We compared Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Comparison Results: When comparing Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS, Azure is praised for its manageable setup, support, and documentation. It offers a wide range of features, an intuitive interface, and strong integration with other Microsoft solutions. However, it may be challenging for beginners and lacks user-friendliness in certain aspects. On the other hand, AWS provides quick deployment, extensive features, and strong integration capabilities. Users appreciate its scalability, reliability, and cost-effectiveness. However, some users find AWS pricing to be high and suggest improvements in areas like user interface, security, and billing.
"We can spin up the server anytime and have root access to it."
"The services that we are using have frequent updates, at least twice a year. They provide a new version that has more capabilities or features that fit our process and procedures."
"In general, Amazon's performance is good."
"The initial setup is not difficult and it did not take us more than one day."
"The ease of use is the biggest benefit."
"The solution scales very nicely."
"I like many features, like the recently released useful analytics features. There are many from the data analytics or database side."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the S3."
"The product is rather stable. We haven't had any issues with it in that sense."
"Microsoft offers free courses and an exam on their products. Many of my colleagues who use Microsoft Azure take advantage of those free courses to help them learn about the solution in depth."
"With Microsoft Azure, we have a platform that lets us easily deploy applications to the cloud."
"We've got multiple tools on Azure, which is a very good feature of Azure. Our Palo Alto firewall and other things are hosted in Azure. We're using Sentinel as well, which is a security tool that is being used by our SOC teams. I've also used AWS, and I find Azure to be more Windows-driven. Although Azure is newer as compared to AWS, it is growing fast. Microsoft is working towards the betterment of Azure."
"The scalability is good."
"The solution does a lot of coding and customization, and can go live quickly."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure is its ease of use."
"The most valuable features of Azure for me are its ease of management, recoverable virtual machines with backup support, excellent customer support, and user-friendly interface."
"There is a feature called Kinesis, which has to do with image processing. There are a few artificial intelligence tools that Amazon AWS should improve on."
"At times we find ourselves a little trapped, with the lack of customization, for what we need."
"The pricing is expensive"
"There have been some issues in the past when it comes to file integrations in AWS's cloud products. However, there are now alternative solutions out there that are helping to integrate them all."
"I have trouble with the AWS command-line interface."
"Requires better integration with other cloud products."
"The web console of AWS is not so user-friendly."
"The availability could be better."
"Some of the capabilities available in an on-premise SQL Server aren't available in Azure. For instance, we found Azure Managed Instance to be lacking in certain aspects. One of our clients decided to stay on-premise rather than migrate to Azure because of this reason."
"The security of the solution could always be much better."
"Customer services and support should be improved. If a user faces challenges in accessing Microsoft Azure, the support team takes time—it could be 24 to 48 hours—to resolve them. We need solutions in four to five hours. And there are business-critical issues where we need an immediate resolution."
"It could be more flexible. If you look at all Mircosoft products, they are not up to the mark. For example, Azure Ready doesn't provide the same kind of access a domain administrator has and the kind of flexibility that they have when using Active Directory. Microsoft support could be better. Their service could also be better. For example, specific policies for templates suddenly become unavailable. When I checked, they said that certain things might be withdrawn based on customer feedback. This happened once or twice, and it wasn't available at all for five days, it just went down."
"It is pretty secure, but it can always be more secure."
"Integrate as a service. A lot of Microsoft software licensing options aren’t yet in Azure. Also, the ability to integrate with other technologies, such as other options on the market based on RISC Technologies."
"The product's initial setup process and stability need improvement."
"The initial setup can be improved."
Amazon AWS is ranked 2nd in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) with 250 reviews while Microsoft Azure is ranked 1st in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) with 299 reviews. Amazon AWS is rated 8.4, while Microsoft Azure is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Amazon AWS writes "Reliable with good security but is difficult to set up". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Azure writes "Promotes clear, logical structures preventing impractical configurations and offers seamless integration ". Amazon AWS is most compared with Linode, OpenShift, SAP Cloud Platform, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and Pivotal Cloud Foundry, whereas Microsoft Azure is most compared with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Google Firebase, Pivotal Cloud Foundry, SAP Cloud Platform and Alibaba Cloud. See our Amazon AWS vs. Microsoft Azure report.
See our list of best Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) vendors and best PaaS Clouds 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.