We performed a comparison between Amazon RDS and SQL Azure based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, SQL Azure nudges slightly ahead of Amazon RDS. SQL Azure is part of the Microsoft Azure ecosystem and offers huge benefits to Microsoft / Microsoft Azure, users which represents tremendous cost savings, great security, and seamless integrations with most Microsoft products.
"The product solved our DevOps and admin problems."
"The initial setup is straightforward, and technical support is good."
"The most valuable features of Amazon RDS are its scalability, reliability, and intelligence."
"The IT is easy to set up, which is the best."
"Amazon RDS is quite a well-managed and stable service...The initial setup was very easy."
"Amazon RDS handles database backup mechanisms and patch management."
"The tool is very easy to use and configure."
"Amazon RDS is a scalable solution."
"SQL Azure is good with transactional systems."
"Great auto-scaling and security features."
"Its performance is good. It has a lot of features. It has the backup feature, which is not there in Amazon RDS. In Azure SQL, there is an option to replicate and restore a database point to point, whereas we can't do that with Amazon RDS."
"It is good for scalability and high availability. It is also secure because of Microsoft's cloud investment. It is easy to use because it is on the cloud. Creation or making it available through web services is super easy. Azure SQL can be quickly published as web services for APIs to connect with other applications. Because it is in Microsoft Cloud, you can easily integrate with Microsoft stack."
"The most valuable aspect of SQL Azure is the SQL language itself. It's open and everybody can use it at my company. Also, we thought in the beginning that the response time would be inadequate, but it's actually decent. It's much better than expected. Then again, I'm not a programmer, but that's what I hear from our development team."
"The most valuable feature of SQL Azure is centralized authentication because I'm using the domain, user name, and password, for Microsoft 365 account with multifactor authentication and the security has been working well."
"Database services and Active Directory related functions for this solution are good. Stable, scalable, and easy to install. Its technical support is good."
"The interface is awesome."
"I like using Amazon RDS because it offers quick operations for me. However, there are times when understanding how to use some of the services can be challenging, even with documentation. If I could add a feature, I'd improve navigation for related services."
"The security features could be improved."
"The running cost could be improved."
"The Performance Monitor they have is a little clanky, at least in regards to the UI."
"A lot of the features are disabled by default. The solution should enable more features. I understand this could cause challenges to management for many clients using RDS, however."
"In the next release, it would be great to see RDS provide connection pooling out of the box."
"In the next release, it would be great to have access to core parameters to improve or tweak the performance."
"It would be helpful if they made it easier to migrate from an existing on-premises solution to the cloud-based service."
"The solution can be improved by reducing the constraints available."
"There are some limitations for cross-database queries and features. The migration of data from older systems should be easier. For deployment, there are too many options, which sometimes makes it difficult to figure out the best option. There is not enough information to help you to find the best option for deployment. There should be more documentation about this."
"In terms of support, they don't give much support."
"Some issues with scalability."
"Their availability in the Middle East and Asia regions needs to improve."
"There are certain shortcomings when it comes to the stability of the product, especially if I consider the fact that there can always be some bug-related issues in the tool."
"The solution has to scale up its expertise for hosting Oracle."
"Lacking in technical documentation."
Amazon RDS is ranked 1st in Database as a Service with 45 reviews while SQL Azure is ranked 2nd in Database as a Service with 90 reviews. Amazon RDS is rated 8.4, while SQL Azure is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Amazon RDS writes "Provides excellent authentication, authorization, integration, data protection, and autoscaling features". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SQL Azure writes "The SQL connector effectively syncs data to databases". Amazon RDS is most compared with MongoDB Atlas, Google Cloud SQL, Oracle Database as a Service, Google Cloud Spanner and Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer, whereas SQL Azure is most compared with Google Cloud SQL, MongoDB Atlas, Oracle Database as a Service, Google Cloud Spanner and IBM Db2 on Cloud. See our Amazon RDS vs. SQL Azure report.
See our list of best Database as a Service vendors.
We monitor all Database as a Service 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.
