We compared Microsoft Azure and Alibaba Cloud based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
Microsoft Azure is praised for its scalability, reliability, and extensive range of services, while users appreciate its customer service and support. On the other hand, Alibaba Cloud stands out for its security measures, efficient data management, and competitive pricing options. Both platforms offer positive returns on investment, but Alibaba Cloud users mention the need for improvements in customer support and service reliability.
Features: Microsoft Azure is praised for its scalability, versatility, reliability, and extensive range of services. In contrast, Alibaba Cloud is valued for its excellent scalability, robust security measures, reliable performance, extensive resource options, efficient data management, and friendly customer support.
Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Azure's setup cost has been praised for its ease and simplicity, with users appreciating the reasonable and competitive pricing. In contrast, Alibaba Cloud offers manageable setup costs, allowing customers to choose a suitable plan. The licensing process is smooth and straightforward., Microsoft Azure has been praised for its cost savings, increased efficiency, and improved scalability. Its wide range of services and tools streamlines operations and reduces infrastructure costs. Alibaba Cloud is highly regarded for its cost-effective cloud services, offering excellent value for money. It enhances efficiency, scalability, and reliability and provides extensive features and functionalities for overall business performance.
Room for Improvement: Microsoft Azure has received feedback regarding areas that need improvement, while Alibaba Cloud could benefit from enhancements in several aspects, including its interface, stability, reliability, customer support, and response times.
Deployment and customer support: Based on user feedback, there are differences in the duration required to establish a new tech solution between Microsoft Azure and Alibaba Cloud. Some Azure users mention a three-month deployment period with an additional week for setup, while Alibaba Cloud users mention both deployment and setup taking just one week. Context and usage of these terms must be considered in evaluating the overall duration., Microsoft Azure's customer service and support receive positive remarks for their responsiveness and expertise, offering prompt and helpful assistance. Users appreciate comprehensive documentation. In comparison, Alibaba Cloud's customer service is also praised for being attentive and helpful, with extensive documentation, but some users have expressed dissatisfaction with response time and expertise.
The summary above is based on 32 interviews we conducted recently with Microsoft Azure and Alibaba Cloud users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"I rate Alibaba Cloud's scalability an eight out of ten."
"It's easy to use, cheaper than other solutions, and more secure."
"Feature-wise, it provides many features. ECS, VM, SP, bucket object storage, and databases are the most valuable."
"What's good about Alibaba Cloud is its database service. It's also good in the virtual machine area."
"The installation is easy."
"The most valuable feature of Alibaba Cloud is the communication it allows between two servers."
"Alibaba support is responsive. When we create tickets in the Alibaba portal, they usually respond online or call me in five minutes."
"We use the product for storage and as a VPN."
"Much more intuitive and more visual than AWS. More obvious where things are and how to change their configurations, etc."
"With the Azure solution, you can get more value from your cloud investment no matter what your future goals are. It depends on your level of familiarity with the cloud you are using or with your computing. Azure helps you with every stage of the cloud."
"The integration with Databricks is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"It is a very straightforward solution that provides a wide range of services."
"We are satisfied with the technical support."
"The technical support has been excellent."
"If you're interested in going with Microsoft, my advice would be to do it. Everybody's using Microsoft."
"Managed storage capabilities, which create a very simple way to create, copy, and replicate local or geo-replicate, it's very simple to assign workloads."
"I think that sometimes the customer service for Alibaba Cloud is inefficient.... Sometimes it's hard to reach out to them."
"The user experience must be improved."
"The solution should have more integration."
"Users use websites as a tutorial. However, the Alibaba Cloud website has the content, and the scripts are copied from Amazon Web Services. We had received customer feedback where the customer asked us to get formulate original content instead of copying from Amazon Web Services. It’s very odd and awkward."
"The solution needs to improve its graphical user interface."
"The flexibility of the solution could be improved."
"From a performance point of view, Huawei and Azure are faster. Alibaba isn't as good."
"It is not robust."
"There are always new features to add in terms of additional indicators, improving the looks of the dashboard and stuff. There are some dashboards that are not attractive, we are looking to make them fancier and nice-looking."
"At this point, the latency is too high to use Azure in our production environment."
"Improving transparency in billing is crucial for us. Understanding how billing works only becomes clear once we start using the services. A more accurate billing calculator would help us anticipate costs associated with using specific services."
"Difficult to understand how it works and it's an expensive solution."
"It should have a better hybrid-cloud central analysis. Their support service also needs to be improved. Our main concern is support calls. Our issue is basically related to the technical functionality of the services that we use. It doesn't behave as expected, and support often fails to solve the problem."
"The interface for configuring the environment is not very intuitive. Certain things are at different places, and it is not easy to navigate. They should have a more transparent licensing model. Currently, Microsoft's licensing is a bit clunky, and it keeps changing depending on the type of subscription you have. Different features are included, and sometimes, it is very hard to figure out the right licensing. So, the commercial aspect of the licensing can be improved, and they can make it easier to understand all the features that are included."
"The alerts management should be improved. Alerts management is very complicated to configure. You have to go through a lot of tests and config action groups to set up those things. It is very complicated, and it can be simplified."
"Any time you use a cloud service, there are increased security risks. If you want more security, you have to have private hosting."
Alibaba Cloud is ranked 9th in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) with 16 reviews while Microsoft Azure is ranked 1st in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) with 299 reviews. Alibaba Cloud is rated 7.4, while Microsoft Azure is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Alibaba Cloud writes "The solution is useful for application development, but the user interface and user experience must be improved". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Azure writes "Promotes clear, logical structures preventing impractical configurations and offers seamless integration ". Alibaba Cloud is most compared with Google Cloud, Amazon AWS, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Google Firebase and DigitalOcean, whereas Microsoft Azure is most compared with Google Firebase, Amazon AWS, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Pivotal Cloud Foundry and OpenShift. See our Alibaba Cloud vs. Microsoft Azure report.
See our list of best Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) vendors.
We monitor all Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
I believe that with Microsoft Azure you will have a bigger advantage due to the amount of partners that there are in the market. If you need support from Partner one and you don't get it, it's easy to switch to another partner to get help.
Further to this Microsoft Azure now has datacentres worldwide which makes it easier to deploy anywhere.
Microsoft Azure