency and connection issues. If you go for a cloud solution provider, you will need to access the Internet, which may result in latency and bandwidth issues, leading to slowness in operations."
"The support offered by the tool is ridiculous."
"Users use websites as a tutorial. However, the Alibaba Cloud website has the content, and the scripts are copied from Amazon Web Services. We had received customer feedback where the customer asked us to get formulate original content instead of copying from Amazon Web Services. It’s very odd and awkward."
"The flexibility of the solution could be improved."
"Their backup strategy is a little complex which racks up the VM to other sole storage areas. This should be improved."
"Scalability is definitely in need of improvement. Azure is a very good solution but it still lacks the performance of other cloud platforms."
"The pricing needs to be a bit lower. It's an expensive solution right now."
"The pricing criteria can be improved with broken-down terms that can be understood easily."
"The initial setup can be improved."
"If the price were reduced then it would be an improvement."
"It would be helpful if it offered more integration with other platforms."
"Maybe Microsoft could improve its monitoring around the networking."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We cut our costs significantly by migrating our infrastructure to the cloud. Alibaba Cloud employs a pay-as-you-go model, so that minimizes many costs for us."
"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"
"Alibaba Cloud is cheaper."
"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."
"The product is not that expensive."
"Pricing for Alibaba Cloud is a little bit cheaper. It has reasonable pricing."
"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."
"We have approached our clients about using Kubernetes or Docker because it's cheaper when inflation is considered."
"It is paid on a per-use basis."
"The pricing of Microsoft Azure is not very flexible."
"The pricing model is subscription-based and it's not an expensive solution."
"The product is expensive."
"We pay a monthly licensing fee for the solution, which could be cheaper."
"The cost of Microsoft Azure depends on the services that are used and there can be a discount at a corporate level from Microsoft."
"The current pricing is on a pay-as-you-go subscription."
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Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
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
Sep 1, 2023
Microsoft Azure
Sathish-Holla - PeerSpot reviewer
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
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
8%
Educational Organization
47%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Alibaba Cloud?
ECS is the most valuable feature of the solution.
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,...
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 2025.
844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.