Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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

"Amazon has a much better understanding of the workflow of data scientists and machine learning processes. This is seen by their SageMaker which offers different versions of the models to be used."
"A scalable and secure product"
"Amazon AWS has a better portfolio. They have an impressive technology and service portfolio."
"I like ETL, the EC2 platform, and Route 53. These features are a great complement to the basic infrastructure of any company. The AWS platform has many features, but the fundamental cloud infrastructure is the most important."
"We are mostly using EC2 compute and other resources. Most of our managed services are in AWS, which some of our clients prefer."
"Amazon is a really good solution with high performance. They offer more connectors than some of their competitors, such as Microsoft Azure."
"Newly introduced features advance capabilities."
"As a service vendor, we have helped clients to achieve faster "go to market" on their products, and have provided highly flexible cost-effective system management solutions."
"We have implemented the ExpressRoute connection, which is an established circuit between the local provider and the Microsoft network edge."
"It is easy to use. It is also stable."
"Data analytics is one of the efficient features as well."
"Technical support, from what I understand, is quite helpful and we speak with them regularly."
"I have found all the features to be good."
"The solution provides multiple well integrated services which happen to work together seamlessly and provide flexibility and scalability for use cases all around the industry."
"I think the most useful feature has been the remote desktop. It has been very helpful when customers have old applications that are not architected to run remotely."
"It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
 

Cons

"The difficulty of the implementation depends on the project. We have a lot of very complicated and complex project which make the implementation more difficult. However, a small project can be very simple to implement. In general, over 90% of the project tend to be complex implementations."
"I'd like the solution to be more plug-and-play."
"Identity and access management on AWS could be straightforward."
"An integrated platform would make it easier for administrators to monitor and manage."
"There is room for improvement in cost. Everyone complains about AWS being expensive. The initial cost starts small but can skyrocket unexpectedly."
"The features that should be improved are that there should be better clarity on their invoicing. There are so many things they charge for - high line items in the invoice. I think there should be more clarity and more ease of use with their billing. I'd like to see better ease of use of with the billing console and a clear dashboard to understand the usage."
"I think Amazon could improve some of the security or fine-grained access for metadata and many other things."
"In some scenarios, Azure will support hybrid cloud better while AWS offers direct connection."
"At times, the support is terrible."
"The customer support can become pricey at times if you don't have proper plans."
"The scalability could improve."
"I think Azure Active Directory and also the backup solutions provided in Azure need to be improved by Microsoft. The backup solution is not a very enterprise solution, and it is very simple. I think in comparison with other backup solutions like Nakivo and Veeam Backup, it can be improved to have a lot of options."
"It is constantly updating. There are weekly releases, sometimes daily releases, and there should be fewer that are consolidated into one."
"I would say an improvement could be allowing for more external, third-party tools. However, I think that's their vision, how they develop the product."
"It is impossible to sell a cloud-based model here in Venezuela because we have strong inflation and most of our clients are immigrating to on-premises solutions."
"The solution could improve by being more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS IaaS is a very generic service, which is extremely overpriced.​"
"The price of the Virtual Desktop service from Amazon AWS could improve, it is more expensive than competitors. The pricing model we are using is pay-as-you-go. You only pay for what you use."
"The pricing is reasonable. It's not expensive, nor will it be cheap, but the free credits initially given provide leverage for new companies to start their businesses."
"The pricing is fair."
"Much faster than other solutions at a super low cost."
"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."
"The prices are somewhat on the higher side. It would help if they can bring it down, especially for the sporting segment and for on-demand instances."
"It's pay-as-you-go... but I think the pricing becomes a problem as the IT organization grows. They need to give better pricing when companies grow."
"Microsoft Azure is expensive."
"The licensing fees depend on the number of users that we have."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"Be careful with Azure Cool storage accounts; if you are dealing with high object counts, then it can be more economical to use Hot storage because of the high storage access costs associated with Cool."
"Its costing can be improved. Its licensing is monthly. In addition to the standard license fee, there is a transactional cost."
"The subscription models can be confusing and it would be beneficial for them to simplify them. We are on an annual subscription."
"The cost of the solution could be reduced. However, I am using the free version."
"We pay yearly for the license."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) solutions are best for your needs.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.