Microsoft Azure Reviews, Competitors and Pricing

reviewer1493898

Senior System Engineer at a engineering company with 11-50 employees

Jan 27, 2021

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Easy to use with good scalability potential and good stability on offer

Pros and Cons

"The product is rather stable. We haven't had any issues with it in that sense."

"It would be ideal if they could reduce costs a bit. Right now, we find the product to be expensive."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution to host the web server.

What is most valuable?

The product is very convenient for us. It ensures the website is set up right.

The solution can scale if you need it to. Expanding it is easy.

The product is rather stable. We haven't had any issues with it in that sense.

The solution is very easy to use.

What needs improvement?

I can't say that we have any complaints in terms of features or lack of capabilities within the product. Over the last two years, I'd say it's been so far so good.

It would be ideal if they could reduce costs a bit. Right now, we find the product to be expensive.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for around two years at this point. It hasn't been too long.

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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution so far has been reliable. We haven't had problems with stability over the last two years of use. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's been good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of the solution is very good. If a company needs to expand it, they can do so rather easily. It shouldn't give them any trouble.

We don't currently have plans to increase the usage ourselves at this point. There's no scaling that will be done in the near future on our end.

How are customer service and support?

We've been in touch with technical support in the past. We had a question we needed them to answer and they were able to help us. I'd say they were knowledgeable and responsive and that we've been happy with the level of service so far.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The licensing is based on usage. I'm not sure of the exact costs involved as it's not an aspect of the solution that is my responsibility.

That said, it is my understanding that it is a bit expensive.

What other advice do I have?

We're just a customer. We aren't a reseller or consultant and we don't have a professional business relationship with Microsoft.

We only really use the solution to host a website, and therefore we don't really use the full scope of features right now.

I'd recommend the solution to other organizations as it is rather easy to use.

Overall, we've been quite happy with the product. I'd rate it eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

reviewer1096965

Systems Administrator Team Leader at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dec 28, 2020

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Good workload performance and the ExpressRoute connects us directly to the Microsoft cloud

Pros and Cons

"We have implemented the ExpressRoute connection, which is an established circuit between the local provider and the Microsoft network edge."

"At times, the support is terrible."

What is our primary use case?

This year, we built our own data center, and we use this solution to extend it into the cloud.

We have implemented the ExpressRoute connection, which is an established circuit between the local provider and the Microsoft network edge. This leads you directly to the Microsoft data center.

The digital workload transfers from on-premises here to the Azure cloud, which is a hybrid model. We have two different zones in Azure. One is for the intranet, and the other is for the internet.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the performance for our digital workloads.

What needs improvement?

At times, the support is terrible. It is not bad all of the time, but many times when we have contacted them, there are juniors without refined knowledge. We have had instances where it takes a long time to solve just a single problem.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Microsoft Azure for the past two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability depends on the customer. They decide the compute and other things, such as the level of support. If they take premium support then the SLA given by Microsoft is higher than when you choose a virtual machine without premium.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

At the moment, we are reviewing and studying how to migrate our full workload to the cloud. We have one datacenter with more than 120 virtual machines and we are learning how to do the migration. Once it is achieved, the hybrid model we have can become a public model.

How was the initial setup?

Our design was complex because we wanted it done in a certain way. There were lots of things to be done. We just experienced problems in the firewall's compatibility with Azure because when you implement a firewall, it's not as straightforward as in the case when you implement it on-premises. This led to some challenges and we had to troubleshoot the deployment of one firewall for a full month.

Even the local providers did not have experience with how to deploy that one firewall, which is why we spent so much time troubleshooting. It turns out that when you deploy a firewall on-premises and you want to migrate to the cloud, there are certain considerations that you have to keep in mind, which makes it more complex.

For our second firewall implementation, it was faster and better.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis.

What other advice do I have?

