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Amazon AWS 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

Amazon AWS
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
2nd
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
254
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Azure
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
1st
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
312
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Amazon AWS is 18.8%, down from 25.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure is 20.8%, up from 18.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Arun Srivastav - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows for automatic scaling of resources and provides built-in firewalls and security features, eliminating the need for external security solutions
One thing that's a bit different is that we're still accustomed to speaking to someone directly. AWS doesn't offer that kind of support. It's only through bots. You're speaking to chatbots, and that can sometimes be frustrating because there's no person on the other side. AI is not a substitute for a person. AWS marketplace is very strong, but somehow AWS doesn't promote it much. They have a huge customer base across the globe, and if products were launched in their marketplace, they could sell like hotcakes. They should improve their marketplace and promote the same product across the globe. They can take a cut, but they should promote it. That's something they don't do very much. So, AWS should promote its marketplace software. The company should promote it aggressively. Currently, they keep it very subtle. If you ask for it, they'll help you out. But they don't seem to advertise, "You're building a product on our platform? Why don't you sell it in our marketplace?" Improvement in AI: AWS is a little behind Microsoft Azure in terms of AI. AWS is still getting there, but the kind of examples and help files available in Azure for AI are much better. So AWS still needs to work on its AI functionality.
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

"The installation and initial setup are easy."
"AWS is stable."
"Friendly console for implementation."
"The solution scales very nicely."
"Almost everything is good. It is a whole ecosystem. It is not only the storage, computing, or networking. It is interesting in the way all things are combined to form this ecosystem. It is a very well-built and logical ecosystem that has some small building blocks. These building blocks can be used in the right way to build a much bigger ecosystem that is robust, secure, scalable."
"The most valuable feature is that it is simple."
"The stability of the solution is very good."
"It's very user-friendly."
"The advantage of Microsoft Azure is its simplicity. It's easy to launch a project. However, the problem with this kind of solution is the reliability for the customers. You have to be sure to stay with Microsoft."
"There are a lot of valuable features in Microsoft Azure, such as Kubernetes, pipelines, and development environments."
"I like the ease of implementation."
"I like a lot of features. For example, the Windows virtual solution has helped in such a way that our client-based application was converted into a web-based version through the use of the Windows Virtual Desktop."
"Good security, scalability, and elasticity."
"Azure is very user friendly. I was able to create some database servers really fast. The user interface is intuitive."
"Azure virtual machines are stand-out."
"It is a flexible solution that is straightforward to use."
 

Cons

"The pricing is something you have to watch. You really have to constantly optimize your costs for instances and things like that. That can become a job in itself to manage just from a budgeting standpoint."
"Like anything, Amazon AWS has room for improvement, but it's not bad."
"One thing that's a bit different is that we're still accustomed to speaking to someone directly. AWS doesn't offer that kind of support. It's only through bots."
"The IEM (Infrastructure Event Management) appears to be complicated, specifically cross-account resource permissions."
"The pricing of AWS is very unclear. They make it quite confusing."
"The initial setup was very complex."
"I have been using Amazon AWS for approximately one year."
"We have had some difficulty figuring out how to monitor how many EC2 instances have been networked into our entire enterprise. We usually try to create a diagram outside of AWS. The types of information we are trying to determine are, for example, what hardware devices are interconnected, and when was the interconnection made."
"It would be nice to have faster support."
"Pricing is one area where Azure has room for improvement. There should be some due consideration. Azure has solved some issues with pricing from the development team's standpoint, but it is still quite costly. They should also offer a trial period for the individual platform solutions. I think that would be pretty handy for the developers."
"The solution needs a more integrated password feature."
"Azure installation is complicated. When we first deployed Azure, it was challenging."
"Microsoft Azure's design language is a little too basic."
"It would be advantageous if the dashboard had more clarity, in terms of the visibility that it provides."
"It can be cheaper, which might simplify things a bit."
"An issue I encountered was around the integration of Identity. I lost some important information and I would like to see improvements with this."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are reducing costs year-over-year."
"The tool’s pricing is reasonable."
"We pay a monthly licensing fee. It's below $100 a month."
"When you compare Amazon AWS to Microsoft Azure, the pricing of both is almost the same. There are some instances when one is cheaper than the other in one area but it is difficult to pinpoint which one is cheaper because it depends upon a lot of factors, such as the use case. However, the overall price of both solutions could be reduced."
"A few of our customers pay for it yearly and monthly. Sometimes, when it's related to the data, the pricing seems to be high. It could be cheaper on a transactional basis."
"It can get quite pricey at times."
"Some customers will provide their own license and others will purchase it directly from AWS."
"The solution is expensive, and I rate it an eight out of ten."
"The cost-benefit equation for Azure is very good, particularly for small applications. However, Microsoft should do much, much more to improve how costs are communicated and how to forecast them. The Azure Pricing Calculator is not useful."
"The price of the solution could be reduced. There should be a loyalty cost reduction model. If customers have been using the service year after year they should receive a discount."
"The pricing is relatively high."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"We're paying in dollars, and it's very expensive for us because of the exchange rates."
"I believe that we have a three-year license, and I'm happy with the pricing."
"It's a metered environment, and it's pay-as-you-go. That's the big challenge with a metered environment."
"It’s necessary to use third party products or to use good self-management economic tools"
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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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
29%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
45%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does OpenShift compare with Amazon AWS?
Open Shift makes managing infrastructure easy because of self-healing and automatic scaling. There is also a wonderful dashboard mechanism to alert us in case the application is over-committing or ...
How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS?
How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS? Amazon AWS offers options both in terms of upgrading and expanding capabilities as well as acquiring greater storage space. These upgrades can ...
Looking to compare Google Firebase, Amazon AWS, and Microsoft Azure
We like Google Firebase hosting and authentication and also the excellent cloud functionality. Our team found the flexibility of handling and dealing with the database through EDL to be very useful...
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

Amazon Web Services, AWS
Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Pinterest, General Electric, Pfizer, Netflix, and Nasdaq.
BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon AWS vs. Microsoft Azure and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,791 professionals have used our research since 2012.