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Microsoft Azure vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry 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

Microsoft Azure
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
323
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (1st)
Pivotal Cloud Foundry
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
14th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure is 15.2%, down from 20.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 6.7%, down from 10.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Azure15.2%
Pivotal Cloud Foundry6.7%
Other78.1%
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

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.
reviewer2263239 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
PCF allows for fine-grained configuration, especially regarding scaling but routing limitations
Something that can be done better is canary deployment. So, right now, we're using blue-green deployment. The support for canary deployment would be nice. A few things, such as what OpenShift does better are cluster management. Like, you can manage the entire thing together. Currently, it's possible to manage all the clusters, especially when it comes to cluster management using straightforward configuration. As of now, we have to handle each application instance individually, which means servicing them one by one. It would be better if we could perform these actions as a group or in a more streamlined manner. One more downside is actually the cost of this environment. So, major downside of Pivotal, it's the cost. So, the runtime running costs are very high. Extremely high.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution has enabled us to provide advanced indicators and analytics to the client on their data."
"It is easy to install."
"I like the ExpressRoute because that makes it easy to configure connectivity to Azure-hosted services."
"Provisioning a server is fast, taking only one or two minutes before it is ready."
"Reduces work for our IT teams and saves us a lot of time."
"The best feature is it's easy to integrate with other Microsoft solutions."
"I think the single sign-on functionality and the ease with which you can deposit things on the cloud have been valuable. Azure has very robust security functionalities and authentication features, which come with mobility, along with backup and credential checks."
"Its ability to scale is most valuable. There are certain periods of the year when we are busier, and we're able to scale up and scale down with Azure depending upon our needs."
"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is the UI, it is easy to use."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very easy to use compared to other cloud technologies. It has a very good performance."
"It is a scalable product...We are not facing any particular issues since most of the applications in our company are written in Java and .NET."
"The most valuable features of Pivotal Cloud Foundry are its ease of use and the command line interface has the ability to push instances to the cloud easily."
"Stability is not a concern with this product."
"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is auto-healing and the plenty of other features that are provided."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very robust, especially for building Java."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to scale. The services that connect to the database are also very good."
 

Cons

"Difficult to understand how it works and it's an expensive solution."
"There should be more language options for the Azure Functions apps. It supports programming languages, but there are only a few options. It could have more programming languages."
"The deployment was quite complex."
"The product's initial setup process and stability need improvement."
"While integrating services from different vendors, the perceived costs are high, with occasional confusion about specific charges, especially in data transfer scenarios between regions."
"Microsoft Azure can be pretty advanced and difficult to understand. I would like it to be simplified. The licensing especially needs to be simplified."
"The management portal can be confusing sometimes. We have difficulty navigating the menus because the terminology is unclear, especially when referring to the content or actionable items."
"I would want Microsoft Azure to provide some credits that can be used to test and validate Microsoft’s different solutions since it is an area where the product lacks."
"There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the future of Pivotal Cloud Foundry."
"Regarding the setup phase, every step is a hurdle. With Pivotal Cloud Foundry, I won't get any proper resources for that. Even if I Google it, there is no proper solution for Pivotal Cloud Foundry."
"It should offer more security features."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is not scalable, infinitely, because when you install it on a set of virtual machines it is very hard to scale. It's easy to scale on an application level, but not it is not similar to if you were using Amazon. Amazon you can scale thousands of applications."
"The user interface should be simpler to navigate because it t can take time for users to learn it."
"In the next release, I would like to see easy integration with external tools."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve the documentation. They are good, but they could improve more. Additionally, it would be beneficial if there were more use case examples."
"I'd like to see a larger service offering."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The license is on a monthly basis."
"The tool is cheap."
"Licensing fees are paid monthly."
"This is an expensive product."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"It’s necessary to use third party products or to use good self-management economic tools"
"The licensing price is fine."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"Licensing is on a monthly basis and right now we pay $24/month. There are no other costs over and above that."
"The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve. However, in this category of solutions, they are all expensive."
"We do pay for the licensing cost because we have opted for a private cloud setup. So, it is a cloud setup, and we have to make payments based on the cloud size. I do not consider it very costly when comparing it to the market."
"You're paying for the number of virtual machines you want to install in the installation."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."
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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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
University
6%
Financial Services Firm
37%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Insurance Company
6%
Computer Software Company
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business140
Midsize Enterprise53
Large Enterprise150
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

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...
Which would you recommend - Pivotal Cloud Foundry or OpenShift?
Pivotal Cloud Foundry is a cloud-native application platform to simplify app delivery. It is efficient and effective. The best feature is how easy it is to handle external services such as database...
 

Also Known As

Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure
PCF, Pivotal Application Service (PAS), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), Pivotal Function Service (PFS)
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.
Humana, Citibank, Mercedes Benz, Liberty Mutual, The Home Depot, GE, West Corp, Merrill Corporation, CoreLogic, Orange, Dish Network, Comcast, Bloomberg, Internal Revenue Service, Ford Motor Company, Garmin, Volkswagen, Solera, Allstate, US Air Force, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, ScotiaBank
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure vs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
882,032 professionals have used our research since 2012.