This is definitely a product that I recommend, but it has to be done smartly. Not everything can be migrated and you shouldn't try to migrate everything as-is. It has to be done properly and people have to understand how services that are to be migrated need to be done. Also, there are some services that should not be migrated because it is better to keep them on your own cloud. This should all be studied in advance.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

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reviewer1461696

IT Senior Consultant and trainer at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees

Dec 11, 2020

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Simple to use, easy to configure, and scalable

Pros and Cons

"The solution is very simple to use. It has a lot of great practical applications we really appreciate."

"The solution could use mutual segmentation for servers. It would be ideal if you could constitute something like five or 15 groups among the groups of different computers inside Azure."

What is our primary use case?

I primarily use Microsoft Azure for application development in our development environment.

What is most valuable?

The solution is pretty dynamic.

We prefer that we can configure our environment very quickly.

We can add some notes if we need to. The testing capabilities are great. We can use the load balancing environment, and we can test a lot of different components from an infrastructure point of view. We can also test different scenarios within the application.

The solution is very simple to use. It has a lot of great practical applications we really appreciate.

What needs improvement?

The licensing model is not ideal. It is not very useful in predicting actual costs. Sometimes we found that we could not accurately predict how much specific products will cost the company in the future. Just now, for example, we want to start using Log Analytics for Office 365, however, we don't know the final price. It's inconvenient for us as we cannot predict the budget and it puts off making a decision. For Microsoft, it's very disadvantagous.

The solution could use mutual segmentation for servers. It would be ideal if you could constitute something like five or 15 groups among the groups of different computers inside Azure. If you could get something like logical groups of servers outside the mutual servers, it would be an improvement.

Sometimes we want to start and do a penetration test. If, for example, we're planning new security scanning for our customers. You have to inform Microsoft that you want to start a penetration test. If you have regular scans Microsoft should allow regular scanning, without having to plan and to ask for approval from the Microsoft side every time. When it's meant to be a regular occurrence, it's very inconvenient for us.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability of the solution is pretty good. It doesn't cause bottlenecks or any other major issues for us. We find it to be reliable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

While we can dynamically add servers according to the user request, it's not profitable for us. Currently, it is possible to scale the solution. It just costs more to do so.

How are customer service and technical support?

We are not so satisfied with technical support right now. Sometimes they cannot help us. We had problems with licensing and with the invoicing and so on and so on. Sometimes it's not very easy to explain the problems, the technical or non-technical, and they can't really assist us effectively.

In one instance, we had an issue with anti-spam on the service. We were trying to figure out why certain emails were being marked as spam. It took far too long to get to the bottom of the cause.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It's hard to gauge what the pricing will be, so It's hard to plan with the solution. The licensing needs to be more transparent and obvious.

What other advice do I have?

We're simply Microsoft customers. We don't have a business relationship with the company.

Overall, I would rate the solution eight out of ten. We're mostly happy with it, although we would prefer if pricing was more transparent.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user719895

Diretor de Sistemas de Informação at a transportation company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Aug 22, 2017

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Mobility of cloud-based directory reduced reporting and sped implementing new solutions

What is most valuable?

Virtual Networking
Security
Feature packing
Virtual Machines
Ease of implementation
Azure AD
Azure AD Directory Domain Services
Database as a Service
Operations Management Suite
RBAC

How has it helped my organization?

Mobility, no more "metal" on-premise, cloud-based directory with SSO features, sped implementing new solutions, reduced skillset for management and reporting.

We have a full Azure plus Office 365 implementation for servers and desktops, authenticating users on Azure AD over 802.1X switching and wireless. No on-premise servers, DC's, file-servers, etc.

What needs improvement?

Stability. Microsoft is implementing changes too fast and sometimes things break.

For how long have I used the solution?

Three years, but the full stack only since January 2017.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

None.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Yes. Beware of August. Microsoft makes some big changes during this month and they have an impact on customers.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

None.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

10 out of 10.

