Microsoft Azure Reviews, Competitors and Pricing

Abdul Khaliq

Information Technology Solutions Architect at Injazat

Sep 13, 2021

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Stable, plenty of features, and scalable

Pros and Cons

"I have found all the features to be good."

"The technical support is good, but the response time is poor."

What is our primary use case?

I am a system integrator and some of my customers are using Microsoft Azure for one server and others are using 10 servers. I have a few customers that are only using the Office 365 services within Microsoft Azure.

What is most valuable?

I have found all the features to be good.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Microsoft Azure for approximately one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable.

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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Microsoft Azure is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is good, but the response time is poor.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is easy.

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

The price of the solution is reasonable.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Microsoft Azure an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner

John Arnold

sales at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Oct 31, 2020

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Easy to set up, and offers flexibly that gives you good value for your money

Pros and Cons

"The most valuable features of this solution are the value for money and flexibility."

"In the next release, I would like to see better security."

What is our primary use case?

We are resellers of Intel-based processors and Microsoft software. We offer Windows 10, Windows 2019 server, and HCI for example.

We are a technology-based company and we set things up for people. We are dealing with educational establishments, and moving them from on-premises situations to the cloud.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of this solution are the value for money and flexibility.

What needs improvement?

In the next release, I would like to see better security.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been selling the latest version of Microsoft Azure for six months.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

On average, there are approximately 1000 users per site.

We plan to continue selling this solution.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have used technical support from Microsoft, although we do all of the technical support for our customers, ourselves.

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

Before Microsoft Azure, we did not sell any other product.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward.

We do hundreds of deployments and each individual one is different.

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

The pricing model is subscription-based and it's not an expensive solution.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Microsoft Azure 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: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller

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Microsoft Azure

December 2024

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STAR HOU

Technical Manager at Systex Software & Service

Aug 12, 2020

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Easy to use, stable, and the technical support is good

Pros and Cons

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure is that it is easy to use."

"The pricing can be reduced."

What is our primary use case?

We are a software development company and the primary use case of this solution is to create applications for our customers using the MSDN premium.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure is that it is easy to use.

What needs improvement?

The pricing can be reduced.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for between three and five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Microsoft Azure is stable and I haven't noticed any issues with it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This is a scalable solution.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is good.

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

The pricing for us is higher because we are using IaaS.

What other advice do I have?

Depending on the project requirements, I would recommend using Azure.

I would rate this solution a ten 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.

it_user76884

Owner with 51-200 employees

Dec 25, 2013

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Implementation is simple but anything to do with referencing other packages is simply frustrating

What is most valuable?

The ability to kick start a new web application or website and having them up and running in matter of minutes still amazes me.

How has it helped my organization?

Deploying new release for existing web applications has now become a matter of right clicking the name of the project and clicking ‘publish’, the same activity before might have been done in hours to days – depending on the complexity for the app.

What needs improvement?

Anything to do with referencing other packages is simply frustrating, this is mostly a problem with the Windows framework and not the hosting service, but it is still the most time consuming and irritating thing about using ASP.NET

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

Yes, well back in the days we used to install physical servers, then we went to manually virtual servers, that to hosted virtual server, then to Amazon machines and now switched to Windows Azure.

How was the initial setup?

As simple as can be.

What about the implementation team?

We do all technical work in house and with Azure there was really no need for external assistance.

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

When starting out I became member of the BizSpark program so the initial cost was 0 (FREE!), on customer’s projects the cost can go from $50 to $200 per month which is really cost effective for them.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Yes for every project we will compare Azure with Amazon, with virtual servers with a physical server. But in almost every case choosing Azure will be a no brainer.

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

it_user150756Director of Engineering at a tech services company

Report as inappropriate

Sep 5, 2014

How do you go about solving L7 loadbalancer issues in Azure? Also when you want to do L7 redirection from one datacenter to another datacenter , how do you solve them in Azure ?

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it_user7842

Owner with 51-200 employees

Jul 21, 2013

Secure your ASMX WebServices with SWT and Claims

I was recently involved into interesting project, that was using the plain old ASMX web services. We wanted to migrate it to the Windows Azure Access Control Service and make use of Claims.

The way we achieved that is to add additional Soap Header to the client requests that includes Simple Web Token (SWT). On the server side, we make a check for this specific header existence, then extract the token, perform some validation checks and inject a fresh new Claims Identity into the Service instance. One thing to look out for is that you have to think of a workaround, if your ASMX WebService is a Singleton object. My implementation works with non-singleton implementations. And I currently get my Simple Web Tokens from Windows Azure Access Control Service’s WRAP endpoint. I have configured a “Password” service identities and I play with the RuleGroups to add additional claims, based on identity used. It is pretty flexible!

The result is on … GitHub. I initially wanted to be on CodePlex, because I have other projects there and am more used to TFS style of working. But CodePlex’s TFS is down for quite some time, which was a good excuse to use GitHub. There is some explanations in the Readme.txt file, as well as comments in the code. So feel free to get the code, play around with it, ping me if it is not working for some reason, and so on!

The project makes extensive use of SWT Implementation, done by the Two10Degrees’ team. But I added a compiled assembly reference for convenience.

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

it_user6648

Owner at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

May 23, 2013

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Easy to connect to on-premise infrastructure, but deprovisioning services is complicated and SLA is not competitive

Valuable Features:

SSO access Easy connect to On-Prem infrastructure GA of new features, such as Azure Backup and Mobile services, free websites and easy to manage pay-as-you-go model.

Room for Improvement:

Deprovisioning services is complicated. SLA is not competitive. While some prices have been lowered, some increased after GA. Options from beta moved to different categories.

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

reviewer1663731

Process Manager at a marketing services firm with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 5, 2021

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Flexible, easy to use, and good technical support

Pros and Cons

"The solution is easy to use and flexible."

What is our primary use case?

We are using Microsoft Azure for test case management and automation code repositories.

What is most valuable?

The solution is easy to use and flexible.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Microsoft Azure for approximately one year.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have approximately 300 users using the solutions in my organization.

How are customer service and support?

The Microsoft technical support is good.

How was the initial setup?

Microsoft Azure's initial setup is simple.

What about the implementation team?

We use the help of our organization's system administrator. The solution does not require much maintenance.

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

The license cost could be reduced.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Microsoft Azure an eight out of ten.

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.

reviewer1333911

cloud solution architect at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Aug 29, 2021

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Reliable, scalable, and has good support

Pros and Cons

"I like the familiarity of this solution."

"The initial setup could be simplified."

What is our primary use case?

We are CSP distributors. We are indirect resellers.

What is most valuable?

I like the familiarity of this solution.

What needs improvement?

No product is perfect, there is always room for improvement.

The solution to the market and the guidance for the customer should be streamlined.

From a customer perspective, it can be complex. It's a bit abstract for the customer.

They need to provide comprehensive and easy-to-understand guidelines for the customers to implement.

The initial setup could be simplified.

The customization could be improved.

I would like things to be easy for the customers and partners.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Microsoft Azure for five years. I am a Microsoft engineer. It was my first job, and I have used it throughout the years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Microsoft Azure is very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's a very scalable product.

How are customer service and technical support?

We like the technical support.

How was the initial setup?

It can be complex when you deploy it on your own.

I have studied it, for me it was easy, but for our customers, it could be simplified. We want to make their lives easier.

What about the implementation team?

Customers will need the help of an integrator or consultant.

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

Customers need to purchase additional services because of the complexity of it.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution to others.

I would rate Microsoft Azure a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:

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