Technical Support:

10 out of 10.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

On-premise traditional solutions.

How was the initial setup?

Complex in the beginning, because the company I was migrating had some peculiarities.

The latter move was totally stable as we did a cutoff migration and no garbage was imported. Some downtime was expected, but this was minimal.

What about the implementation team?

In-house, with support from a vendor team. Excellent support: 10 out of 10.

What was our ROI?

Not yet calculated since it was a major digital transformation and an ongoing project.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Setup cost is low and Microsoft may help your project financially with services from a partner.

Be sure to know your licensing or ask for advice. It's worth it. You may be led into something you don't need, if following Microsoft or a vendor.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

No.

What other advice do I have?

Evaluate extensibly (the actual scenario), have a definitive vision of where you want to be in a near future, align the strategy with your management and expect that it may not be cheaper. A correct vision of a project of this kind cannot be focused on lowering costs but vision alignment, future scalability, speed on delivering services, and maintaining smaller IT crews focused on business needs.

Please do some previous math regarding actual licensing versus a costs model. Extrapolate this to a five year plan to match current hardware lifespans.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user698160

Cloud/System Administrator at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jul 31, 2017

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Saves a lot of time for our developers as it enables moving from the virtual machines to the Web Application-side

What is most valuable?

Virtual machines, Azure Web Applications, MS SQL DB, DNS, Azure Active Directory, etc. are some of the most valuable features.

It is quite easy to learn to start working with them and they are composite enough to use them in many different scenarios.

For example, you can create a web app with a few clicks from Visual Studio and publish it to Azure Web Apps. You also can integrate that Web App to CI/CD pipeline (https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/docs/build/get-started/aspnet-4-ci-cd-azure-automatic), assign custom SSL certificates to it (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service-web/app-service-web-tutorial-custom-SSL), configure auto-scale (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/app-service-environment-auto-scale), implement Azure AD authentication (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service-mobile/app-service-mobile-how-to-configure-active-directory-authentication?toc=%2fazure%2fapp-service%2ftoc.json), etc.

How has it helped my organization?

It enabled moving from the virtual machines to the Web Application-side, which in turn saved a lot of time for our developers.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used this solution for about two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There were some stability issues. Some of them were user-specific (some applications were buggy), while some were global https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/status/history/.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

There were no scalability issues. My work duties are not connected to this feature.

How is customer service and technical support?

On a scale from 1-10 (1=worst, 10=best). I would rate the technical support a seven out of 10. First level support is awful (it works only if you have a generic issue). But if you are lucky enough, you could get a real technical person, who could help you.

How was the initial setup?

The setup/installation depends from which service you start (for example, start to use DNS which is much easier vs the web applications).

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

If your company is big enough and oriented to the cloud, then go for the Enterprise Agreement. If you want just to try it first, then use the trial version.

What other advice do I have?

Learn the fundamentals using the official documentation; for example, you have the Developer Guide and courses.

Start using new services based on the scenarios described in the official documentation.

Use communities for consulting, such as Stack Overflow, Reddit, and Slack. However, personally, I prefer the channel azured.slack.com.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user8577

Director of Infrastructure at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

Aug 13, 2013

When to use different Azure IaaS storage types…

I’m been using Azure IaaS in a lot of enterprise deployments lately and I’ve noticed that there is some confusion regarding the different storage types available and provisioned for the virtual machines. In many ways the capabilities associated with Azure storage is its greatest strength, but unless you configure it properly, you might be in for a surprise regarding your results. The key message to understand is the difference between the operating system disk, the temporary disk, and data disks as they have different performance characteristics and will impact your systems in different ways when used correctly or incorrectly.

The operating system disk:

This disk is used for the operating system install and it will exhibit great read performance. It is not however scalable for write performance, so you shouldn’t use it for any write-centric or data-centric use. It would NOT be the place where you would put your Microsoft SQL data, or your file server.

The cache / temporary disk

The cache disk is used for temporary data that you don’t want to keep. It might seem like it is retained, but eventually you will find this disk refreshed when the system is booted back up, or undergoes a “repair”. The cache disk is really only appropriate for storage of data you don’t want to keep.

The data disk

The data disk is where you should put any of your important information, especially databases and file stores. The data here can be effectively scaled out through striping several data disks together. A rule of thumb to use is that each data disk is worth approximately 500 IOPS. If you stripe several together you’ll see that number increase. At this point you might find it helpful to run some tests against the disks you’ve allocated to ensure you’ve added the appropriate IOPS for your capacity requirement. I’ll note that the disk IOPS will increase as it is used, which is a component of the caching engine of the data disk type. The cool thing about the data disk is that they are easy to provision and you can create stripes of a lot of disks (16) which will provide excellent scalability to your application.

The key point? Use the right disks for the right things. If you don’t, then you’ll get a different performance experience than you’re expecting. Now move some workloads to Azure and take advantage of the scalability!

Want to learn more? Check out the Azure internals session from TechEd!

Azure Internals

Also, check out Azure Storage Testing, which checked a standard Azure hard disk against a local SSD and a small server. This performance can be improved by striping multiple Azure disks together.

Disclosure: The company I work for is a Microsoft Partner

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user8502

Head of IT with 51-200 employees

Aug 10, 2013

Simple Calculator for Comparing Windows Azure Blob Storage and Amazon S3 Pricing

UPDATE – 06-DECEMBER-2012

I originally wrote this post in September 2012. Recently at their re:Invent event, Amazon announced reduction in their storage prices by 24-28% (http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2012/11/amazon-s3-price-reduction-december-1-2012.html). Yesterday Microsoft announced similar price reduction (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2012/12/05/announcing-reduced-pricing-for-windows-azure-storage.aspx). I have updated this blog post taking these price reductions into consideration and including them in my calculator below. Please note that both Amazon and Windows Azure have reduced only the storage charges. They have not changed the transaction charges or the bandwidth (Egress) charges. The new prices for Amazon became effective as of 01-December-2012 while that for Windows Azure will become effective on 12-December-2012.

Few months back, I wrote a few blog posts comparing Windows Azure Blob Storage and Amazon S3 services. You can read those blog posts here:

http://gauravmantri.com/2012/05/09/comparing-windows-azure-blob-storage-and-amazon-simple-storage-service-s3part-i/

http://gauravmantri.com/2012/05/11/comparing-windows-azure-blob-storage-and-amazon-simple-storage-service-s3part-ii/

http://gauravmantri.com/2012/05/13/comparing-windows-azure-blob-storage-and-amazon-simple-storage-service-s3summary/

Since pricing for both of these services are changing quite frequently and depended upon a number of factors, it was not possible for me to pinpoint exactly which service is cheaper. I created a simple calculator where you can input appropriate values and compare the cost of both of these services to you.

As mentioned in my other blog posts, the pricing depends on 3 factors in both services:

Transaction costs i.e. cost incurred based on number of transactions performed against each service. These include various REST based operations performed against the two services.
Storage costs i.e. cost incurred based on the amount of data stored in each service. These are usually calculated based on Giga bytes of data stored per month.
Bandwidth costs i.e. cost incurred based on the data sent out of the data center in each service. Please note that at the time of writing of this blog, all incoming traffic is free in both service as well as the data transferred between an application and storage service in same data center is also free.

In this simple calculator, I took only first two factors into consideration. Again when it comes to storage costs, both services offered a tiered pricing scheme, which I have not considered.

A few comments:

At the time of writing this blog post, the pricing is taken from respective services pages (https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/details/ and http://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/). I will try an keep this post updated with the default pricing however I would strongly recommend that you check the pricing page for respective services to get most current pricing.
While pricing is an important criteria, it should not be the sole criteria for deciding which service to choose. One must also consider the features offered by each service. You can check http://gauravmantri.com/2012/05/13/comparing-windows-azure-blob-storage-and-amazon-simple-storage-service-s3summary/ for a feature by feature comparison as of 11th of May 2012. Since then both services have offered some new features (e.g. Asynchronous copy blob support in Windows Azure and CORS support in Amazon S3 etc.) which should also be taken into consideration.
For storage costs, I have taken very simple scenario though both services offer tiered pricing as well. One should take that into consideration as well.
Lastly, I must emphasize that it is a very simple calculator with no in-built error checking or data validation. If you find any issues with this calculator (especially around incorrect calculations), please let me know ASAP and I will fix them.

http://gauravmantri.com/2012/09/03/simple-calculator-for-comparing-windows-azure-blob-storage-and-amazon-s3-pricing/

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user8124

CEO at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Jul 28, 2013

Top Reasons Developers Should Use Windows Azure Mobile Services

With the recent release of Social Cloud, I asked the RedBit teamwhat are the top reasons for using Windows Azure Mobile Services and here is what we have.

Easy Third Party Authentication

Using the Identity feature of Azure Mobile Services allows developers to quick implement OAuth based authentication without having to worry about a lot of the plumbing code that is required when writing everything from scratch.

You can easily incorporate authentication with

Microsoft Account
Facebook
Twitter
Google

As a developer all you would have to do is

Specify the keys in the portal
Use the mobile SDK for iOS, Android, Windows 8, Windows Phone with application
Authenticate via the SDK calling MobileServiceClient.LoginAsync()

Here is what it would look like from the dashboard to setup keys identity

To learn more about this feature see Get Started With Authentication with Mobile Services

Data Storage

Most mobile apps written today need some form of data storage and usually the process is

Figure out where to host it
Figure out what type of database to use
Write some REST APIs to access the data
Make sure the APIs are secured

Using the data feature of Azure Mobile Services developers can quickly create data tables, secure the data tables for read/write operations and also write custom scripts to run when an insert, update, delete or read operation is performed on the data.

From the client side, using the SDK, you call the MobileServiceClient.GetTable<>() method and data will be retrieved. If the data is secured via the portal settings, you will need to login using the client SDK before attempting to retrieve the data.

For more information see Get Started with Data in Mobile Services.

Client Libraries

Azure Mobile Services comes with clients libraries for the main mobile platforms available in the market today which are

Leveraging this library and Azure Mobile Services on the back end, developers can focus on writing their app and not all the extra plumbing required for things such as authentication.

Custom APIs

The API feature is relatively new (as of Jun 24 2013) to Azure Mobile Services but allows developers to quick build APIs to the systems to be accessed by various client applications. You can quickly build out the APIs required by your app and just as quickly secure the APIs making sure only authenticated users have access to the APIs. Definitely something to use more often in the future!

Push Notifications

I’m a big fan of push notifications for mobile apps because it allows users to stay connected and engaged with their users. It’s also a great way to entice users to open your apps and this is especially useful if you are monetizing your apps with in app advertising.

Using Azure mobile Services, developers can quickly get this up and running on the various platforms such as iOS, Android, Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 and it’s as easy as setting a few keys in your Azure Mobile Services Dashboard

push

Definitely something every developer should look at to keep their users engaged with their app.

For more information on how to get this running, see Get Started with Push Notifications in Mobile Services.

Overall, I think Windows Azure Mobile services really helps accelerate the development cycle and get your product to market faster. It allows you to focus on building out your product on not have to worry about server infrastructure or plumbing code required for things like authentication. When you need to scale, it’s just a few clicks and you are ready to handle your extra load from your users.

So those are our top reasons for using Windows Azure Mobile Services. If you have used it, what are your top reasons? Ping me or the RedBit team on Twitter or leave a comment here.

https://www.redbitdev.com/top-reasons-developers-should-use-windows-azure-mobile-services/

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.